Montesquieu

The problem is that you frame the act of a wolf surviving in humanistic terms, like the wolf is living off "aggressive actions" like when it "attacks and eats a rabbit." The wolf and the rabbit are equally devoid of human rights, as they aren't humans. The world of beasts is a strugal for survival, the human world is not not per se, but an attempt to survive through our primary means of survival, human reason, whereas all other animals work off of brute force and built-in genetic instincts. We have no instincts because we don't need them, every human being can figure out how to survive simply by learning things with the passage of time. A wolf cannot take "aggressive" actions in the human sense of that word (like Germany aggressively invading Poland or France) because whereas humans have the right to be free, a rabbit has no rights at all either qua wolf or qua man. It's life is only good so long as it can stay alive, by being faster and more aware, agile, etc. than potential predators, including the greatest predator the world has ever known, mankind. While it is easily within our ability to exterminate all mammal life on the planet, if we really put our resources and efforts into it, we don't do so because it is to our benefit to keep some animals around, particularly chickens, cows, pigs, goats, sheep, fish, etc. They exist, in artificially gigantic numbers, because of our wants and desires. Were we to all go vegetarian tomorrow, these animals would die wholesale because no one would want them for anything at all. Either way, if we all eat meat or all refuse, animals will continue to die at our will, and if we all became nutjob vegetarians, whim.

This is the price you pay for living in the capital, the feds own it and they control it. You must live in a state to be represented. As it is, its ridiculous enough DC even gets electoral votes, let alone anything else.

This is a very interesting topic. I only wish Mr. Eisenhauer had also pointed out the denial of reality that goes on in today's academia, and how this also inhibits the ability of mankind to advance.

I lived in Saudi Arabia for about four years between 1993-1996, the Saudis hate the Iranians and the Iranians hate the Saudis. Were it not for the uniting hatred they all share for Israel (and to a lesser extent the U.S.) they would be blowing each other up right about now. It mainly has to do with their competing religious battle for Islam, and the fact that Arab and non-Arab muslims look down on each other.

There is no way to prove that Kerry will do this any better or more than Bush has done it, in fact he is saying things that are quite the contrary. Their must be a premise two and a premise three to get to the conclusion. 2 must be that Bush is harming premise one, and 3 must be that Kerry will not do so to the same extent as Bush. If this is one's argument then fine, we can debate the merits of those premises and the facts one can cite to support them, but to make a positive argument for Kerry is ridiculous, the only way he can be preferable is through default, due to the dangers and inefficacies of Bush. But then why should one vote at all? Ayn Rand abstained from voting in 1980, a very important election, although admittedly not one which ended up being very close.

Neither side knew a treaty was signed and the treaty wasn't ratified by congress yet, which makes it not legally binding in the first place.

We defeated your invasion at Plattsburgh, New Orleans, and Fort McHenry. That gives us three defensive victories to your one, so by that standard we won the war.

All this half-battle stuff is referring to arguments, if you compromise in ideas you hasten the victory of your enemy. This is what happened in Germany, the liberals compromised in fighting the parties opposed to the Weimar Republic, most notably the Nazis. In war however, the situation is somewhat different in that even though you are compromising you are still engaged in the deployment of deadly force, which can't be compromised (i.e. you can't half kill someone). A half-battle is preferrable to no battle at all in a war, in fact it may prove strategically brilliant. I'm not saying the war up to now has been strategically brilliant, the point is merely to say that half measures in war still accomplish death and destruction whereas half-measures in politics (Bush's domestic agenda for instance) accomplish nothing and merely emboldens the enemy (which has been and always will be the Democratic Party). This was what Ayn Rand was talking about, political half-measures, compromising with your ideological enemies will hasten their victory because you will have ceded the opposition away. I fail to see how this can be applied to a war. Even if Bush refuses to firebomb Fallujah, or level it with atomic weapons, he is still killing hundreds of people and leveling buildings all over the place with targeted strikes. Try telling the dead terrorists that we are fighting a half battle. Remember that Bush's mode of fighting is inherited from liberal democrats fighting in Vietnam. It was Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, and Lyndon Johnson who came up with the brilliant tactic of endangering your own troops to avoid civilian casualties by flying our fighter jets and bombers nearer SAM sites so as to not risk hurting civilians. The compromising Bush makes on the war is with the Democrats, so how will electing the Democrats effect anything for the good? If there were no war, and we were just talking Bush's domestic programs I would be very tempted to agree with those supporting Kerry, at least so long as I am confident of the congress staying Republican. But there is a war and Kerry's position is very clearly to go back to how it was before Bush and he'll view his victory as a mandate to do just that. Kerry is the product of a generation that views American power and the use of it as an evil on par with any other country using force, including our enemies. Why do you think he was so indignant about America having the nerve to ask other countries to stop developing nuclear weapons when we are developing a new nuclear bunker buster? All force is equally heinous to men like Kerry, as it was to Jimmy Carter (who got to speak at a Democratic Convention this year for the first time since 1980). If Bush were running against an Objectivist or a rational politician like the Barry Goldwater of 1964, then I would say goodbye to him in a flash, but he's not running against either of these. He's running against a man who once called Ho Chi Minh the George Washington of Vietnam. He's running against that which he has been so criticized in these forums for compromising with. Some will say, but if Kerry gets in there and does nothing for four years, someone good may get nominated to challenge him, like Giuliani or someone similar. This may be, but how can we waste four years of valuable time in doing nothing when something needs to be done and sone. Fortunately for all of us, no matter who is elected, if the American president does nothing about Iran we can at least thank George W. Bush for selling the Israelis long range fuel tankers and bunker busters with which to attack the Iranians, even though we could not muster the will to do so ourselves.

On a side note, you're wrong about how the war turned out and what the big battles were. The Battle of New Orleans is remembered so well because it gave us our seventh President, and it was fought by both sides both thinking the war was hot. A treaty is no good until people know about it and it is ratified, which wasn't true when the battle was fought. Also, the important battle in the war was Plattsburgh fought on and around Lake Champlain near the Canadian Border. The victory achieved here was more impressive and more important strategically. But it was overshadowed by New Orleans. People like land battles more, plus the one-sidedness of New Orleans was incredible even to this day.

Of course it was possible to recognize Iran as the greater threat to the United States before we invaded Iraq, but in the context of world affairs before the invasion one could certainly make a great case that Iraq was very dangerous and had to be dealt with. Bush chose Iraq as a matter of convenience, given that they clearly broke a cease fire agreement, attacked us overtly everyday, and had numerous connections with terrorists. In the context that everyone thought they had weapons of mass destruction, Iraq was clearly a large threat, Iran was and is a bigger threat, but that doesn't diminish the threat Iraq posed. Our soldiers haven't died for nothing, we have the right, whenever we want to, to get rid of unfree governments at any time. Saddam's attacking of us on a daily basis was reason enough to get rid of him. The fact that you think Iraq and Afghanistan are losing efforts is amusing. Even with Bush's dopey way of prosecuting them I think it improbable that we will actually lose, rather we will spend more time and money and blood than is necessary and proper. I have no particular reason to think Iran and North Korea will be different, except that they are different countries. Iran's population hates its own government and is actively trying to undermine it, which means an invasion or toppling of the mullahs will be a lot easier to accomplish. North Korea isn't going to be attacked by either Bush or Kerry, because the North Koreans are savvy as to how modern politics work and will not push the situation to the point of war, they will push it far enough to get concessions. They are dopey communists, not fanatical lunatics. It was meant to be, though it was entirely warranted. You never would have made it through World War 2, you would have gone mad with the casualty lists. Over 10,000 dead in the Battle of the Bulge alone. We often lose far more people in the war than in the attack or event that led to the war in the first place, does that mean we shouldn't fight? Or should we fight only if we can keep the deaths below those of the initial attack? Iraq will eventually stabilize and cease to be a diversion for the terrorists who are already regrouping in Iran and Syria. The question is will anyone pursue them to their new hideouts? Bush has a record of attacking terrorists and taking out countries, Kerry and his Democratic Party has no record of doing anything. Everything he has said and done point to a reversal of Bush's policy back to Clintonian foreign policy, which means nothing will happen. Perhaps you think that doing nothing is better than doing a flawed something, I do not. We don't have the luxury of waiting around for a pacifist John Kerry to blow to political pressures which may or may not come around, and why should he? He will have defeated the policy that said doing something was necessary on a platform of doing nothing as opposed to doing more.

Sorry, the story is a little updated since I created the topic. The quote cam from an article in New York Times Magazine. But it is now becoming a major news story, so I imagine most 9/11 families heard about it by now, though I'm not sure what good it does since most 9/11 families seem to have become highly partisan one way or the other.

Like Kerry, you're context dropping. Bush even pointed this out (once) in the second debate. We only know that Iraq didn't possess weapons by controlling the country. At the time an invasion was ordered every intelligence aganecy in the world agreed that Saddam had weapons, thus his numerous terror connections meant he could give those weapons to terrorists if he wanted to. Given the nature of the war and all the stupid restrcitions on the troops, 1000+ dead is microscopically small by historical standards and making anything of it only contributes to making people less willing to fight bigger threats which may cost more people, i.e. Iran, Syria, North Korea. Whether you support Bush or Kerry, I would refrain from picking up the partisan lingo and talking points of the side you support considering most of it is election baloney. One last point, you mention how glad you are terrorists can't train, hide, and attack us in Iraq, sarcastically of course. You're making Bush's case for him, it's far better to have the terrorists all embroiled in Iraq against our trained professionals than plotting to blow up the Sears Tower or something. If only Iran could be made into a similar diversion for the terrorists so that they can throw themselves against the bulwark of the American military.

Kerry told the New York Times, "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." What does he mean go back? The only interpretation available for this quote is that he liked the way it was under Bill Clinton, where Americans and others were killed at will with no attempt to respond and no strategic vision to deal with the very real problem terrorists represent. Could anyone who thinks we need to go back in time, to a time when threats gathered and worked unfettered, be the right person to deal with any current problems? Why would Kerry ever deal with Iran? If he was elected he would see it as a repudiation of preemption, of the War on Terror all together. His ideas for dealing with Iran and North Korea are bilatteral talks on the Clinton model where we give them what they want in exchange for some inspectors to go in and try to see if they fool us, which they did. Kerry is sinking his campaign into unthinking idiocy.

The Revolution and the War of 1812 were fought for totally proper reasons and were fought successfully. The rhetoric sometimes associated with the Mexican-American War, that of manifest destiny, was wrong, but we were attacked by the Mexican army and responded properly. To say that no war in all history was fought for a proper reason is just wrong.

This is commonly called by economists, "featherbedding," unions do it all the time when they write out the employment contract to creat and preserve as many idiotic jobs and tasks in the hands of a set group of people, even when this number of employees is absurdly high. You're not the only one who has to deal with it, unfortunately.

Watch the whole thing, it was a pretty interesting debate, but Cheney blew Edwards away. How much does it matter though since Edwards isn't running for President.

Techinically, and this may mean something given the opening question, "government" property is privately owned because all of us (meaning U.S. citizens) own the government. You should look at the government as a big corporation of which everyone is a shareholder and board member. Also remember that the FEDs holding tons of land forever was never supposed to occur, the government at first sold land gained through treaty or war to people as its main source of revenue. It could do that today as well, but the environmentalists want land frozen in time for some as yet unborn generation to see and realize we were idiots. Now, the government differs from a corporation is other quite fundamental ways, but for the issue of land owning I think the analogy is helpful and accurate. One more point, remember that at the beginning of the country the real federal property, that property which was essential to the running of the government and chosen to house it (Washington D.C.) was a very useless swamp which George Washington organised the purchase of for the government. I'm not totally familiar with the arrangements in New York and Philadelphia, the first two capitals, but I think the congressmen and senators did rent space from private persons for officed and even for committee work. If this applied universally or across the board I don't really know, it's not my field of research. Caution: There is a serious and real disconnect from the way government land owning should and briefly did work and how it works today, beware not to confuse the two together.

Ayn Rand, a communist! Must be a religious freak who associates Communism with Atheism and vice versa. Michael, my take on your problem, and I'm going entirely on your characterization of how much Objectivism has prompted changes in your life, is that the people you associated with prior to learning about Objectivism (except for your family) were chosen based on whatever your preferences for good people were before Objectivism, I call these people Friends BO (Before Objectivism) I had many such friends before my dad introduced me to Ayn Rand and Objectivism. AO, after Objectivism, I found that I slowly but surely had falling outs or a diverging path with all my BO friends. I don't think you can really expect anything else given that you begin to notice all sorts of things about them which don't encourage you to keep a good friendship going, plus it is much easier and likely to have arguments, especially about God or politics as they get older and both parties can vote. As I see it, unless you're explicitly raised as an Objectivist from the outset, one is going to make friends with a hodgepodge of different people who are almost all going to end up as semi- (or completely) irrational adults unless you happen to "convert" some of them or pleasantly discover they have learned what you have. Now if you can still make these relationships work, then bravo, but my experience has showed me that it is usually more trouble than it is worth. But one must ultimately decide whether wants to live a guilt-free moral and rational existence or to compromise everything for the sake of keeping irrational people your friends.

Barbarous? Unnecessary? Not justifiable? By what ethical standard? Lesser animals aren't humans, and only humans have any rights. The ability to process pain isn't anything noteworthy, any being with a primitive brain can claim that (if they could all talk). The instinct to survive is the base point of all organic life, plants included, and that is the only respect in which lesser animals can be said to be self-interested. By this standard all vegetable and fruit life cannot be consumed, because it to is "self-interested" and has also been barbarously slaughtered. Killing animals is necessary because they can't be properly processed for eating unless they are dead, unless you know of a way to pull out a chicken's feathers and cut it apart and eat it without killing it (the same applies to all animals that are eaten). Human beings are omnivorous, meat is a fundamental part of the human diet, if it weren't we wouldn't be able to chew it, digest it, crave it, or swallow it. It would be anathema to us as a species, which it clearly is not. I would suggest you take your uninformed and goofy "ideas" somewhere where they will be appreciated, i.e. a farm or petting zoo.

Bush expresses this idea incorrectly, saying these people want freedom. Really it's quite irrelevant if they want freedom or not. A free state is the only condition we can leave these places in, unless we commit ourselves to colonizing the region, to assure we are not attacked by these states again. Free states, states that recognize and uphold individual rights do not make war on one another. Now one may argue that Bush has not created governments sufficiently free, which I think is true, but harping on the idea that these people may not "want" freedom is leftist irrelevancy. I could care less if they want freedom or if they want Saddam, they are going to get freedom or they can accept death, those are their only options.

Before we move on to another topic, this epistemological argument is not over, Kerry is not as great as he is being portrayed, nor Bush as foolish. This idea of Bush being consistent and certain is a myth created by 1) Kerry's logical incoherence on the topic, and 2) the Republicans using Kerry's "flip-flopping" as a way to say by implication that Bush is the opposite. Kerry has held contradictory views at different points in the year since January, saying the war was a mistake, and then saying he would vote to go to war knowing all that we know, and then saying just the opposite. This is pure politics, I know that, but to paint it is some monument to a proper epistemology is absurd. Kerry is not looking at any facts, if he were he would merely point out that Bush isn't tough enough in Iraq and that we should have gone to war in Iran. He didn't say any of this. Kerry has put Bush in the position of explaining what logic is, i.e. the art of non-contradictory thought, which Kerry is ignoring wholesale. Bush ignores it to, but has run a better campaign taking advantage of Kerry's precarious political situation, i.e. his party is split over the progress and usefulness of the war in Iraq. Bush has changed his positions numerous times, i.e. 9/11 commision, steel tariffs, homeland security, not to mention changes in policies in Iraq. These aren't mere changes in tactics, but wholesale reversals of fundamental ideas. But Kerry can make no hay of any of these changes because he either agrees with them, or is left running with unpopular leftist positions like me need more tariffs. I thought Bush should stay away from coming out to say that he is consistent and Kerry is not. In a debate situation you leave yourself open to the argument of the first Justice Harlan in his lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson where he was assailed for being inconsistent, in once owning slaves and then writing that segregation laws were unconstitutional. Harlan replied that he'd rather be inconsistent and correct than consistently wrong. Of course Bush isn't consistent, let alone consistently wrong, if he were he would have no hope of reelection, even by his own party. But the format of these "debates" isn't sufficient to argue yourself out of the charge before the topic changes. Better to let Kerry be inconsistent on the campaign trail or in his interviews, like the one he just had with Diane Sawyer or even within the debate itself. Kerry vascillated between saying Saddam was a threat to the United States while also saying the war was a mistake. By saying he would build alliances while previously insulting every ally we have and having his sister work actively in other countries, most notably Australia, to defeat our allies in their elections. He said Bush doesn't bring other countries to the table, but then when Bush does what Kerry says he should do in the case of North Korea, Kerry then says he should go it alone. (Both are wrong, but logically Kerry is all over the place, he either is so political he doesn't care or his mind is a tangled mess incapable of integrating any knowledge or ideas.) Much is made of Bush's metaphysical belief in God and thus his reliance on faith for knowledge. If he were so reliant on God, why meet with any intelligence specialists, why have any advisors, why not just pray for what to do and then do it? Also, Kerry is no better religiously, walking around with his ridiculous papist ash cross on his head acting pious. However neither of them is so irrationally blinded by religion that they don't consult earthly knowledge for earthly problems. The biggest problem with Bush on foreign policy is that he is too much like Kerry, George H. W. Bush, and Powell while not enough like Rumsfeld. He is too liberal and European in his fighting of the war, and not enough of an American, who blows people away and asks questions later. As opposed to a Cowboy, Bush is more like a sheriff's deputy, always searching for guidance and pointers from institutions like the UN. How Kerry can be reasoned with is lost upon me. For Kerry, the things he says the day before are forgotten, the things he says the hour before are forgotten. He's not recognizing reality in any of his critiques of Bush, his critiques always and invariably miss the real point. Bush is a weak candidate who could be torn apart by any rational person, and yet Kerry's logical foibles have made Bush the frontrunner. He did not correct this last night. In fact he made it worse by talking about his terrible ideas, which are worse than Bush's (an accomplishment), on Iran and to disarm the United States of nuclear weapons meant to be used against terrorists. If Kerry is an epistemological model that we look to as good, then Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Ralph Nader must be our ideals.

Who do you think prevailed in the first debate, if indeed you think anyone won?

Kerry said the most outrageous things in the debate. 1) He equated the United States to other countries and terrorists by denouncing US development of a nuclear bunker buster bomb, meant to defend the United States. 2) He mentioned his idiotic plan for dealing with Iran, which would mean offering them nuclear fuel under the condition that we would send inspectors in with the fuel. His great plan is, instead of just telling the Iranians to stop or be blown to hell, to give them exactly what they want and then hope that some inspectors can make sure nothing bad happens, that the fuel is used only for "peaceful" purposes. Another thing, he incorrectly blamed Bush for the United States being the only country with sanctions on Iran, instead of blaming France, Russia, Germany, etc. This Bush pointed out. Kerry also implied rather obviously throughout the evening that Bush lied about all sorts of things, hence Bush's pissed off looks throughout the night and once referring to Kerry's drivel as "absurd." Kerry was willing to blame every problem in the world on America, and on Bush. For example he went on explaining how Charles De Gaulle, President of France, had told the American ambassador that he would take Kennedy's word for the fact that missiles were in Cuba and didn't need to see photographs. Kerry then said what leader would do that today? But why is it America's fault that leaders won't do that? De Gaulle is dead, and Jacques Chirac is President of France and he is the most obstinate and unhelpful of any foreign leader. Not only that but the context of the two situations is a million times different, De Gaulle was under threat of invasion and nuclear annihilation from the Soviet Union, of course he'll take the President's word for it. Chirac has a public unconcerned about America's security and a government all entangled with Saddam's regime, even though his own intelligence agency said Saddam had WMD's he wouldn't support war no matter what. There is no doubt that Kerry is a better speaker, but why is this surprising? There is a whole cottage industry created around Bush's speaking blunders (who says he's not creating jobs). But Kerry's ideas, contradictory to an extent that makes Bush look like the paragon of consistency even though he isn't, can't be made to look better than they are, and they are terrible. It's already coming out how many times Kerry lied during the debate, for instance he said the NYC subway system was shut down for the convention due to Bush's bad job of defending the country. He ignores Federalism, plus the factual assertion was false, it did not shut down, just in areas around the Garden. Also he said to Lehrer that he never used the word "lied" in regard to the President on Iraq when in fact he's used that word many times in the course of his primary campaign and subsequent Presidential campaign. Unravelling all of his bad ideas, lies, and doubletalk will consume the attention of the media in the days to come.

Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld would be a good ticket and would anger communists even more than Bush/Cheney. I'm almost in George Costanza mode. I don't know how many of you watch Seinfeld, but in one episode George theorizes "If every instinct I've ever had is wrong, then the opposite must be right," he then goes on to ask a woman out by telling her the truth about himself (he's bald, unemployed, and living with his parents) and voila he gets a date! Relating this to politics today my theory is "If every theory and opinion communists have is wrong, then the opposite must be right." Of course, as in George's case, this theory only goes so far, but I think in my case there is some grain of truth to it, even if it is far from absolute.

Your question is a good one. Without force, and not just the thugery of union members, but the force of the state to look the other way and to force employers into accepting unions, a union could not exist in anything like the form we know today. In a free labor market all workers can do to attempt to raise their price is the same thing companies can do, which is collude. Collusion is, however, highly ineffective as it succumbs to cheating as soon as the price goes up. But in the case of employed workers another risk is present in a free labor market, the employer can merely fire the colluding workers and hire others. Now this is impossible as it is illegal to fire people on the basis of their trying to form a union and in some locals firms are forced into all sorts of odd arrangements, like not being able to do business with a firm whose workers are on strike, etc. But the force of the state is what is essential for the success of a union with any real "power" because otherwise you would have situations where companies would just call out the police, or if the cops are sympathetic to the unions, call out the army or private security (Pinkertons) to prevent vandalism and trespassing. This is what typified attempts of people to strike in the 19th century. Especially against large firms like Carnegie's US Steel, where he could afford to lock the workers out of a plant until they gave in or went away (as they would starve without jobs eventually). If the workers want an association in the form Betsy referred to, a mutual aid society where they chip in money to help out a guy who gets injured or provide a pension to a widow, that's one thing, but forming a union to force employers to deal with you is unjust in the extreme, it's reverse slavery almost.