John McVey

David: I think he's asking two separate sets of questions, and beginning to let his fears get the better of him. Marty: 1) How real and valid is this whole idea? I most certainly sympathise with questioning it outright. I have often thought if the illness is being grieviously overascribed to people as a means to delegitimising the successes that geeks and nerds have had from the 80's onward. It may well be real, just as ADHD is real, but I think perhaps it is similarly nowhere near as prevalent as it is made out to be and is being abused to serve sociopolitical ends. This is just purely my own musings given the increase in mentions of it ever since geeks started getting glowing headlines. 2) Do I have it and if so, what's my prognosis and what can I do about it? First, it is silly to try to self-diagnose based on some gleanings from webpages. If your thinking and feelings are troubling you enough to interfere with your quality of life, then go see a psychologist. The only problem is that how competent that many mental health experts and practitioners are is open to debate. I can't say much other than see if Dr Hurd or Dr Kenner have anything to say or can help in somewhere (Dr Hurd allows some consultation by email, IIRC), and that (I think) those good doctors have had a few good words to say about followers of the Cognitive Therapy School in general (one name that comes to mind is Dr Aaron Beck, its founder). Also, Dr Locke was a practicing psychologist before he switched to business motivation studies, so he may also have material in his archives or other publications available. Second, it doesn't seem to be bothering Bill Gates any, being successful and a married father. If you don't have it, fine whatever, get on with your life. If you do, evidently it is nicely manageable and if anything you can use it to your advantage. Of course, this is NOT a substitute for proper medical advice, I am just saying that I highly doubt you have anything to get all worked up about. Cheers, mate! JJM

Even after reading your clarification I would not change a word of my larger response. Mate, that is a flat contradiction that almost defies civil response. I sympathise with Dr Peikoff's getting apoplectic at times. I'll dig up some references for you when I regain access to my books and ObjCDR. JJM

Presently I am the Senior Laboratory Technician for an Australian unit of a biotech SBU within the German-based global specialty chemicals business Cognis. Our job where I work is to steal all the Precious Bodily Fluids (natural beta-carotene and mixed carotenoids) out of the cells of the algae Dunaliella Salina. Amongst other R&D things I get up to, it is my great privilege to subject those cells to all manner of high-strength acids, alkalis, and organic solvents. No D.Salina cell is safe, wuahahahaha I'm in my last year of a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment with the Financial Services Institute of Australia, after which I want to be involved with researching, rating, and funding venture capital projects. JJM

Re emergency damage: Are you seriously suggesting you don't see the flagrant contradictions in the scenarios you just posited? That someone is in a position to threaten another party yet unable to extricate himself from the situation!? That this same person can use government to do it for him and say in effect "Call 911 for me, or I'll call 911 upon you!"? Further, I don't see why you are making a big song and dance about 'damage' in such cases in the first place. It is not as though the healthy party is asked, in your original scenarios, to bear great costs of any kind. A call to 911 costs a few cents - there goes the budget for the next ski-trip, hmm? Those who would not voluntarily bear such costs, if they would even think about them at all, are such exceedingly rare brutes as to be totally unwarranted as topics of contention in a discussion on Constitutions. Assistance rendered must be an act of charity at the total discretion of the giver, never compulsory. Make it compulsory and you're enshrining altruism, and no matter how trivial the instance once you do that then you're beginning to dance with Mr Brownstone. In any event, the kind of law you cite actually was put into place, some time in the 90's. I think it was in Europe somewhere that it became compulsory to stop for drivers on the side of country roads trying to flag down some help. In short order the law was used as a means to generating victims of roadside ambushes, and as a result there was a great push to have that law abolished (I don't recall if this was sucessful or not.) Again, the immoral is the impractical. This reminds me of a recent episode of Stargate Atlantis. Dr McCabe begins a lunch discussion of saving ten people versus one by throwing a railway switch. Col Sheppard and Ronin respond by rightly tearing holes in Dr McCabe's whole setup. Dr McCabe, who never once questioned the legitimacy of the scenario, just accuses Col Sheppard and Ronin of missing the point and so just gets frustrated and increases his feelings of alienation. Collateral damage: Correct, insofar as that paragraph goes. What I am saying is that governments properly aren't the initiators. Your insistance that it is okay for governments to do a 'little' initiation is in the same dance hall as the above. Taxation: This is not the thread for that argument. In this thread - an Objectivist Constitution - the evil stature of taxation is taken for granted. Ditto conscription. In fact, I would go so far as to say that almost all of what you cite shouldn't be in this thread at all, but discussed elsewhere in one or more rights threads. Amongst other things, trying to discuss them in this thread alone would turn it into a collosal and unintegrated sprawl. Re surveillance: Reread what I wrote, as you have missed it entirely. You quote one sentence that you totally misunderstand, and then completely ignore the rest which deals with the precise case you raise after that first quotation. Amazing. Re minimisation: Unavoidable damage caused by governments is not initiation by that government when governments are acting rightly. Minimisation of the damage in total is about making sure the government does NOT step over into actual initiation and keeping moral responsibility for that part which is necessary entirely on the shoulders of the criminals or invaders. It is evil, but the government rightly acting in such ways as necessary to deal with the miscreants isn't committing that evil. To the extent that governments can legitimately be said to be initiating force, then is again an evil but neither necessary nor right, and it is part of the job of a Constitution to say NO. ... and that confused mess is EXACTLY why exhortations to bone up on Objectivist epistemology would be and are made. You are the one being thoroughly concrete bound in the treatment of the word 'initiation,' holding it in effect as being exclusively the immediately preceding efficient cause of forceful action without reference to prior causes and context. You are thus also dissociating other concepts you discuss from their proper meanings (particularly retaliatory force), and improperly attaching them to initiation. This is the main reason why you end up saying that 'some' initiation is necessary. I repeat, to the extent that the actions you site are necessary and I agree they are necessary, I am telling you that they are NOT properly identifiable as initiations of force, and those actions that are properly identifiable are neither necessary nor justified. You then give a partly circular notion of what a definition is, and swinging from one wrong method to the other wrong method you state by implication that not only are the meanings of words and concepts not intrinsic but are entirely relative, collectively subjective, more fluid than lighter fuel. Matching that, you then top it off with a sentence that sounds like it came from The Red Queen during her awkward teenage years. Definitions are not that kind of contextual in the way you are stating. A definition is a formal means of keeping a concept separate from other related concepts, and changes when more concepts are learned of and the characteristics cited in the definition are no longer sufficient to distinguish that concept. A definition does NOT change in such a fashion as to alter the meaning of the concept it is defining as the entire set of previous definitions still remain fully true and descriptive. I'm not going to go into details in any part of this forum section never mind this thread, just tell you to go over ItOE and OPAR again and then raise questions in the Metaphysics and Epistemology forum sections. JJM Post script: This response doesn't include consideration of the post you put up while I was writing this.

BBG/Feather: Not quite - perhaps 'commission' was the wrong word to use. In the same sort of manner BBG describes, deliverers get X amount per item delivered, say $A2.30 per pizza (while the franchise charges $2.50 or something for delivery). From that $2.30 the drivers have to pay for their own cars, maintenance, and fuel. In the main, deliverers are engaged as contractors rather than employees. BBG cites getting past minimum wage laws, which certainly is a part as minimum wage does not apply when you're legally your own boss. I think it is as much to do with laws on taxation (this practice allows deliverers to claim a fair chunk of their cars' costs against their taxable income, to a degree greater than the actual usage for deliveries) and employment (contractors are hirable and releasable at will) as it is about general cost cutting. An element of reducing uncertainty in budgeting by passing on to others concern for daily fuel price volatility is also present. I don't see why a % rate would be even applicable here never mind superior to tipping. Pizza prices, leaving aside that $159 per slice lobster-and-caviar creation, are within a narrow band and I don't imagine the differences would be worth the administrative cost. Nor would it make a difference to the driver as the effort (and risk) in delivering it would be identical were the pizza a jumbo custom-topping job or a standard two-person on-the-menu medium. JJM

Persons interested in the subject may also find Dr Locke's "Psychoepistemology of the Arab World" interesting. As well as an expose' of the present state of their mentality, it includes a discussion of what went wrong, and specifies a single man in the old Arab world who acted as an 'Aquinas in reverse' and almost single handedly wrecked any chance of secularisation in the Arab world for generations. JJM

I didn't add this before because I don't know how widespread this is. In my little city almost all fast food joints, and increasingly a number of standard restaraunts that include takeaway facilities, expressly state a separate charge for delivery, both on the postbox fliers and as a commission rate that deliverers get as specified in recruitment ads (I don't recall how much of the former becomes the latter). Customers are also free to opt for delivery or go do their own pickups. I often don't get delivery because the pizza joint I usually order from is 100m straight up the road. In my case, there ain't no delivery boy TO tip! This practice includes the loca Pizza Hut and both Subway franchises, which leads me to think it may well be very widespread. Major chains are usually seriously out to make sure their franchisees rigidly stick to the operating manual and so such flexibility would most likely not exist without the express permission of PH's and Subway's respective head offices. Anyone care to add enlightenment to this? It may well be just a special dispensation that small cities get - discounting the exclusively industrial region in the north, Whyalla is a bare 7 miles from one end to the other, and only 3 at its widest. JJM

I apologise for the brevity of my previous response on the matter, though I stand by my judgement. I'll also mostly not cover the grounds that David did. Emergency damage: Your shipwreck situation is in error because it is switching contexts. In a place where anyone is capable of calling upon government there will in the same location exist many of the convenience of modern life, which includes other boaties and hence a S&R crew (which will most likely be privately run, but this does not stop any Navy personnel using it as a training exercise etc). That is not far-fetched - where I am, for example, which is not greatly populated, there is an entire S&R helicopter crew funded by a TV station as well as plenty of volunteer outfits (I'm not going to go into the variety of possible funding models here). None of that means initiation of force by anyone. Where there is no government then it is a classic remote lifeboat situation, and discussion of it has no place in the context of a Constitution. Collateral damage: Miscarriages of justice are not initiations of force but mistakes undertaken on the premise of use of retaliatory force. It only counts as genuine initiation when the justice authorities act against who it officially knows to be innocent. One example you cite is compulsory jury duty. You state it as necessary, which I reject completely. Taxation is similarly just plain OUT. Surveillance, OTOH, need not even be a use of force at all. When it does require use of force, such as wiretaps, then at least some actual evidence of wrongdoing must be presented to a judge or magistrate to authorise that surveillance. In such an instance it would again NOT be an initiation, but either a species of retaliation or a mistake. The most interesting one, from a post-mortem perspective, is the matter of military activity. You raise conscription, which must be totally verboten no ifs no buts, and fail to raise a more blunt scenario even despite mentioning the very euphemism it is most commonly known by! First, on conscription, if a country is invaded and there are no volunteers to fight, then giving guns to people who don't care about their country and sticking them in harm's way doesn't strike me as being terribly bright. Such a country is already doomed, and conscription isn't going to save it (if conscription were 'necessary', would it then be worth saving!?) Second, what you fail to cite (and perhaps as well you didn't ) is the likes of friendly fire etc. In peace time, this is again a mistake as before and not an instance of initiation of force. In war, then insofar as the action was objectively identified as required to repel the enemy then it is retaliatory force and the condemnation for the deaths of innocents should be directed at the enemy as they where the ones who initiated force. The principles about objective behaviour are not about minimising damage, but in part (as you cite) keeping actions in perspective and then trying to undo such mistakes as are made. Again, there is no issue of initiation involved. You then go on to standard contracts. Sorry, but you're way over your head with this one. Proper contract law is far more about common law than it is statutory, and is based around judges and magistrates taking the context of expected social relations as they actually stand and change over time. Second, contract law is not about governments initiating force, but about making sure people do not themselves initiate force or make mistakes (such as confusion over meanings, who is competent to enter contract to begin with, etc), and again about rectifying the situation. To the extent that presently existing contract law goes beyond those bounds it is wrong. Third, most standard contracts are formulated and published by private bodies, particularly industry bodies. Governments need not get into the act, and to the extent they do they are best limited to those whose social context is slow-changing. I mentioned the possibility because it may be convenient for government to specify the most commonly used and little-changing ones at a national level (contract law is normally a STATE perogative, rather than Federal), while also expressly stating that they were not compulsory. Fourth, your examples aren't even properly within the ambit of discussion of contract at all, standard or otherwise. In the context of what is possible to government, no initiation of force, as properly identified, is EVER justified. You are correct in stating that one rule that a government has to follow in conducting retaliatory force is not to go into the grounds of illegitimacy, but the rest is about the outright prevention of any initiation and not merely its minimisation to 'legitimate' levels. The moral is the practical: stick within moral principles, and don't try to say there are 'necessary evils.' A government can, and should, be operated on that basis, and a major part of the purpose of a Constitution is showing how government should act to stay within that basis. As for the social context, if the society is of such good stature as to support such a government then it will also figure out ways to make it practical. (I have a mind to post some thoughts I have on funding to the thread on that issue, once I dig them up out of my archives.) As to the quip about arguing about words, any half decent Objectivist would raise an eyebrow at that (or worse), and after calming down a little would direct your attention to various works in Objectivist Epistemology. JJM

They say that even a dead clock is correct twice a day... the Christians say that the wages of sin is death, and here is an example germaine to the present thread: Hat-tip: Wicked Thoughts They've got buckley's chance, I reckon. Eventually they must choose, ants or humans. For Objectivism, there's no contest, and there would be no story in the first place as at the first sign of such pests in one of our buildings (which wouldn't be a temple) it's immediate chemical warfare and fight to the death. JJM

I gave the whole thing another once over and there are some style formatting errors in it, and one or two gaps in the text. Fortunately none of these faults are in the Bill of Rights, which is where the prime content is. btw Onar, government's acting rightly NEVER initiate force, they always use retaliatory force. The difference between this and individuals using it is that the former do so dispassionately and mostly after calm consideration of the matter. The initiation of force is always wrong, in the context of where government action is a meaningful concept (ie outside of genuine lifeboat situations). JJM

I saw one, a famous Australian journalist by the name of John Pilger. Nasty piece of work. I didn't know who he was at the time, but I went to a free lecture at hosted by UNSW featuring him and Ramos Horta about the liberation of East Timor from Indonesian rule. Mr Horta was alive and passionate, full of hope for the future once they got rid of those Indonesian bastards. Pilger, on the other hand, was dressed in black, slovenly slack facial features, scraggly unkempt hair what was of a drained-looking grey, sounded as dead as a post, and just used the affair to pour slime over the Australian government and a few Australian businesses (especially BHP). He clearly did not give a damn about the plight of the East Timorese people, and was just using them to promote his own agenda. I was greatly impressed with Mr Horta. I was filled with revulsion for Pilger even without knowing anything about him at the time, and later discovered how right my initial sense of him actually was. Pilger is one slick sick puppy, and a darling among the left. Ptheh. JJM

Can someone explain to me why tipping is such a big deal in the US? Amongst the Europeans I can understand - despise, but still understand. I honestly thought Americans were supposed to be above what is implicit in the whole sordid deal!? In Australia we generally do NOT tip, and the service is none the worse for wear. We also jump into the front passenger seat of taxis and natter with the cabbie without batting an eyelid, which I hold as part of the same cultural idea underlying the objection to tipping. Conversely, foreigners who go for the backseat of Australian taxis are generally thought of as snobs. Personally I am opposed to tipping on principle on the grounds that it is condescension on the part of the tipper and a thinly disguised shakedown on the part of the tippee. For the tipper, it is encouraging the old view of looking down upon service workers, straight out of old Victorian mores, along with noblesse oblige and hints of lording one's position over one's "lessers". BLEAGH! For the service worker, I am of the opinion that he or she is paid to do a job and bloody well better do the job properly for the agreed wage. If that worker wants more money then he or she should have the brass to front up to the boss for an explicit raise, and NOT give the customer any slightest grief, EVER. Am I right in thinking this, or am I missing something? JJM

Back in the late 70's and early 80's, before computerised programming tv, channels would fill gaps with odds and sods. One channel would use music clips. From that time, there are only two that I remember. One is Kermit T. Frog's Rainbow Connection from The Muppet Movie. The other, more importantly, was one that had a deep and lasting effect on me: the words are a paean to a lightbringer, the music itself is moving, the clip was constructed of fantastic views taken from the Apollo Program, the guitar solo is kickass, and I have a major thing for women with voices that are powerful yet remain delightfully feminine. I didn't know what it was called or who it was by until, about 10 years ago, a new friend at uni just happened to have it amongst his collection, some 16 years or so after I first heard it. It turns out that the maker of the clip didn't write the original, that the original is actually a poem/song thing by some other guy many a decade ago and the musician just fixed it up slightly (and did a much better job than the poet, IMHO). Here is that musician's wording of that poem (sung beautifully by his wife at the time): Queen and Huntress chaste and fair, Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in a silver chair, State in wonted manner keep. Earth let not an envious shade Dare itself to interpose; Cynthia's shining orb was made Heaven to cheer, when day did close. Lay thy bow of pearl apart, And thy crystal-shining quiver; Give unto the flying heart Space to breath, how short soever. Hesperus entreats thy light, Goddess excellently bright. Bless us then with wished sight, Thou who makes a day of night. The musician who fixed the poem into the above is Mike Oldfield, and the singer was Sally Oldfield. The song is called Ode to Cynthia, aka Incantations Part 4, aka Excerpt From Incantations. The original poem/song (which I also discovered entirely by accident) is called Hymn to Diana by Ben Jonson as part of a greater work called Cynthia's Revels. Jonson's Hymn had the last verse split up nonsensically and distributed without rhyme or reason amongst the other three verses. JJM

Hardly a glowing endorsement, is it? Reminds me of the same in an episode of Andromeda, where there is a lingering shot of Tyr Anasazi (a Nietzschean brute) reading it with interest. Btw, the guys at Catallarchy.net reckon the writers are making the stuff up as they go along and that there's no real arc to Lost. I agree. Sooner or later the show is going to collapse in a heap under the weight of the garbage they've raised and forgotten (eg the Island's powers and own will, The Great Beast, the chain-machine that tried to drag Locke underground, etc etc). It's pulp. JJM

Quoth Hernan: That's too limited a range of sources IIRC + IMHO, her actual unique contribution was the sound basis for objectivity in ALL knowledge, where its application to ethics was a matter of course. THAT's why Objectivism is called Objectivism. There were others before her who attempted to give a reasonable grounds for ethical egoism, such as Aristotle and Spinoza, as opposed to the unreasoning brutes like Nietzsche and Stirner. The Ancient Greeks, at least in Athens, were commonly egoists, so she's not unique there in principle (though definitely in development) even as a rational egoist. Quoth Onar: Most definitely a fair enough sentiment. Usually the simplest thing to do is go to the heart of the matter, which leads to the quote that every Objectivist discussing Kant eventually refers to, from the Preface to the Second Edition of CPR: *freedom here = free will, not ethical or political freedom He's saying that unless reason is brought to it's knees, at least with dealing with the question of morality, it will continue to question all the key religious tenets and bring them into serious common doubt. He knew very well, and could see it in the culture, that religion was losing sway amongst the intellectuals (cf Voltaire, d'Holbach), precisely because of the influence of reason being pushed further and further. After that paragraph, he goes on to claim that his legacy is to have engineered a tactical withdrawal combined with a shoring up of religion's defences by letting reason and science have the physical world but declaring that world unreal and reason incapable of learning of anything outside of it. It is this other world that religion comes from, and one learns of it by feeling and faith and not by reason. He genuinely is a religious fundamentalist, echoing by implication the same anti-reason sentiment made by Pascal when he wrote in a note stitched into his favourite jacket (and which he died in) clamouring for fire-and-serenity religion and 'not the god of the philosophers.' (This was also referred to in OPAR). He explicitly identifies reason and religion as incompatible, thought I haven't read (nor am I all that motivated to read) the book about religion within the confines of reason alone so I don't know how far he takes that point. What matters is that he himself says what he is doing and why, and that content is reason enough to condemn him as evil. There are other threads on this site that also have some useful information, and as for the Objectivist literature Miss Rand's article "Causality versus Duty" (available in PWNI as chapter 10, also The Objectivist of July 1970), is also helpful and shows how Kant deliberately set things up to push people towards religion by making them hate reason by saying that reason meant the unremitting pain and drudgery of the Categorical Imperative. JJM

Onar: Your post is implying that Kant was an honest thinker who just happened to mess up. I disagree - he was a thoroughly evil SOB who knew what he was doing (destroying the pursuit of knowledge) and why he was doing it (in ethics he was a religious fundamentalist of a kind that made Cromwellian puritans look licentious). Nor do I think one can say he identified the major insight you mention. The very fact that there were competing schools with many adherents would have made it clear to all and sundry that there were problems all around. Everyone knew the problems, and Kant raised some of them as his 'antinomies' on the understanding of them being some of the most hotly contested. Kant discovered NOTHING - what he did was simply not to take sides among the existing thinkers and use the matter to foist his ideas upon the world as a 'solution.' He was a destroyer, nothing more. Anyway, back to the topic of this thread. As it happens I wrote in the paragraph for Ayn Rand and ItOE in wikipedia under problem of universals the other day. I checked it this morning and someone has tweaked it to give mention to 'conceptualism' and referring to Peter Abelard. I thought about him a little before, and the smatterings I had suggested he might be a minor good-guy along side St Thomas Aquinas. The more I read, the more I like the guy. His race with St Bernard of Clairveaux is perhaps a minor version of the battle of Aristotle vs Plato. His grand love affair with Heloise, despite the sad ending, is something most Objectivists could well admire, not just for his bold defiance but Heloise's greatness as well. So, from what I can gather, anyone who wants to make a serious investigation of proto-Objectivist material prior to Rand may find Peter Abelaide and Heloise as worth researching. Not as good as Aristotle, Aquinas or Spinoza, but maybe up where with the second-tier best such as Avicenna, methinks. JJM

Jim: I think you're misunderstanding what existence means, to some degree at least. Existence is just what's "there," by which I mean *this* (waving hands about, pointing at things at random). There is something, out there, which I am conscious of. It is self evident because all you have to do is perceive it. To consider it as not independent of consciousness requires a conceptual-level invention of ideas with zero basis for making them, it necessarily lead to contradiction in their making. One example is the old brain-in-a-vat idea, discussed by both Miss Rand and Dr Peikoff, wherein the proposer has to posit a whole bunch of things we are expected to hold as plausible yet denying the foundation of what is being relied upon to generate that plausibility. Something exists, and you just start with that. Now, what that something happens to be is a separate question. At this point you cannot claim anything about it other than that this something that exists, combined with your own existence, has perceptual effects. Whether that existence is material or something else is for philosophy beside the point (including brains in vats or whatever), and introduction of that kind of talk about the Observable Universe in the manner you describe it into metaphysics is an error. IIRC, in her Journals, she deftly smashed that error as the fundamental source of the dichotomy of rationalism versus empiricism, and pointed out that cosmology - which is what you're trying to smuggle in - should be utterly evicted from philosophy and kept strictly in the physical sciences where it belongs. My present layman's attitude (ie I am not willing to stake the farm on this) is that I wouldn't go as far, as I would leave behind one thing, just one, and that is the cosmological principle, that the laws of existence are the same everywhere, on the grounds that it is a direct corollary of the Law of Causality. Beyond that, I agree with Miss Rand on the matter. JJM

I know it's an old thread, but I couldn't resist. From Anthem: "I do not know if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to my end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose." This one struck me most one dusk many a year ago when both Venus and Mercury were visible above a light yellow horizon fading to a darkening blue, and the structure of the solar system became almost perceptualised. This view was over a part of Australia called the Spencer Gulf, with the east coast just barely visible, and if you pay attention you can discern the curvature of the Earth from a hill at the edge of Whyalla on the west coast of the gulf. Metaphysics, epistemology, science, ethics, aesthetics, all in a single moment - now THAT's integration. JJM

Total word count is 26,096. The Bill of Rights is over a third at nearly 10,409 words. Yes, the idea that this is excessive has occurred to me. The rest is mostly a cross-breed of the actual constitutions of the USA and Australia, with a few bits of my own devising, so you are quite right in your assessment of fundamentals. Fine, I will make it an attachment. I experimented with making it plaintext, which cuts file size to 150k, but that makes the thing unreadable. JJM Aus_constitution.zip

I wrote one for Australia, based on Objectivist ideas, several years ago, when I went by the handle of Legendre on the IRC (this was late 90's). I haven't touched it in years, now. It's thorough and a more or less complete draft, lacking only reasonable detail on transitional material. I used to have it uploaded on my old blog (The Usurer), but I gave that up and the server has since bit the dust. I still have it as a Word document, so anyone who wants it can get it by email if they want. I notice there is an attachment system for this forum, and at 436bk it is within the 2mb limit. I can't see anything in the forum rules that says I can't attach it now, but nor do I want to breach any understandings or unwritten rules so I wont consider that until I am more familiar with this forum. That being said, I do not want to give the impression on my first post in this forum that I am yet another who is focussed on politics. No, I know better. Epistemology is key. Instill that, and in due time everything follows so easily it will almost seem effortless. That doesn't mean ignore politics, and I don't regret the time I spent on writing it (it is nearly 4 times the wordcount of the actual US Constitution), only that now is not the era in which to get enthusiastic about it or promoting it. Table of Contents: Pt 1: Bill of Rights Pt 2: Operation of Commonwealth Government Pt 3: The Legislature Pt 4: The Executive Pt 5: The Judiciary Pt 6: Interaction between various governments within Australia Pt 7: Transition Pt 8: Changes of the Constitution Sc 1: Oaths Sc 2: Detailed provisions for transition Sc 3: Amendments to the Constitution JJM