fletch
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Posts posted by fletch
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What do you mean by "the truth"? If you mean "whether or not man is the cause", that again does not matter.
If are willing to conceed that global warming may be occuring due to natural factors which have nothing to do with human activity, why are you so insistant that man take immediate action to counteract an effect that he has not caused? Why are you so eager to violate the rights of people who have not violated your rights?
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I'm trying to find that out myself. I'm not for sure.
Unless someone just happened to find a spare $150 billion lying around, then I am quite sure that this cash give away will only add to the deficit.
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When asked to comment, Senator Clinton responded that she was co sponsoring a bill that would create universal edu-care. "In America," she said, "the quality of a child's grades should not be based upon their ability to learn."
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Maybe its just me, but I cant say that I am all that upset about getting a check from the Treasury for about $1200.00. If they did this sort of thing every week I wouldnt have to work.
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Surely a murderer forfeits his right to his own life for as long as his sentence lasts. By giving them medical experiments whilst they are in prison, you are giving them a punishment that could last long after they are out of prison. By that grounds, I would say it is immoral.
What if they were serving life sentences with no possibility of parole?
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This discussion seems to be going nowhere.
That might be true, but the defense of capitalism put forth by Thomas, Thales, Chops, Kendall, and others has been nothing short of fantastic.
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Barring a come-from behind victory in Florida, Giuliani is finished. So is Huckabee. So is Thompson. That leaves McCain and Romney to fight it out for the Republican nomination. In this regard, Romney has the edge in two distinct ways. First, he has an endless supply of cash, while McCain is just about broke. The second and, perhaps, the greater advantage Romney has over McCain is that he is not McCain. While being a "Maverick" might endear you to the press, it doesnt help him with Republicans. Maverick in this context means that McCain bucks his party at critical moments to follow his own inclinations. He seems to love the attention his splits with his party brings him. Republicans have long ago learned that they cannot count on McCain at crucial moments, and the consequences for that type of behavior is that McCain will not be able to count on Republicans at this crucial moment. So for my money, the race is over.
Not only do I think that Romney will be the Republican nominee, I think he will beat Clinton in November. Republicans can unite around Romney and moderates will not support Hillary. Plus, I think the Clinton tag team attacks on Obama will work but leave a bad taste in the mouths of liberal black voters. I suspect many of them will stay home in November handing the presidency to Romney.
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The point of contention here is whether LF capitalism is better than a mixed economy for long-term growth, stability and maintenance of a middle class. The economic/social/political instability of the pre-Great Depression era, as well as the GDP chart I linked to earlier here, is evidence that the latter is the better choice.
If the mixed economy of the post-depression era is preferrable to LF capitalism, you might want to pinpoint which admixture of state and economics you prefer: The 1948 variety? The 2008 variety? Or does what you consider the best example of a mixed economy lie somewhere in between? You also might want to explain how you plan to stop the state from going too far in its control over economic freedom. One of the problems with allowing the state to meddle with economics in the first place is that the level of interference can only grow.
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While I certainly admire Pipes as a step in the right direction, I am adamantly opposed to his view that 'Islamic Totalitarianism' is the problem and that moderate Islam is the solution. The root problem is the religion of Islam, and there is no solution to Islamic Totalitarianism which includes Islam.
How, then, do you propose to rid the world of Islam?
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I don't think you can call Huckabee a niche candidate. Alan Keyes would fall in that category, not Huckabee.
Niche might be the wrong word, but nonetheless, Huckabee filled a void. That void was the lack of an authentic, traditional conservative republican in the race. The draft Fred Thompson movement was a direct result of this vacuum. The trouble was, he didnt seem to want the job. Or, at least, he didnt seem to want to work for it. That left Huckabee.
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Even if Mike Huckabee doesn't win the Republican nomination, more explicit calls to entwine government with Christianity should be expected in 2012.
Dont count on it. Huckabee's failure to gain the Republican nomination in '08 is a direct result of his explicit call to entwine government with Christianity. The Repulican base would rather choke down McCain than swallow what Huckabee had to offer. He was a niche candidate and nothing more. His strength had more to do with the overall weakness of the Repulican field than anything he, himself was selling. I take the Repulican party's rejection of Huckabee as a positive sign for the future, not a negative one. In fact, it is still possible that Guiliani, despite a roundly criticized primary stratagy, will win the nomination. That could never happen if Peikoff were right about the threat from the Christian hoards.
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I have never quite understood all of the focus on Huckabee when there is another candidate out there who is truly frightening--John Edwards. Neither, in my mind, has a chance of winning their respective parties nomination, but in a comparison between the two, the divisive Edwards is by far the worst. His entire campaign is built around the idea of two Americas--those who have and those who have not. He plans to close this wealth gap the old fashioned liberal way--by stealing from those who produce and distributing it to those who do not. Along the way he will demonize every American corporation, blame them for all of Americas ills, then send teams of lawyers, regulators and tax collectors to cripple American industry.
Not that his opponents, Clinton and Obama, are all that friendly to the free market, but Edwards strikes me as anti-capitalist to the core. It is certainly the core of his message and accounts for the core of his support. He has made it his vow to end poverty within a generation. Sound familiar? Apparently, Lyndon Baines Edwards plans to end the war in Iraq to launch WW(on poverty)II in America. We will immediately flee from the "immoral" war for oil in Iraq to embroil ourselves in the "moral" civil wars raging in Sudan and Uganda. The 15% support that this guy continues to draw is far more worrisome to me than the 20% support that Huckabee gets. Huckabee, for what it is worth, is a likable guy. And that likability accounts for much of his appeal. Edwards is strident, angry and divisive--that appears to be much of his appeal as well. The trouble is, what angers Edwards the most--human liberty, property rights, and free markets--is what makes America the best. His campaign is a overt campaign against Americas principles. That makes him the worst of all cndidates in my mind.
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Are you saying shouldn't be preserved or can't be preserved? Civilization has soldiered on for thousands of years now without pure laissez-faire capitalism, with tremendous wealth creation and technological innovation, and a general improving of the human condition from one generation to the next. How could all this happen in a mixed economy? Shouldn't things have self-destructed by now?
Yes, civilization will soldier on, but there have been vast swaths of time where there was virtually no discernable change in the human condition. Virtually any improvement you can think of is the result of the freeing of the human mind and the ability of the creator to capitalize on what he has created. When the Soviet Union collapsed, what great technological innovation or wealth creation ideas emerged from behing the Iron Curtain? Answer: None. The semi-free market West ran circles around the Communist slave states. But, a mixed economy's advancement is tied to the degree it unleashes the free market. If the leash is too tight, capitalism strangles and the society self-destructs. If a mixed economy awakens and demands its economic liberty it will survive.
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I don't think there is a particularly high risk of a man wrongly accused of murder leading police to the decapitated body of the victim. I get the impression that you are opposed to the death penalty in general, David. If so, that is a different issue. My question is why this guy, and so many others like him, who are obviously and clearly guilty of murder so fear the death penalty? Why men like him who have no regard for human life scratch and claw to preserve their own? And, in the ultimate insult, after committing crimes of such barbarity and unmitigated evil then sue to halt lethal injections as "cruel and inhuman treatment." The cruel and the inhuman are on death row, and the treatment they get, they deserve.
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Much of the dollar's weakness can be seen in relation to the Euro and the Canadian dollar. They are more welfare statist than we are, so what are they doing different than us?
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He agreed to take them to the woman's body, something, presumably only the killer would know, if they agreed not to pursue the death penalty against him. I take that to mean that he was influenced by the possibility of facing death if his guilt was proven at trial. That fear, apparently, was too much for him. About two weeks ago I saw a case on one of those cable TV investigative shows with a similar story. The police knew they had the right guy in custody, but weren't sure they had enough evidence to convict him. The suspect, however, was so worried about being convicted and sentenced to death that he confessed rather than face trial. The point is, were it not for the existence of the death penalty, that suspect would have taken his chances at trial and may be walking the streets today. That is the added benefit of the death penalty I am talking about.
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The Police apparently have their man in the case of the missing hiker, Meredith Emerson.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=4109946
According to the article 'drifter' Gary Michael Hilton "led authorities to Emerson's body Monday evening in an agreement that prosecutors not seek the death penalty against him, according to Union County's district attorney, Stan Gunter." Even though this monster will not be facing the death penalty for this crime, it was the possibility of facing the death penalty that brought about Hilton's confession. I cant help but wonder whether Hilton would have been so cooperative if he faced only life in prison. I kind of doubt it.
This is not the first time I have heard of a criminal confessing to avoid death row, which is an added benefit to the overriding cause of justice that the death penalty serves, but my question is why do these murderers fear it so? Almost without exception, people on death row seek every legal maneuver possible to avoid or delay their date with the noose (or the needle). A man like Hilton, who by any objective standard has led a valueless, pointless, parasitic existence and is now a suspect in several other similar crimes, has absolutely no regard for human life...except when it comes to his own survival. Is Hilton the ultimate altruist, sacrificing others to himself, or does the explanation lie elsewhere?
Another oddity, in my mind, is Hilton's age. He's 61. The average wait on death row is close to 20 years. That would make him near 80 by the time the sentence would ultimately be carried out. Chances are he will die of old age first, yet he is so fearful of execution that he will admit his guilt to avoid facing it. That strikes me as strange. But if killers so fear societies vengeance when it takes the form of the death penalty, then that is reason enough to keep it.
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I see it being Huckabee vs. Obama.
That's my bet so far...
You're on, Mammon. Huckabee will never get the nomination. Obama has a chance, but not a good one. I think things will shake out just the way everyone thought they would a few months ago: Clinton vs. Giuliani or McCain.
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Are people from Kristiansand really in the same ethnic group as people from Vadsø? Are people from Charlottenberg a different People than those from Magnor (near Eidskog, if you don't know the area).
Being from Columbus, David, you should be well aware that people from Michigan are, in fact, quite different from those from Ohio. There is plenty of research that would indicate that the people from Michigan are quite possibly from a different species altogether.
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I was pleasantly surprised to see that nearly half of Americans surveyed believe you can be moral without believing in or worshiping God!
That is not necessarily all good news. Most secularists are little more than neo-mystics who worship the whims of society rather than the whims of an Almighty God. To them, every society determines its own standards of what is right and moral. If what is right in my society differs from what is right in yours, well that is just fine. There are no objective standards of right and wrong anyway. What is right for me may not be right for you. So go ahead, enslave your people. Who are we to impose our values on you? Obviously, I too believe that a man can be moral without God, I just dont have much faith in mans ability to do so.
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Slick Romney?
Where Bill Clinton took us to the definition of "is" Romney takes us to the definition of the word "saw."
Why do these politicians have such a mighty struggle with the truth? What is so hard about saying: "I misspoke. Let me correct the record."
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I've only lived 11 years--but I've done it 4 times.
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I have had several high tech scans made of my body, particularly my head. I have looked and looked and looked at the outputs even with a high power magnifier and by golly, I do not see any sign of a mind in my head. Not a trace.
I suppose that it is always possible, Bob, that you have simply lost your mind.
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I think I agree with Senator and John Pizzo on this one. Were I a member of the Isreali or American forces in the two examples cited, I am quite sure I would not have been able to shoot an unarmed, potentially innocent civilian even if failing to do so put my life and my mission in greater jeopardy. As badly as the two scenarios turned out, I think the soldiers made the right moral decision in not killing the civilian. I think the best thing to do if you are behind enemy lines and your cover is potentially blown is to abort the mission.
Global Warming
in Environmentalism
Posted
Why blame anyone for something that may not exist at all, or have a natural cause? If, as you say, you can alter your lifestyle "without much difficulty," then feel free to do so. Why force me to comply?
I dont think that is a proper analogy. A better one would be:
You believe it is possible, maybe even probable, that at some future point, a car will crash into mine. Therefore, you want to impose restrictions on the use of all vehicles. Develope new and safer means of transportation. Ban all large vehicles from the roadways. Make all cars so much lighter and slower that should an accident occur, no one will be hurt. All of this is to be mandated by the state and enforced without consideration for the harm it will do to the lives and the liberties of the individuals involved. If you are really concerned about the well-being of future generations, you might want to concern yourself a little more with the freedoms you would like them to have.