agrippa1
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Posts posted by agrippa1
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Your point is well taken but 'twas not I making the assertion that one shouldn't speculate without proof.
I'm glad you took the time to post this though as I had to cut my post short to do some work.
I think in a couple posts here people are using (incorrectly) "proof" interchangeably with "evidence".
I should have made it clear that I wasn't contradicting, just clarifying what you wrote. Getting "proof" and "evidence" mixed is too common. Rumsfeld's dictum "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is a good example, and is false. It should have been "absence of proof is not proof of absence.
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"Nucular"
- George W. Bush
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Apologies if my point was unclear.
While you were the one who stated the speculation that he was more likely agnostic than muslim I was directing my post at the others on this topic who were saying that people who speculate about Obama possibly being muslim were being irrational unless they have some proof.
My point was that many apply a double standard when it comes to Obama. If it is irrational to speculate on whether Obama is a muslim without proof then it must be deemed equally irrational to speculate anything else about his spirituality/religion without proof. My post was not aimed at you, your post was merely the example I used to illustrate an important point about burden of proof being subjectively applied on this topic.
Sorry to fine point this, but it is irrational to speculate "with proof." Proof, in either direction, ends speculation.
It is entirely rational to speculate without proof, provided there is some evidence to support the speculation, and an absence of proof that the speculation is false.
Speculation is the rational exploration of the realm of possibility. Obama's inexplicable failure to produce existing documents that would reasonably be expected to provide proof of his assertions about himself is, in and of itself, evidence (not proof) that his assertions are false, and that some other explanation is true.
He has fought the release of this birth certificate, even though HI officials have claimed it exists. There is documentary proof that he was enrolled by his adoptive stepfather in a school in Indonesia, with his name and religion certified as "Soetoro" and "islam." There is no documentation that he legally changed his name back to Obama, or withdrew any legal claims to Indonesian citizenship conferred by his adoption (if it even occurred). There is documentation that would prove whether or not he enrolled in any of his universities as Barry Soetoro, as a muslim, or as a citizen of Indonesia, but he has successfully blocked the release of that documentation, for reasons that the mainstream media has found no incentive to uncover. That, in and of itself, is evidence that the wide-held impression, that he enrolled as the American student Barack Obama, is false.
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I agree. Otherwise, the foreign exchange students would have to interact with the people they came here to interact with. That would be ridiculous. Next thing you know, they're banging white chicks.
Let's instead just isolate them all in a corner of the campus. Send over some fertilizer and diesel while we're at it, in case they wanna start a farm.
The people they are here to interact with are professors and other students. They will probably find both in the classrooms and on campus, and in various shops, restaurants, and bars in the neighborhood. They might even find white chicks in those bars... maybe even Asians!
Your reply is interesting because you scoff at the idea that muslims might exhibit ... how shall we say ... sensitivities to other cultures, while in the same post suggest that rooming two of them together might, per nature, lead them to commit acts of violence against members of those cultures.
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According to his own accounts, Obama was roomed with Muslim foreign exchange students while attending Columbia. Is it normal procedure for foreign exchange programs to room foreign muslims with American Christians? It would seem to me that a more commonsense policy would be to try to avoid cultural and religious frictions by rooming muslim foreign students with other muslim foreign students. (Does anyone know what the typical policy is???)
The reason this is open to speculation is that Ubama's college records have never seen the light of day. Is it possible, given that he was formally adopted by an Indonesian muslim, that Ubama/Soetoro might have taken advantage of foreign student special deals to ease his enrollment and costs at Columbia, by enrolling as Barack Soetoro, muslim foreign exchange student from Indonesia? Only his college records could tell us. Why have they been blocked? Is his GPA really that poor? Is there anything in those records, given his brilliant academic performance since, that could possibly hurt him now?
Likewise, his birth certificate has never seen the light of day. What was released during the campaign was a modern computer printout of information in the Hawaii database, not a proper birth certificate. HI now says that the birth certificate does not exist, only a notation in the records. If Barak was adopted by Dr. Soetoro, is it standard policy to update the original birth certificate with the legally changed name of the person it was issued against? Is it possible that Obama's birth cert does exist, but is filed under "S" for Soetoro?
For those of us who scoff at the conspiracy theories, keep in mind that the failure of Obama to release documents relating to his birth and education (and indeed an active and expensive fight to keep them from being released) creates fertile ground for any theory that fills the vacuum.
The point is not that Obama might be a muslim. The argument that he "claims" to be a Christian ignores the fact that membership in Jeremiah Wright's church established street cred on two fronts, both to dissuade speculation based on his "funny name" and to associate himself with an extremist black liberation theologist, in liberal/radical Chicago. Obama is, if nothing else, an opportunist. His campaign for state senate revealed the cold manipulative nature of his ambition. His habit of using people and then tossing them underbus is well documented. The idea that he might have asserted a (valid) status of foreign muslim to his advantage is certainly within the nature of the man we know.
So the point is not that Obama is a muslim or a Christian. I don't think he is a thinking, acting Christian, or a muslim. I don't think he considers Christianity any more valid than islam, which is to say, not. He is on record demeaning Christians and Christianity, but not islam or muslims, and has actually said that the muslim call to prayer is one of the prettiest sounds on earth. The point is that he is the President of the United States and we don't really know the first thing about him. And he likes it that way. As he himself said, he is the blank screen upon which everyone projects their own ideology, which is a pretty good cover for whatever he really is.
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His purported father was a muslim from Kenyan.
His parents gave him two muslim names, Barack and Hussein.
His adopted father was a muslim from Indonesia, and listed his (Obama's) religion as "islam" in his enrollment paperwork.
He "accidentally" referred to "my muslim faith" in an interview with George Snuffle-up-a-gus.
When he attended Columbia, he was roomed with Muslim foreign exchange students. Are Americans typically roomed with foreign exchange students? Are Christians typically roomed with muslims? This is evidence that he attended as an Indonesian muslim, under his legal name Barack Soetoro (Simple as pie to disprove, if only someone could get a look at this college transcripts).
The pastor of the only Christian church Obama is known to have attended, Jeremiah Wright, is a good friend of Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, and teaches a brand of Christianity barely recognizable as such. There is reason to believe that Obama attended only to gain cred in Chicago so he could run for office.
But - no way is he a muslim!!!
Given the lack of documentary evidence on this guy's early life, is it any wonder that people believe all manner of things about him?
And - what, exactly, would be so bad about him being a muslim in the first place?
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This same logic would result in the conclusion that a smoker should not treat his lung cancer, because "he earned it." The fact is, we all take actions with risks every day, and when those risks actually obtain, we should be perfectly free to deal with the consequences in whatever way we see fit. The fact is, even people who make this "responsibility" argument about abortion wouldn't dream of making it in analogous cases which don't involve sex. The basics of the situation are: you are taking an action which involves the risk of something unpleasant happening, and you are taking medical action to alter the unpleasant situation if it occurs. The same basic structure applies to the smoker who treats his lung cancer, or to the fast food junkie who seeks medical attention when he has a heart attack. Or consider the very closely analogous case of a person catching syphilis or gonorrhea by having sex, and then going to a doctor to cure it. Would you also tell these people to just "deal with it?"
I'd imagine not, and neither would most of the people who make the responsibility argument. However, they are willing to make the argument in the case of abortion because of their additional premises about the immorality of abortion. This argument fundamentally relies on the premise that abortion is already "different" and "immoral" while other methods of dealing with consequences are not. Thus, it cannot be used to provide or support an argument against abortion.
Also, you're attempting to equivocate with the term "evade" to make your argument sound more appealing to Objectivists. Evasion as the core vice means unfocusing your mind and refusing to think about reality or consequences. Your example individual does not evade in this sense when she gets an abortion. She may have done this when she was having sex and not thinking about the consequences, but the act of getting an abortion is one of accepting reality (the reality that she's pregnant) and actually doing something about it. She's only evading in the sense of dodging or avoiding the situation through willful action; she's not evading in the sense of refusing to think about what she's done and what could happen. There is absolutely nothing wrong with evading in the sense that you use the word; in fact, it's a profoundly moral action to recognize the reality of a situation and to take conscious steps to improve that situation for oneself.
As for all that parasite talk, I think you've incorrectly identified that as a core of the pro-abortion side. I feel like it's mostly used to attempt to shock the other side into taking a second look at the way they view a fetus. It is really incidental to the argument itself.
I'd buy your cancer analogy if the cancer spontaneously left the body and went on to become a rational, self-sufficient entity without killing its host. Same for a cholesterol lump. Same for gonorrhea and syphilis bacteria.
But since there has never been a single recorded case of lung cancer, a lump of cholesterol or any bacterium developing rational faculties, I see a small problem with your analogies.
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My first quesion to you is if there are such thing as "morally neutral" acts.
Sneezing is a morally neutral act.
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While striking down the individual mandate is good insofar as it establishes a limit on the reach of the commerce clause, it wouldn't do much to ObamaCare overall.
Without the individual mandate, the whole scheme collapses, like a precarious arch with one stone removed. I believe they left out the severability clause for two reasons: first, because they acknowledge that the whole Act is a house of cards, balanced on itself (and on ever widening circles of coercion); and second, because if the law is successfully challenged, the whole thing will disappear with no remnants, allowing the Dems to run on "yes, we tried!" in 2012.
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If the classified information can be reasonably considered to provide significant advantage to an enemy or enemies of the nation, then the theft and release of that information should be considered treason. Any agent that propagates that information should be considered to have committed an act of war against the state.
So far, I haven't seen anything that fundamentally or significantly harms our nation, except maybe that the Obama Administration is incompetent (NEWS ALERT!!!), and most of what I've heard has been damaging to U.S. enemies and their collaborators, by providing details of activities and cooperation, for instance, between Russia, France, China, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
All the world's a stage.
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Yes, it is initiation of force. So it sending your kid to his room, or giving him a smack when he tries to cross the road without looking both ways.
Kids do not have full rational faculties, and so are given incremental rights until they demonstrate the ability to act rationally, or turn eighteen (or twenty-one), whichever comes first.
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I'm not going to play this word game with you. No one here, no one in American law, and no one in Objectivism defines speech to include the use of force. What you are claiming is speech does not fit the definition.
That should be clear by now, if it isn't it's not going to become more clear after a few more pages of arguing about it.
Yes, you are playing a word game. You are claiming that political speech is protected at the same time you explicitly outlaw political speech towards a purpose. You are, in essence, denying (or, at least, nullifying) the concept "political speech" (which is speech intended to convince the voting populace to vote a certain way) as a means of "protecting" that speech in an Objectivist society.
You wrote:
So no, the scenario you describe could not happen in an Objectivist state. Not because the people advocating it would be hauled off to jail, but because they couldn't rise to power by convincing the majority to vote for them. That would be illegal, and anyone who tried it would be disqualified as a candidate for political office.If "no one ... defines speech to include the use of force," and "convincing the majority to vote for them ... would be illegal," then either convincing the majority to vote for them is considered force, or it is unprotected speech.
What is the functional difference between disqualifying any candidate based on his political views, and outlawing those political views outright?
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The first step to changing the way gov't is funded is to allow trading by other means (alternate currencies, commodities, and bartering), which would not be protected by the government against fraud, counterfeiting, etc. Let people take and understand the additional risks involved in a monetary system that is not protected by the rule of law, and they will very quickly price in the value of a protected currency, and pay some percentage of that value voluntarily in a transaction tax.
The government will then have a natural valve placed on its spending - if it spends on improper functions and increases taxes, transactions will shift to other means of exchange and it will lose revenue. Likewise if it prints additional currency to pay for those improper functions, transactions and savings will shift to other stores of value.
The result is a completely voluntary means of funding government, without requiring some to sacrifice wealth for the collective good of society. It is the reliance on the altruistic tendencies of voluntary contributors that is the contradiction in a voluntary donation system to fund government. Alternatively, it is the conflict of interest of government becoming beholden to large donors, at the expense of equal protection of all individuals, that is the fatal flaw.
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Interesting thesis, ZS. Thanks.
I think you have a point on the perception of an external component of self, i.e., destiny, as being a source of irrationality.
Something I've noticed with irrational people I know, and this is not a new idea here, is that they tend to conceptualize on the basis of membership to a collective entity (e.g., "mankind"), rather than shared characteristics defining a individual conceptual entity (e.g., "man").
I believe both of these misintegrations of concretes into concepts (that is, destiny, collectivism... and maybe others?) seem logical to the mind, and become the premises, if not axioms, that lead to fundamental contradictions. These contradictions, unaddressed, lead to the conclusion that reason is flawed, and is only one of many tools with which to deal with reality.
Once a man accepts the premise that "mankind" is a valid concept, he rationally conflates his identity with his: family, tribe, race, religion, nationality, mental acuity, physical capability/disability, etc. From that point, it becomes rational to see altruism as a rational course, because, of course, the "alter" is conceptually indistinguishable from the "ego," so helping others is, to the collectivist, helping one's own "kind," i.e., one's self.
The concept of destiny helps to reinforce this misconceptualization of the individual as merely part of a collective, because as victims (or benefactors or subjects) of an all-powerful destiny/providence/God, all of our egos (that is, our potential accomplishments) are subject to same, external purpose.
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Are you asking why some people drink fruit-flavored beers, or did you have something more profound in mind?
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He can't be working actively to bring about the downfall of the Fed. That would go against everything Ayn Rand wrote about.
Unless you count Atlas Shrugged.
Anyways, if he was working behind enemy lines, Rand would have given some sign, like, showing up when he got sworn in to his first big government job, or giving him a nickname, like, "The Gravedigger," or "the Grim Reaper."
Anyways, using fraud to bring about the fall of the statist economy would be against what Rand believed. She wrote once that the best economist in Atlas Shrugged was Ragnar Danneskjold. He used force, not fraud.
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Robbing banks is illegal and evil, right? And yet, watch this:
I think bank robbery should be legal. Allowed. In fact it should be subsidized, and first born sons should be sacrificed to the gods for good luck in our efforts to rob banks.
That's a pretty outrageous, terrible thing to say, huh? And yet, no one was hurt. Every bank and child on the planet is fine, all their rights are intact. Why? Because speech, no matter how evil, does not harm anyone!!! There is no conflict between free speech and rights.
In what part of this are you planning to rob a bank? I think I said...
I'm not talking espousing political systems, I'm talking the planning of a democratic takeover of the political system for the purposes of initiating force against the populace.You do get that thinking bank robbery should be legal is espousing a political system, while planning to rob a bank is conspiracy, right? If you had said "I think I'm going to rob the 1st National Bank in Bumfugg, IN next week, and I'm looking for a trigger man to kill any cops that come along," you could still claim: "And yet, no one was hurt. Every bank on the planet is fine, all their rights are intact."
So speech does not harm anyone, if you're not concerned with context. But in context, it becomes part, a necessary part, of a series of actions which lead to harm.
Like it's been pointed out many times before, no, an Objectivist state would not allow the imposition of socialism just because a majority somehow got convinced to vote for it. Objectivism does not support democracy, it supports a constitutionally limited government. So no, the scenario you describe could not happen in an Objectivist state. Not because the people advocating it would be hauled off to jail, but because they couldn't rise to power by convincing the majority to vote for them. That would be illegal, and anyone who tried it would be disqualified as a candidate for political office.
Sounds like there would be no candidates, and no political offices, since anyone could be disqualified for disagreeing, in word or action, with the precepts of Objectivism. How would this work in practice? There could be no elections, since the right of the people to select their leaders would be limited by the choice of candidates given to them, presumable by the current leaders. And, after all, Objectivism does not support democracy. How do you check and balance the force of the government with the consent of the governed?
Don't confuse the right to speech with the right to be a tyrant or rob a bank. There is a clearly difference between the two: one involves the initiation of physical force, the other does not. Writing laws and judging specific instances to differentiate between the two is not only possible, it has been put in practice well in the USA, in First Amendment cases. American laws and courts have no problem differentiating between speech and action, it's only other rights (mostly the right to property) that they are confused about.
Free speech is actually one of the few areas that's handled well already in the US, and needs to be left alone, not changed.
I would differ with this last assertion. All free speech cases that reach the SCOTUS are judged by weighing free speech rights against other considerations. Yelling fire in a movie house, is, despite your contrary assertion, speech. Conspiracy to rob a bank, not conspiracy to change laws so that robbing a bank is legal, is: speech. Neither of these are protected because they can reasonably be assumed to lead to the use of force against individuals. There are other, much more nuanced cases in which the right to free speech is restricted on much more shaky grounds. I can't name any cases offhand, but I'll know them when I see them.
But the question still remains: Does conspiring to raise anti-Objectivist candidates to political office constitute protected free speech, or is should such speech be made illegal, as you propose?
because they couldn't rise to power by convincing the majority to vote for them. That would be illegal...
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Your use of Galt's Gulch places the context in a specific place. It is private property. Thus, sure, there is an authority: the owner.
This was correctly pointed out a few times. But it highlights the fact that the only credible Objectivist society that Rand, the originator of Objectivism, described was totalitarian by nature.
Before I go on, I am not advocating the restriction of free speech, only arguing that those restrictions are implicit in Rand's description of an Objectivist "Utopia." (the Gulch)
It's an interesting discussion, and I'm not trying to show that Objectivism has an inherent contradiction, but maybe that the concept of an Objectivist state has either a contradiction or the accommodation of evil, that is, political speech towards the imposition of an immoral political system. As someone pointed out, the planning of a bank robbery can be properly deemed beyond the limits of free speech. Can the planning of a political system, including the methods and tactics to trade future favors for the votes of a majority of the populace, be considered outside of those limits? I'm not talking espousing political systems, I'm talking the planning of a democratic takeover of the political system for the purposes of initiating force against the populace.
In concrete terms, the success of Leftist ideology in the U.S. depends on the Leftist leadership credibly promising to rob a wealthy minority to pay for the support of a large, less-wealthy majority. If a large enough number of people evaluate that promise as being in their best interest, they may very well vote for Socialism, with the result that the political will of Leftist leadership is forced upon all citizens.
Perhaps this points to a limitation of Objectivism that prevents it from occupying a stature as a fully formed political system.
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That is the exact opposite of the Objectivist view of political speech. Here's the actual Objectivist position:
The communists and the Nazis are merely two variants of the same evil notion: collectivism. But both should be free to speak—evil ideas are dangerous only by default of men advocating better ideas. The Objectivist Calendar, June 1978
Argument from authority.
There is a contradiction here. Rand required the oath for entry into Galt's Gulch for a reason that should be obvious to the simplest of minds. What do you think would have been the penalty for apostasy in Galt's Gulch? Think about that, in the context of the story, and imagine what options the Gulchers would have had in such a case.
A nation that allows any sort of political expression clearly does not require such an oath. A moment's consideration, using Galt's Gulch as analogy for a free state, leads to the conclusion that such a nation cannot survive in freedom for more than a few generations.
Freedom and rights do not include the right to infringe on others' rights. Does freedom of speech allow one to advocate violation of others' rights?
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A rational society would rightfully outlaw the propagation of speech which is a threat to the Constitutional principles of that society.
An Objectivist society would outlaw political speech espousing socialism, just as it would outlaw political speech espousing the killing and eating of 49% of the population by the majority 51%. Free speech rights are not absolute, for the reason that some speech constitutes the initiation of force against individuals. (Yelling fire, and inciting riots are two easy examples)
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Yes, if it actually means making the person a prisoner, it ought to be, under a proper system of property rights.
You've made the argument for not allowing the surrounding owners to prevent the enclave owner from leaving, but can you make the same argument for not allowing him to return?
Suppose the enclave was not a single owner, but a group of owners; would the surrounding owners rightly be forced to provide a transit route within their property, for the purpose of allowing the enclave dwellers to pass safely?
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My theory based on two things
Density
Pressure
I get the first one, but who's pressuring you?
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Tim Geithner is proposing to the G-20 that rather than just fiddling with exchange rates, they should agree on a limit on current accounts (trade surpluses or deficits) to within some percentage of GDP.
This is exactly the type of mechanism that the gold standard creates, when it forces the flow of gold from deficit nations to surplus nations, driving down prices in the deficit nations, due to decrease in the money/gold supply, and driving up prices in the surplus nations, due to money/gold supply increases.
Of course, if there were a gold standard, nations could choose to import goods in order to invest in capital so they could enhance future production, and counter near term trade deficits with long-term trade surpluses, both of which the percentage limit would effectively outlaw.
Geithner's "solution?" -- an exemption for “structurally large exporters of raw materials”. That's great for nations that have already invested heavily in their industries and are looking to rebalance their international accounts.
But what about nations that want to get foreign investment today for increased production tomorrow? Oh, that's right, this administration [sic] doesn't believe in expanding production.
This is a statist's attempt to manufacture a gold standard without having to subject governments to the restrictions that such a standard imposes on their whims. A sort of half-assed economic alchemy.
Sorry Timmy, it won't work.
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However, once the bread has been purchased, the man is no better off in the creation of the business. The bread has not contributed anything to the flow of value (or 'flow of goods') that Rand describes.
The bread will be converted to energy which is necessary for the man to pursue business. The amount of value produced by that energy is expected to be greater than the cost of the bread. It is no different, conceptually, from the purchase of fuel oil with with which to run the machinery of a business, or, extending the concept, purchasing the raw materials, or even the capital equipment.
The only difference between the examples, from an investment definition standpoint, is the time frame in which the "investments" return value. I'm not arguing that buying bread is an investment, only that our definition of investment must not subsume actions which we do not consider investment. Buying bread, vs. buying sandwiches for immediate consumption, can be considered an investment, but only in a very limited context.
Iowa Caucus Focus Group Agrees: Obama is a Muslim
in Current Events
Posted
You tell me:
BTW, I agree that isolating a group of foreign muslims on a campus and providing them the raw materials for IED's would be a bad idea, just for the record. I also believe that rooming a foreign muslim with, say, an American Baptist or Jew, would also not be the best idea. Your faith in the basic character of man is commendable, but it ignores the reality of a religious ideology that defines itself by its demand (through violent intimidation, if its founding document can be taken at its word) for islam ("submission") to its dogma.