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kainscalia

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Everything posted by kainscalia

  1. On the vocal cassical non-operatic front some excellent composers are Samuel Barber, Ralph Vaughan Williams (also a symphonisy but his vocal compositions are often neglected, unjustly so), Stefano Donaudy (pure romanticism), Victor Carbajo, Lee Hoiby, Amy Beach, Manuel De Falla, Paolo Tosi and Heitor Villa-lobos.
  2. In other words, let us not be moral because the system isn't moral?
  3. Are we to believe you must be at your wits' end (no long journey indeed) if instead of facing your contradiction you result to weak insinuations?
  4. Nice way to evade the question altogether, Maximus. Or to even ignore the fact that by restricting immigration to anyone outside of criminals and terrorists, you are violating individual rights. Your own argument contradicts itself.
  5. I concur with the numerical one. Ideologically, you are best suited for the elephants, it seems.
  6. It seems like I need to repeat the question: And you own The United States... how, precisely?
  7. Because the Health Care Bill situation was such a success, right?
  8. I'll explain it in terms you can understand, Maximus: It's the difference between Gaius Julius Caesar and Cato The Younger.
  9. Good for you then. I'm keeping America. I'll be dragged to Canada only as a corpse. Hence, I am interested in the right changes being made to immigration here, not just any old change, and I certainly won't let statists like the ones who keep popping up in this thread use strawmen arguments and alarmist hysteria.
  10. Oh, I have a very good idea, Sophia. I am a legal Immigrant here, and for the past ten years I have been struggling to attain perpetuity. Believe you me, if anyone on this forum knows how fucked up the current immigration system is, it would be me. Sorry, but by principle alone you don't have the right to ban anyone from immigrating into this country, if they are not criminals or terrorists. Period.
  11. Of course, and you own The United States how?
  12. Right, then so it is not up to the individual to decide which laws are correct, the individual should follow the laws that other individuals who consider them correct have passed. Your argument is thoroughly consistent. Interesting way to find out that Ayn Rand was wrong on the whole 'communism' thing because, after all, it is not up to the individual do decide which laws are correct- they just are. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go brush up on my International.
  13. Fair game, let's do the same thing for each state, then, since states must also defend their borders from other american citizens and immigrants who would be deemed undesirable. Surely they too have the same rights the nation as a whole has to keep undesirables away? Since it seems that now we have -more- criteria than simply the criminal component (and rather arbitrary ones... I guess that we can say goodbye to affordable unskilled labor and start paying double for our food, since an unskilled worker who'd end up in food-picking wouldn't end up passing Sofia's 'merit-based' screening), well, let's put all of them in operation... Wait, why stop at states? Let's also apply it to cities. Why stop at cities? let's go for districts! Neighborhoods... You know, something doesn't quite sit right with your idea when we take it to its full logical conclusions.
  14. I don't know. Are the satanist or socialist next door right? Concerning which laws? You're not going to play the "everybody may be right" game, I hope.
  15. No, it isn't. If the entity that is responsible for preserving them is not, in fact, preserving them but infringing them or destroying rights, then it is moral, proper, justified and -overall- heroic to fight against it and break the offending laws. There is no moral obligation to follow an immoral law-- to do so would contradict the entire concept of morality.
  16. The risks of posting on an iPod touch. Well worth the while, though.
  17. Then perhaps you may elect to be less condescending by posting actual objections instead of strawman arguments and anti-conceptual diversions. You try to derail the point by arguing 'Well, then if X is X, then what about X?' Very much like that man a young objectivist was talking to who eventually agreed it was not moral or principled to regulate the steel Industry, but when then immediately asked "Well, what about the coal industry then?" What other reaction do you expect when you come up with something that, quite honestly, you technically should be able to straighten out for yourself. The fact that you used the examples as an attempt to refute someone's point instead of asking for clarification shows that you were listing those examples in a very condescending attempt to undermine someone else's points- not by digging at the principle, but by trying to stay on the level of concretes.
  18. So you're implying that taxes are moral and that you have a duty to pay them? Are you sure you're on the right board? Do you really need someone to hold your hand and point this one out to you, or are you being cute? Yup you do need someone to hold your hand. Guess what? They're free to sell them whatever they wish. They're adults, they have all the right in the world to want to destroy themselves and take the necessary steps to do so, whether it be moral or not-- it's that little problem of individual rights. If you can't tell the difference between a consenting adult and an undeveloped child and the philosophical nature of their positions, then you really are in the wrong part of the internet. If a prostitute is plying her trade in direct awareness and protest that any laws that try to regulate what you do with your body (abortion, prostitution, sodomy laws) are both immoral and illegitimate? Then, sucks to be you aequalsa, yes, they would be inasmuch as their stance is a protest of unfair laws. Prostitution is a hedonistic pleasure and not moral, but whether or not an individual is going to resort to a prostitute or not is not for the state or the government to determine, but that individual and that prostitute alone. One problem with that whole 'freedom' thing is that people are going to be doing things you may not like, but which is not illegal for them to do so. You're going to have to deal with it. Really, are you having a problem abstracting the principles at play here, and that is why you have to constantly ask about each new concrete scenario that comes into your mind? If that is the problem, then I think you need to read The Anti-Conceptual Mentality.
  19. Please look up the usage of the imperfect subjunctive in contra-factual conditional clauses as well as the difference between 'its' as a possessive and 'it's' as a contraction of 'it is'.
  20. You seem to be obfuscating categories here on purpose. 1.- Claiming you have the right to impede an innocent (that is a non-criminal) immigrant from immigrating into the United States out of a claim of collective ownership. Unless the entire country is one man's private property, this cannot be done on principle. The reason by which a country may secure its borders is not collective ownership, but the protection of individual rights of those dwelling within its borders-- This is the only legitimate application. An innocent immigrant (many of which are currently here branded as illegal because of an unprincipled law) does not infringe upon anyone's rights by immigrating into the country. You have no right and no principled leg to stand on whatsoever to impede his or her immigration into your country. You may only do so if they are coming in with criminal or terrorist intent. 1a.- The welfare strawman(when used to attack immigration) is really something people here should be able to spot already, as well as why it doesn't work in this discussion. Welfare, by itself, already is a violation of the individual rights of the inhabitants of the country, regardless of what immigrants may do. The question of Welfare here has nothing to do with immigration, except that both the current system of immigration and the Welfare system are a violation of the rights of the individual, e punto. 2.- Government, when having a legitimate reason for existing, requires places of operation. Ideally, as Rand once put it, voluntary taxation would furnish the government with funding for the buildings it needs (imagine, the government having to stick to a budget! gasp!). Those buildings of operations must have a legitimate reason for existing. For as long as they exist and are in the use of the government, they are considered government equipment, required for the operation of its machine. They are not private property per se, in that they are not owned by one particular individual, but they are neither no man's possessions any more than a company car in a private company would be considered 'owned by nobody' because it's in the name of the company. Nevertheless, it still is not a 'collective' property-- if you are still skeptical of this, try 'borrowing' a Post Office vehicle next time you send a package. 2a.- Now the argument will be whether those buildings, territory, etc, that the government now owns and uses which are not legitimate in principle or by the constitution (such as the post office, for example), would be considered no-man's land and whether you could rob it, deface it, vandalize it or do what you will with it. My first reaction is to wonder why, when faced with such a situation your immediate example is either theft or vandalization as opposed to, say, appropriation and development, but that is neither here nor there. While it indeed is an illegitimate use of government power (since most of its funding was extracted by force through taxes) and the purpose may be illegitimate (such as the post office), you would have to fight its illegitimacy like a rational being- through law reform and demanding federal audits, not like a vulgar thug or a thief. Unless your instant reaction to this sort of thing is to react violently and physically- in which case it would first be best to seek psychological aid, then proceed as previously indicated.
  21. If your lever of intelligence were what you claim it is, you wouldn't be so easily distracted from the core of your argument, which at this moment shines in absentia.
  22. So collective brains do exist and have rights over the individual? Please enlighten us, this is an area of Objectivism I had not encountered before. Fascinating, Captain.
  23. I'm sorry, but that's complete baloney (or Bologna). When someone moves from one state to another, are they required to prove that they have a job offer or a concrete means to support themselves in their new destination? No. And there is no reason for anyone to be forced to prove that-- as long as they commit no crimes-- in order to go somewhere. Let them fend for themselves and find whatever opportunities they can. That's how many immigrants did it in the past. If you're going to whine about welfare, then get off your tuckus and do something about dismantling the welfare system instead of punishing people who want to be Americans for the socialist tendencies of current Americans. Trebor put it very clearly.
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