jfortun

While I am pleased with the Presidential outcome, the increased Republican majority in Congress is cause for some concern. Now all we have to do is hold the President to his word regarding the war on terror and fight any effort to for social control his party seeks to put into place. I think the message to Moore, Europe and Bin Laden is clear though.

This is being remade into a film with Dennis Quaid and Giovanni Ribisi.

Not ignoring it. I decided to choose one Miyazaki film for my list. I could have loaded it up with his films.

It just got to me, that's all. It was also beautifully animated and I thought the movie serves as a good showcase for what animation is capable of. As for Kurosawa, I can't get enough. Yojimba, Sanjuro, Stray Dog, Ran, Hidden Fortress, Throne of Blood; all could have made my list. I have Ikiru but haven't steeled myself up to watch it yet.

Some favorites in no particular order: Lord of the Rings Spirited Away Grave of the Fireflys Schindler's List Seven Samurai High and Low Rashamon Lawrence of Arabia The Samurai Trilogy M Monty Python and the Holy Grail Aliens If I were to pick the one I view as the greatest it would be The Seven Samurai.

In what ways do immigration laws protect the rights of Americans?

If making such a determination on an individual basis is impossible then why not deny entry to any member of any non-American culture? At what arbitrary point are you willing to deny immigration into the US? Should people from largely socialist cultures be forbidden entry? After all, in the long term they are probably more harmful than terrorist sympathizers. What about denying entry to those with certain religious backgrounds? Again, religion is harmful to the US as well.

Not denying a connection between culture and belief, but recognizing that those seeking to immigrate to the US may not strictly adhere to the beliefs of the culture from which they are fleeing.

The "higher cause" is not open immigration- it is recognizing each man as an individual being. Show that an immigrant is likely to violate the rights of an American citizen and deny him entry on that basis. But turning away immigrants on the basis of their original culture, to say nothing of their actual beliefs, is accepting collectivism because the ends justify the means. What don't you know? Only information you are not willing to collect or investigate. It's not being done out of uncertainty, it is being done out of presupposed "knowledge" that if someone belongs to particular culture or ethnic group, he poses a potential risk to American lives. Whatever uncertainty arises is only because because you choose not to evaulate the individual. Using this logic, uncertainty can be used to justify all kinds of policy; i.e. Global Warming: we are uncertain of global warming and the effect of man on the phenomena so to protect our citizens from the possible effects, we should sign the Kyoto treaty, after all, better safe than sorry. The principle that each man must be judged as an individual is not a principle and is not an idea worth pursuing? What other ethics are worth sacrificing in the name of security?

The purpose of government is to protect individual rights. Obviously it can only do this for its citizens but I bring up the distinction because you seem to be willing to accept some level of collectivism in determining immigration policy. If there, why not in other instances? Would-be immigrants may not be citizens and may not qualify for the protections of the US, but does not the anti-collectivist ideal of America (never mind Objectivism!)still apply? Ethically can you justfy categorizing everyone of a certain ethnic backound as being an enemy of the US? Is there some risk in judging individuals as individuals? Yep. There is some risk and cost. But judging individuals based on the enthic or cultural collective to which they belong costs us our principles as a nation and in my view is an unacceptable and a pragmatists approach to the problem.

I guess their health care system couldn't keep up with all the dog related injuries.

I don't think Kerry is a normal power luster. I think he is something worse: a second-hander. Whatever power he does seek, he seeks with the approval of the UN and France. I think that make's Kerry more dangerous than any normal politician seeking the power of office because its hands us directly over to the socialists, the terrorists and the dictators.

Hell, there is an American ex-President who is sympathetic to the cause and many Americans share his view. It would not surprise me if peaceful Muslims were sympathetic in some way, but unless that can be verified I don't know that we can act on such a supposition. Give my former point I don't see how we could base any restrictive action on birth rates. Also, are Muslims who are born in the US more or less (or at all) sympathetic to the cause of militant Islam? Restricing known communists is perfectly justified for a couple reasons. 1) they are known to be communist and 2) they are communist. That is, they have pledged allegiance to an organzation that explicity seeks the downfall of America. As for profiling I think to a certain extent it is unavoidable. If security more closely scrutinzes those coming from Islamic nations or those individuals who are known to be Islamic (i.e. Cat Stevens) then that is the price those individuals pay for living in a region or associating with those who are hostile to the US. The agents assigned to protect American borders must use what information they have to do their job- if that includes stopping and questioning every passenger from Iran or Saudi Arabia then that is what they must do. That is a far cry however from restricting anyone who looks Arab (or Persian) from entering the US. Unless an individual has expressed a violent sentiment or belongs to a group bent on actually harming US citizens I don't see how you can turn them away. Those people may not yet be under the protection of the US Constitution, but automatically turning them away is a sorry way to invite those seeking its protection to our shores. That may let a few bad seeds in, but just as in our own court system in which it requires only a reasonable doubt to find a man not guilty, it is better to let a criminal go than to punish the innocent. Besides, the freedom America represents, even in her current state, must be a powerful tool of persuasion against anti-American sentiment for those who have never experienced such freedom.

I am playing half a devil's adovcate here but... As we are trustees of our children's rights, perhaps parents should be allowed to cast a vote not just for themselves but for each of their children until those children reach legal voting age. I wonder what the polls would predict about the outcome of November 2 were that the case? BTW, thanks to Betsy for introducing the idea that parents are trustees of their children's rights. It clarified many things for me!

I used to think that way before I had children. Now, protecting them means protecting America- not just its ideals, but its physical borders and its cities and buildings. I think there are ashes enough for a new America to rise from without extinguishing the lights of New York.

A celebration of prosperity and the values we gain from friends and family.

so oral sex is not "physiological" either? what is the purpose of your point about whether or not sex is physiologically correct? What is important about it being "simulataneous"? regarding anal sex, the lower colon is pretty clean until just the moment before it evacuates. Colonics are not really necessary unless you have really bad timing. As for male/female sex, many women cannot even orgasm just with vaginal penetration- that is a physiological fact- not a psychological one. It is quite normal and is a result of the female anatomy.

uh, no it doesn't. The file plays on its own or you can also download it without giving an email address.

'Tis the season! Any gift ideas for the Objectivist in your life who has everything?

I'm not sure if I see much difference in making policy decisions based on faith in a religious form altruism (a la Bush) vs. faith in a secular form of altruism (a la Kerry). There are other reasons religion is a threat, but I think we underestimate the power of what Thomas Sowell refers to as the left's "vision of the anointed". While in today's philosophical climate religion may have a monopoly on the source of morality, it does at least have a weakness in that there are blatant contradictions between religious belief and most conservative economic policy. The left on the other hand, has no such contradictions and because of the their more complete embrace of altruism it has a monopoly of the moral high-ground. Religious conservatives seem to accept that fact and spend a lot of time apologizing for it. Kerry may be paying lip-service to religion in order to secure a few more votes, but in essentials he truly believes “faith without works is dead” and his long standing commitment to consistent religious-in-secular-clothing principles is a matter of public record.

This is just ignorant. Note I didn't say "stupid", I said ignorant. First, men and women do not feel similar sensations at the same time. Most sexually experienced people know that while penetration and a bit of friction is enough to bring a man to climax it frequently is not enough to do the same for a woman. There is even a large time lag, I believe the average for the man is 8 minutes while for a woman it is over 20 minutes. I am not saying that men and women are incompatible, but that the sexual experience is not the same. How many women have lived their entire lives without achieving an orgasm because their man believed the woman was experiencing the same kind of pleasure? Second, homosexual sex does not consistantly involve blood or feces. Many gay men do not engage in anal sex. For those that do, blood and feces need not ever be involved. I won't go into details here, but do just a little bit of reading on anal sex and you will find it can be very safe, very clean and very enjoyable without all that much effort. Besides which, many straight couples engage in anal sex or play as well. That area has an incredible concentration of nerve endings, so from a physiological perspective it makes for a very good erogenous zone. From an evolutionary perspective (i.e. the continuation of the species) sex between 2 men or 2 women may not make much sense, but from a physiological and sexual perspective- that is, the ability to give and recieve pleasure- all our bodies are pretty well suited to the job regardless of gender if you have the right partner.

I especially like the "Who is John Galt?" t-shit in organic cotton.

Ayn Rand had this to say about fraud: from The Nature of Government So fraud is the initiation of force precisely because it involves "disregarding the conditions" one has set for transfering property.

And that gets us what? Four (or 8!) years of no war does what for us?

It's worse because we have evidence of what doing nothing (the Kerry/UN strategy) leads to: attacks such as the one on 9/11. Perhaps your theory is that it is better to wait until a few million American's are killed on our own soil so the country will "wake up" rather than make at least some attempt of shutting down terrorist governments? I can undertstand advocating a much more aggressive approach than Bush has taken, I don't understand how one can think how Kerry's plan of sitting on our asses is a better alternative.