McGroarty

The big problem here is that wherever any liberal policy fails, the accusation is that it failed for not being liberal enough. Look at what happened when irrational "liability without fault" laws were passed to push the cost of being a flu vaccine manufacturer up, and then irrational laws were passed that made the government an artificial monopoly consumer with an irrational fixed price cap. Did anyone point to the unreason that made manufacturing flu vaccines in the US an impossible business venture? No. The presidential challenger stood up and declared capitalism at fault -- the process failed because it still wasn't socialist enough. If that clear cut a failure doesn't wake people up, I don't want to wait for us to lose wars so badly that the majority can see it. I can't begin to envision how bad things would have to get.

No specific recommendations on models, but do look at the accessories available for whichever PDA you're considering. Some use proprietary interfaces for memory cards and the likes. It's no fun to pay a premium in a more limited market, and then to throw away any add ons if you change to a new PDA a couple years down the line.

I saw a self-professed libertarian write that she was voting for Nader because she didn't think the libertarian candidate was viable. I had to ask to be sure that it wasn't a joke. I replied that if I can't have a pizza without cheese, I want double cheese, because I really hate cheese pizza. She didn't follow.

The article seems to be missing or moved, but you can still view a copy from the "cached" link at Google. The statement that a severed umbilical cord and the body being outside of the mother mark the point of independence seems to belong to Glenn Woiceshyn. But Glenn makes that statement based on wanting to protect a woman's right to her own body through the entire pregnancy, not based on any attribute of the fetus. The reason I asked about this demarcation is that I still have trouble with the view that a body can be as capable of independence as an infant, but not afforded rights because of physical location and attachment. I understand and now share the objectivist view that a fully dependent being has no rights. This is a definite change from my emotionally driven view of a few months ago, where before reading objectivist views, I wanted life protected from the moment it was recognizably human. But I don't understand why a woman's right to her body would trump a presently viable human's right to live in cases where it's possible to induce delivery of a viable infant early. I want to be very certain that I'm not accepting a position as correct if I can't fully derive the logic behind it. That a presently viable human isn't human merely because of its present location seems tenuous at best. Ditto for a human that is biologically dependent but capable of being otherwise if removed from its location -- removing a presently viable infant changes its circumstance, not the infant itself.

How long can we let others dictate what happens to individuals' bodies based on unprovable beliefs? I think everyone here is pro-life, in so much as a life is a human life with the full unalienable rights accorded thereto. Without those, life is as meaningless as it is to breeding stock.

BugMeNot is useful for these kinds of sites.

The equating of religion with law is a part of the majority culture, and you won't be able to cure that with a document. If there is criticism that Bush hasn't changed the fundamental nature of these people and made them accept laying it aside altogether, then that criticism is valid to whatever extent someone can come up with a plan that would have accomplished what the Bush administration has not. That said, the Iraqi interim constitution mostly pays lip service to Islam. Islam is named as the state religion which is empty language because it is cited as a guide for law, but not as a peer to the law. And this means nothing when Article 3 is explicit about putting all religions and sects on equal footing, making it similar to US law. Assuming atheism is counted in Iraq as well, this is a definite win. More importantly, however: Article 13 enumerates essential individual rights. Here, we have the tip of the wedge for countless good laws flowing. I can't understand why one wouldn't see *this* as the most exciting thing about the interim constitution. This is huge!

Muslim practitioners are pretty well varied. While the Qoran calls for the death or financial enslavement of all unbelievers, and some interpretations even include all non-Arabs as well, many overlook these requirements. Recognizing passages such as the above as a call to action is the specific problem. It makes sense to me that you would ban immigration based on being a Muslim and being unwilling to swear an oath to Allah that you do not share those specific beliefs, not on being Muslim alone. Of course, this raises a fun new issue of making more specific requirements of select groups.

The entire purpose of al Qaeda ("the base") is not to war on the US directly, but to embolden other Islamic fundamentalists to act against us. There are millions of fundamentalists who hate the US for various reasons. Some who view us as a contrary religious power, some view us as a den of corruption, some view us as intruders on holy Saudi soil, some view us as siding with enemies, some view us as targets only of slavery or slaughter purely for not being Arabs and Islamics. What all of these groups have in common is that the large groups among them are held in check by a fear of US retaliation, should they act against us. This perception alone severely limits their power. But any time we back off a little based on a threat, any time we don't respond to the best of our ability when threatened, some of these groups are emboldened and made that much more ready to act against us. Enough perceived victories and al Qaeda has accomplished its mission. To the extent that you accept the above, preventing al Qaeda from feeling victorious is actually a very good guide for your vote!

The situation which the discussion originally applied to was an emotionally loaded one. I think that carried over, and not taking an absolute position on the use of force was the final straw. I am thinking specifically of both Galt and Rearden equating any kind of compulsion with the pointing of a gun in Atlas Shrugged and of Roark doing the same in The Fountainhead. Bearster also conveyed this at the tail of our conversation: I never made mention that I would use or point a gun. As I interpret it, Bearster brought that up at the end to further equate any force with the threat of escalating to deadly force. In addition to the above, I haven't seen any mention of degree of force in any objectivist writing. It's been binary in that every individual has rights, but an individual loses those rights when they violate others' rights. I've not seen any mention of an individual losing only some measure of their rights, or of weighing one individual's rights over another where there is a conflict. I'm not sure I've even seen any acknowledgement of the possibility of a conflict.

Take a situation where one person's rights are being violated by a second person. The second is inapable of correcting the violation without help from the victim and did not intentionally cause the violation. The victim intends to use lethal means to protect his rights. The victim has non-lethal means of protecting his rights, but chooses lethal means for convenience. A third party can forcefully intervene to make the first party to use the less convenient non-lethal means instead of the lethal. In this situation, as the third person I stated that I would use force to prevent the unnecessary death, but I would not use lethal force. I'm not going to kill the victim to prevent the second from being killed. But I am going to further impose on the victim to prevent death. Wrong answer. "Bearster" banned me from undernet #AynRand IRC for this position (reason: intrinsicist). Unfortunately I was not able to get a rational answer out of anyone as to the objectivist position. I know that objectivists recognize force as binary. You either don't impose, or you stand ready to fire a gun. There is no in-between. Then, is the objectivist position that the means of protecting one's rights are completely up to the person whose rights are violated in every case, even where the violation wasn't willful? Is there some other resolution I'm missing here?

I've read a few Peikoff abortion articles and Googled around, but not found this argument yet. Do you remember where you read this, or do you remember the reasoning that set this as the absolute start of personhood?

Those most critical of people holding discourse with themselves, dialectic or otherwise, are normally called "psychiatrists," not "neo-Sophists." Doubly so when it takes so long for either side of a one man argument to have the final say. If that's not the key to the funny here, perhaps it's in equating indecision, contradictory recollections, or constant misleading appeasement with dialectical discourse.

Oh really now...!

This all hinges on accepting that the organism/fetus has rights: My problem remains with the later stage abortions. If the woman and the organism/fetus have rights, a non-destructive procedure could be pursued which would have a high probability of delivering a live baby without harming the mother -- that is, without violating the woman's rights. If labor can be induced prematurely with drugs we can estimate that the result will be similar to that of naturally occurring premature deliveries, where there is a 50% survival rate starting around 24 or 25 weeks. I don't see how a woman's right to choose not to carry through to childbirth is the same as a right to a destructive procedure when other options exist which are safe for the mother and allow the chance for a live delivery. That said, most here agree that an organism/fetus has no rights. I still haven't seen convincing reason for that, however. The arguments I've read rely on the fetus not having cognitive processes which can't rationally be ascribed to newborns either, or rely on the fact that the fetus is taking nutrition from the mother through the embryonic cord. I don't think any here would argue in support of destruction post delivery merely because the cord hadn't yet been cut.

A moment of genius from Scott Ott at scrappleface.com:

In a way, I've been dragged kicking and screaming into this. For most of my life, I've tried to become a Christian, as I admired my grandfather who was a minister, and I appreciated the values Christianity endorses. Indeed, I even gave serious thought to becoming a minister myself. Unfortunately, one can't (or I can't) simply will to believe in God and do so. For a long time I regarded this as a personal deficiency and even thought of becoming a minister who kept his lack of faith as a personal secret. Eventually I left it aside and simply went through the motions of religious practice on occasion. About fifteen years ago I found a copy of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal laying about on a family reunion vacation. I remember myself reading and agreeing with much of what I read in the book, and so I purchased a copy more recently when Greenspan was starting to inch the interest rates back up. Rand made every bit as much sense as Greenspan, so I picked up The Fountainhead as a bit of a lark. From there, I ploughed through Anthem and Atlas Shrugged, as the characters and constructs rang true. The characters' actions all made sense, and were either comfortably predictable or made me want to cheer and shout "Well-played!" when surprised. Books don't normally affect me this way. I'm now working through some of Rand's essays and starting to collect other Objectivist material as I struggle to internalize the material well enough to act on it from the gut. Questions and seeming exceptions come up, and eventually resolve in a logical way, so long as Objectivism's few logical laws are accepted. I'm a programmer by trade, and it's refreshing and encouraging to finally be able to work daily life, political views, and ethics into a cohesive whole in much the same way it's comforting to create a program and know all of its parts. I'm a person who doesn't like surprises or unanswered questions. That said, this has been exceedingly frustrating for me. I had initially expected - even hoped - to find where Objectivism was "broken," or where Rand had cheated in developing her fictional characters in order to produce a biased outcome. However, the more I read, the more solid Objectivism and Rand's two major novels have proven. I did not want this, and I've tried to be very critical. The reason this is frustrating is that Objectivism denigrates the religious society I would very much have liked to have become a part of. Many of the people I respect the most are religious conservatives, but I'm starting to realize that the aspects I most appreciate - honesty, intelligence, integrity, accountability, and work ethic - are better instilled by Objectivism than by Christianity. Indeed, Objectivism demands each trait, whereas Christianity encourages, but forgives lapses. Furthermore, Christianity demands certain compromises in support of faith and subjective charitable obligations. Further, Rand's non heroic characters are proving just as consistent as her heroic characters. Rand's portrayal of the second handers reaffirms many of the biases I've held against people who try to tell me what I "should" do, or how I "should" feel about things where such feelings and actions haven't come naturally for me. Having her characters in mind has also got me gritting my teeth and ill at ease whenever I start hearing a littany of weak external excuses for failure or contradictory logic accepted as fact. Lastly, while I find comfort and inspiration in Objectivism's clarity, it also makes me feel physically ill. Starting to recognizing the amount of unrealized potential out there and the means by which it's been wasted is enough to make me want to abandon the thing that made me see it. But I can't will that realization out of existence any more than I could will God in.

Please let me know if I'm clear on this. I'm not arguing against the position you state, but trying to see if I can reconcile it for myself. I think most here are in agreement that in the majority of cases, where the abortion is done in the first trimester and what you have is a wad of tissue nobody can do anything with, there aren't rights. This is logical to me. Let's take the far extreme of late third trimester abortions however. Do you view the following? If an abortion procedure were to deliver a live baby, the baby would have rights. A destructive abortion procedure violates no rights where the alternative is an early extraction of a living baby as above. For example, in dialation and extraction abortions an early delivery is induced, the baby is delivered partly, and its skull is punctured and suctioned before completing the delivery. In cases where inducing a full delivery without the cranial destruction would produce a live baby, the fact that the baby is still partly inside a woman and the umbilical cord is not yet severed is sufficient that no rights exist? I'm also curious if any rights would be violated were one to terminate a partly delivered baby once the birth process has begun naturally.

In all fairness: "She speaks to you through me. And I have to tell you right now -- I didn't plan to talk about this -- right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to you." That's reported as a direct quote from Edwards during trial, following his relaying what the child had been experiencing throughout the procedure. You should be able to find numerous sources by Googling on parts or all of the quotation. This was in a trial against an obstetrician. It's not an abortion issue.

Premise check -- It seems as though everybody is treating a developing baby's possible right to live and a woman's right to biological independence as though they were necessarily in opposition. Further, it seems to be assumed that a woman's right to terminate pregnancy is the same as a blanket right for the woman to terminate the developing baby. In my current thinking, abortion isn't the problem. The problem lies in the method of abortion and in the treatment of the aborted fetus. It's currently acceptable to enact any measure of violence against a developing baby even in very late stages in order to exercise a woman's rights. However, given that babies have been delivered prematurely as early as three and a half months and still lived, other options exist. Would it not be a more objective viewpoint that a woman has the right to have a developing baby excised so long as measures are taken to save any that are mature enough that they might have survived premature delivery?

I'm not old enough. Were late term abortions common or practical when Ayn made the dismissal?

While reading The Fountainhead, I remember appreciating Howard Roark for simply labeling his door with "Howard Roark, Architect" on finally founding his own firm. Saying "here I am and here is what I do" bespeaks a different mindset than the one that names a company to evoke unrelated imagery. The difference is like that between the architects who dedicated space and effort to a building's purpose and those who sacrificed purpose to classical architectural decorations.

The meat of it is in the transcript of course. My views of the presentation: President Bush worked at becoming more personable this time around, or he may have been more comfortable with the public around him. Either way, he successfully asserted the character strength that makes many secure with him as commander in chief. To his benefit, there were also a few lighthearded and comfortable moments, but he didn't broadcast the kind of command of the debate that will win over the emotionally driven voters. Kerry was much more aggressive this time. I didn't see him drawing a defensive posture or position out of Bush as easily as he did in the last debate. He seemed to realize this and press much harder, turning to Bush several times and delivering criticisms at Bush directly as though he were calling him out. I expect this worked as a negative: While the segment that is voting "against Bush" this time around surely loved this, Kerry would have been better served if he had put more of that energy into passion about issues than into trying to intimidate his opponent. I'll call it a draw on presentation this time around. I'm guessing presentation will go to Kerry next debate. It's going to be easier for Kerry to tune where he projects himself than it would be for Bush to crank it up another few notches.

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