Free Capitalist

Thanks guys!, I've just been so busy lately.

Bill, I have an excellent addition to your link. Doesn't Obama really strike one as strongly for the "middle-ground", the quintessential centrist, vague and fuzzy-feely "community organizer? The question may arise, whether there is something more concrete to this designation: http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips...elieve-in.thtml

Look, I don't even know why we're talking about this. The TOC controversy is settled, and they lost. You cannot make a distinction between a person calling himself an Objectivist, and between representing that philosophy. Lots of people are influenced by all sorts of philosophies, and that doesn't make them "-ists" of that philosophy. The "-ist" is a designation, a description, for a person who accepts the philosophy completely. Then, when you make a philosophical statement you are implicitly adding that this statement is completely consistent with the "-ist" you are trying to be. Now I don't know Bidinotto personally, but the TOC group in general likes to call themselves Objectivists, but refuse to accept any kind of consistency with it, or within it. They just take pieces they really like, and not pay so much attention to those that they don't. That is fine if they call themselves simply intellectuals, but if they call themselves Objectivist intellectuals that is dishonesty.

I.e. an Intellectual who advocates Ayn Rand's ideas.

When you claim that you're an Objectivist intellectual, you claim to represent Ayn Rand's ideas.

The question is whether he's an Objectivist intellectual, in that he understands and accepts Ayn Rand's philosophy. That is what's being challenged here. No one doubts that he's an intellectual, perhaps influenced by AR as have been many people throughout the last 50 years without it making them Objectivists or any kind of spokesmen for the philosophy.

Newsweek has an interesting article on rumors about Palin's stances: http://www.newsweek.com/id/157986 A detailed analysis these points follows at the link above.

By the way, "Kuffar" is the Muslim word for infidel, so unless John McCain has suddenly turned to Islam the very title of the blog is yet one more example of making a trade of candidates' flaws, and of enlarging or adding exaggerations whenever possible.

One of the larger overall problems is this mindset of "Let me just sit on the sidelines and take sniping shots at both sides". Our job is to decide the better candidate, so unless both candidates are rationally just simply stomach-churningly unacceptable, this task is not helped when we are pointed out that both candidates have flaws, and that the only flawless person was the guy pointing such things out.

Since there exists plenty of evidence of religious people doing wrong, I thought I'd start the opposite with a collection of atheists making horrific errors. Here is a wonderful example from Richard Dawkins, a self-appointed champion of atheism and of discarding of religion (even traditional and non-evangelical). Dawkins, on his forum, was asked to clarify rumors of being a vegetarian on moral grounds, and of granting rights to animals. Here was a perfect opportunity to clear misconceptions and to declare to the world that, though an atheist, he upheld man's exalted stature and recognized his unique nature (since after all, biology is his profession). Dawkins' response went quite the other way, however: http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewto...234689#p1234689 If a leading "new atheist" can say that "If cows and pigs knew they were about to be slaughtered, and feared it, I think that would be morally wrong", it begs the question: how much does he even understand morality at all??

I've been interested in exactly the same question, so I've been reading a few Republican news sources/blogs, and they asking themselves exactly this question, and are blaming themselves for the the Democratic takeover of Congress. "Return to our Conservative principles" is the ideological slogan of this election season, which they inevitably interpret as stronger social stances, a small government and much privatization.

What the?

Some reference to that might stem from Adams' own life, which was not getting happier as he grew in age, and in some ways lacked the fiery idealism of the Revolution. He thought the Americans were slowly losing grip on the very principles the country was founded on, and was deeply distressed that Europe violently started going against the Enlightenment right around the year 1800. But even if that's so you could argue that the show must keep a positive spin and present his struggle with something benevolent to offset it. Perhaps this desire by Hanks to stick closely to Adams' life without any frills is a slight case of Naturalism.

Just as a final comment on the whole inner-city education thing, what I said about the necessity of projecting violence is right, piz. And I say this from the other side of the spectrum, i.e. how your students view you: if you bear yourself in a way that covertly projects the capacity for physical violence, the students will listen to you a lot more than they will to all the other teachers around them. We're nursing a crop of brutes in our very heart, here in the good ol' US.

Freedom shall reign, in America! Great show. I didn't see the last few episodes so I hope they were as excellent as all the starting one. I love the little touches which history-buff Tom Hanks added into the show: the disembodied snake standard carried with ominous ferocity, and Latin quotations which Abigail Adams was teaching to her children while John supervised.