Free Capitalist

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  2. Posted · Report post

    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:

    In her game-changing convention speech, Sarah Palin took a swipe at Obama for having been nothing more in his life than a ‘community organiser’.

    This prompted the Obama campaign to issue a pained defence of community organisation as a way of promoting social change ‘from the bottom up’. The impression is that community organising is a worthy if woolly and ultimately ineffectual grassroots activity. This is to miss something of the greatest importance: that in the world of Barack Obama, community organisers are a key strategy in a different game altogether; and the name of that game is revolutionary Marxism.

    The seditious role of the community organiser was developed by an extreme left intellectual called Saul Alinsky. He was a radical Chicago activist who, by the time he died in 1972, had had a profound influence on the highest levels of the Democratic party. Alinsky was a ‘transformational Marxist’ in the mould of Antonio Gramsci, who promoted the strategy of a ‘long march through the institutions’ by capturing the culture and turning it inside out as the most effective means of overturning western society. In similar vein, Alinsky condemned the New Left for alienating the general public by its demonstrations and outlandish appearance. The revolution had to be carried out through stealth and deception. Its proponents had to cultivate an image of centrism and pragmatism.

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips...elieve-in.thtml

  3. Posted · Report post

    Advocating ideas is not the same thing as representing the originator of the ideas. As I posted above, to "represent" is to make a claim of being a spokesperson, etc.

    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.

  6. Posted · Report post

    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.

  7. Posted · Report post

    Newsweek has an interesting article on rumors about Palin's stances:

    http://www.newsweek.com/id/157986

    Sliming Palin

    We've been flooded for the past few days with queries about dubious Internet postings and mass e-mail messages making claims about McCain's running mate, Gov. Palin. We find that many are completely false, or misleading.

    Palin did not cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62 percent. She didn't cut it at all. In fact, she tripled per-pupil funding over just three years.

    She did not demand that books be banned from the Wasilla library. Some of the books on a widely circulated list were not even in print at the time. The librarian has said Palin asked a "What if?" question, but the librarian continued in her job through most of Palin's first term.

    She was never a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, a group that wants Alaskans to vote on whether they wish to secede from the United States. She's been registered as a Republican since May 1982.

    Palin never endorsed or supported Pat Buchanan for president. She once wore a Buchanan button as a "courtesy" when he visited Wasilla, but shortly afterward she was appointed to co-chair of the campaign of Steve Forbes in the state.

    Palin has not pushed for teaching creationism in Alaska's schools. She has said that students should be allowed to "debate both sides" of the evolution question, but she also said creationism "doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."

    We'll be looking into other charges in an e-mail by a woman named Anne Kilkenny for a future story. For more explanation of the bullet points above, please read the Analysis.

    A detailed analysis these points follows at the link above.

  8. Posted · Report post

    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.

  9. Posted · Report post

    One of the largest holes in this argument is that nationalists are usually anti-immigrant and anti-free trade, both of which McCain supports. A better example would be Pat Buchanan, who actually is a nationalist.

    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.

  10. Posted · Report post

    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:

    I am not, in the end, in favour of rigid lines. But if I were forced to think in terms of lines, I would try to divide animals into those that suffer from being eaten and those that don't. And I would imagine that there are three main classes of suffering.

    1. Physical pain: It seems to me that it is immoral to inflict physical pain on animals just so we can eat them. [...]

    2. Distress, which might fall short of physical agony, caused by the rearing process or the slaughtering process. Battery hens, intensively reared pigs, that kind of thing. I think causing distress of this kind is morally wrong, although it is difficult to measure. [...]

    3. Fear of what is to come, or the grief of bereavement. [...] If cows and pigs knew they were about to be slaughtered, and feared it, I think that would be morally wrong.

    Any of these three kinds of suffering could lead us to draw lines, and each of the three might have its line in a different place. For example, if might be only humans who suffer fear of class 3. But it could be that cockles can suffer physical agony just as much as we can.

    However, I prefer not to draw hard and fast lines at all, but to think in terms of continua. For example, I doubt if there is a line such that all species on one side of it can experience fear, and all species on the other side can't. I suspect that there are sliding scales, rather than rigid lines, with respect to all three of my classes of suffering. Maybe all animals can suffer, but some species can suffer more than others. And it is extremely hard to measure, in any case, as Marian points out. Given that it is hard to measure, I think it is a moral choice to err on the side of giving the animals the benefit of the doubt.

    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??

  11. Posted · Report post

    Why did they vote for these things, then? Most of these passed when the GOP controlled Congress.

    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.

  13. Posted · Report post

    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.

  14. Posted · Report post

    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.

  15. Posted · Report post

    Freedom shall reign, in America!

    :huh:

    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.

  16. Posted · Report post

    Exactly. Here is some of what 8 years of "compassionate conservatism" has left us with:
    • the TSA
    • Sarbanes-Oxley
    • No Child Left Behind
    • Medicare Part D
    • Government-engineered bailout of Bear Stearns
    • Full nationalization of mortgage lending
    • an explosion of earmarks
    • continued "unfunded mandates" at the state and local level that undermine the impact of tax cuts at the federal level

    I don't know what news sources you've been reading, but what I've seen shows republicans hugely disappointed in the Bush's government spending, and every single incumbent Republican politician both swears to "traditional" laissez-faire principles, and fears the title "neo-con" more then death.

  19. Posted · Report post

    *Note that the "minority," i.e. black and Hispanic, students constitute at least 80% of the kids I see, so they're hardly a real minority in these schools. Also, lest this sound racially motivated, note that "majority" students are exactly the same, but a smaller percentage of them and not nearly as overtly. I don't give a damn what color they are or where they come from - none of that makes a difference in the way I deal with them. What I care about is that they hate, steal, threaten, curse, disrupt, lie, and denigrate.

    Exactly piz. Exactly. You teach in this terrible system, and I was taught in it. Students regularly shouted down and insulted their teachers, there was absolutely no respect for any students and for the teacher least of all, unless he exhibited the capacity for physical violence, and I can say that I learned absolutely nothing having spent my entire adolescence in it. The inner city is the most disgusting place to be in America. Some places on the West Coast in LA are inaccessible to cops, armed camps with their own laws and executions, fenced in by brutish violence and multiculturalism.

  20. Posted · Report post

    Close to the sod and close to god. Jefferson was a man of many contradictions. Those same fields were also the last vestiges of slavery (the absolute worst act of collectivism ever imposed by people in this country), and today are the vestige of a massive expropriation of wealth. It's not the Chicagos of the country clamoring for mandatory ethanol production. We've been forced to use the garbage for 25 years as a sop to farmers occupying the "virtuous" farming towns across rural Americana. It's not the Chicagos who take massive amounts of tax dollars out of Washington. It's Chicago and other big cities who send our wealth to Washington so it can be distributed to all of the Wasillas looking to build their bridges to nowhere while our infrastructure here crumbles (or our local taxes rise to oppressive levels).

    Let me close this little aside between us by saying that I don't hold up Tennessee as a model for anything, while Texas has the virtuous gun-toting population and a billion-dollar economy second only to California. Ask any tech person, Austin, TX is the next most lucrative computer field after Silicon Valley, and in some ways more lucrative. Your dichotomy of North Eastern cities as feeding the rest of the country doesn't hold. North Eastern demographics are shrinking catastrophically and NYC has 0 growth, while that same Austin was at 8% tech growth and at 22% population growth. During the 19th century it was a place where people clung to slavery. This is the 21st century, and their great-grandsons are the last bastions of patriotism (while the old greats like NYC are slowly dying out, and Detroit has already become dead).

  21. Posted · Report post

    I simultaneously love him and revere him as a war hero and a man of constant standards...and I despise him for his frequent and explicit condemnations of egoism and his initiatives against liberty.

    But what do his frequent and explicit condemnations of egoism actually result in? That's what I'd like to know. Where's the proof in the pudding? Let me offer you a contrast by suggesting Hillary, who dosn't say a pipsqueak about altruism but suggests a nationalized health service, and Obama who hasn't a whisper on altruism and the most socialistic voting record in the race.

    McCain might say stuff like: "I believe in duty, so let me privatize 90% of government and encourage people's duty to improve their country privately", etc. Words don't have an intrinsic meaning. I go for the proof in the pudding to see what the candidates actually believe in.

  22. Posted · Report post

    The facts are, the inner city is a deep mess and a travesty for American values, while the small town is exactly the place where American values are left in such strong force. Politico likes to continually drop context and compare the incommensurables; and if they are pointed out the facts they indignantly stub their toe at political incorrectness.

    I'm not sure what idyllic fantasy world you are imagining, but the reality is that the modern small farming town is held together by irrational government farm subsidies and is superficially friendly but largely intolerant. The "melting pot" that created the unique American identity worked its best in the big cities. Let me ask you this, do you agree with Palin's condescending use of the word "cosmopolitan"? It's in cosmopolitan cities like yours and mine where generations of immigrants (from the Irish and Italians in the 19th century to the Eastern European, Asian, and yes, African immigrants today) arrived here with nothing, toughed it out, and made better lives for themselves.

    The principle of America is not some disembodied "toughing it out". The principle of America, or at least how the Founding Fathers embodied it, was virtue and republicanism, to which 'toughing it out' is only an optional ancillary selectively applicable to small portions of the country. What makes the 19th century melting pot so admirable is not how New York streets were filled with Irish gangs and hoodlums, but with what strength and ferocity mainstream America imposed, indeed forced, American values down these throats. These American values cannot come from the melting pot, because the pot is where those values come under constant danger, and are imposed on the new-coming population in a semi-hostile environment. The origin and birthplace of these values then must be somewhere else, somewhere safe where these values are cherished and nourished from birth. That's why Jefferson knew that the small-town is where his virtuous Americans were to be born, and why people are crying out that they are a nation of Massillas, rather than a nation of Chicagos.

  23. Posted · Report post

    I'm a bit perplexed about this outcry about the role of altruism in McCain's philosophy. What kind of altruism is it? Is he planning to raise taxes to 95% in order to practice his altruism and force alms out of the wealthy? Or, is he implementing this altruism by trying to build a national health service and grant 'rights' to healthcare? The only way this gets expressed is in timid endorsements of voluntary Peace Corps and a few tear-jerking invocations of 'service', always voluntary, packaged together with lower taxes and a dwindled government. Where is the actual foundation for why we must recognize McCain's altruistic evil? Does McCain prefer the draft? Sure, but that's because he's a soldier and many soldiers actually prefer the notion of draft, as expression of patriotic duty. But surely he's never tried to impose it on anybody, the public outcry would be tremendous against it, and a democratic Congress would hardly be a party to it. So I simply don't understand these phantom dangers of McCain's altruism which must be stopped at all costs.

  24. Posted · Report post

    A poster on the Politico brought up a good point. If Obama's daughter were 17, and a few months pregnant by her black boyfriend, whom Obama announced she would be marrying soon, do you think the GOP would be making the same gushing statements they are making about Bristol? Or would they be chalking it up as an example of "another thing wrong" with our inner cities and loss of "family values"?

    Look, Politico began this season as a fairly balanced reporter of interesting information, but they are quickly tumbling down the Leftist path well-worn by MSNBC, and aren't even noticing it.

    The facts are, the inner city is a deep mess and a travesty for American values, while the small town is exactly the place where American values are left in such strong force. Politico likes to continually drop context and compare the incommensurables; and if they are pointed out the facts they indignantly stub their toe at political incorrectness.

  25. Posted · Report post

    Dear friends,

    So many people have asked me about what I know about Sarah Palin in the last 2 days that I decided to write something up . . .

    KPO'M, do you realize how long a list you could write about just about anybody? Don't you think that nothing less than a book would do for McCain? What about Obama's cemetary of skeletons? The article author you mentioned piles on Palin's dislike of a city librarian, while Obama has one of the most left-wing voting records in the whole country? Is this all that's wrong with her? She disliked a school librarian and fired a police chief? When you put that letter in context, it sounds almost like wishful thinking, though when looked abstractly by itself it does make her look iffy, sure.

    I draw your attention to some of the comments which seem to have mentioned off-handedly -- sure she raised the city's spending, but when financial windfall came from today's oil prices, she wanted to spread that money to everybody in the city. This is a creationist lady who has made absolutely no issue of creationism in all of her years in office; a pro-life lady who has had that play only in her own life and not in anybody else's. Isn't this almost too good to be true? I keep expecting that we find some real faults in this lady because she can't be as good as it for now appears.