Armed Chinese Troops in Texas

[Libertarian Muslim]

LM,

I'll address it. I have the apparently unpopular opinion that the USA is not in decline, but is close to the edge of a start. One of the characteristics of the USA has always been that it acts like a sleeping giant. The people are waking up, and I don't mean this silly stuff that is happening on Wall Street.

While I agree with you that people in the USA have generally been oblivious to what the government has been doing overseas, I also claim that the very people in the "sleeping giant" part are the ones who are waking up to this knowledge. I expect they will do something good about this situation, too.

I also believe the USA should stop buying oil from Middle East countries. Let them see how much they fill their coffers with USA dollars when they sell only to China, Russia or Uganda without being able to leverage prices they get from the USA market. Wanna see the oil cartel, who think it's in command, go down the tubes? Take away the demand that pays premium price. That's the reality.

The simple fact is that no external human force on earth will stop the USA from intervening in other countries. But the internal sleeping giant will.

This redistribute the wealth thing is partly what is waking folks up. It works like this. The loud poor people defenders in the USA--who figure among the folks who like to gloat that the USA is in decline--look at the rich and think they can take just a little, then a little bit more, and the rich will not miss it.

But the sleeping giant folks are well aware that the poorest American with his iPhone and refrigerator and car and microwave oven is Extremely Wealthy when compared to the poor in Saudi Arabia, etc., and that redistribution of wealth means taking from the American poor to give out to the rest of the world.

They know that the USA is a prize that many, many, many folks would like to get their hands on. But this simply will not happen.

The giant is waking up.

It's always a mistake to crow victory in advance. Let's see what all those folks crowing about the decline of America say when the giant is fully awake. I already hear the whining just from what little the Tea Party did so far.

I expect the whining will get a lot worse before too long.

Michael

Hi Michael,

Those are some very good points!

Thank you for responding. I also agree that the US is a sleeping giant, but so is the Middle East. I don't think that the fact that the US is a sleeping giant means that it is not in decline, in fact I think the fact that it is in a decline and that there is economic hardship being caused is what is causing the sleeping giant to wake from its stupor.

I also don't think that the US not buying oil from the Middle East would make a difference, in fact if anything it would be beneficial for the Middle East if the US wasn't interested at all in oil there.

I also note that you state the cartels in the Middle East are leveraging a high price because the US can afford it, I disagree.. I think oil prices have not reflected the increase in prices that other commodities have had nor do I think it properly reflects the turmoil in the region and I believe that it's not the market that is dictating the price, but in fact it's alliances the oil barons have with the US government that keeps it artificially low which is of an economic disadvantage to the people in the Middle East but a huge advantage to the leadership in the region who enjoy US support.

Next, you also state that no external force can stop the US from intervening and only the sleeping giant can. Well, actually I think this is where I need to state that without the external forces the sleeping giant would not awake as those external forces contribute to the economic hardship that Americans feel and without that, the giant would keep sleeping as it has done while their government continued its actions.

[George H. Smith]

Of course neuroscience involves psychology to some extent, but it involves far more, including a study of the physical brain and nervous system. If you were talking only about psychology, then you should have said so, and we would have had no quarrel.

George,

Thanks for the information about neuroscience. I appreciate it.

(Wait... didn't I say stuff about dendrites, axons, synapses, amygdala, hippocampus, etc.? Dayaam! I thought I did that, but I'm glad you were around and now can see fit to straighten me out about it,)

Unfortunately no, I was not only talking about psychology.

In fact, I will go out on an limb and say I seriously doubt you understand that I have been talking about human nature all along.

(Wait... didn't I go on about how they used to identify human nature--observation of others and introspection--and how they now have other means to add to that--controlled behavior experiments and neuroscience? And haven't I used the term "human nature" until it comes out the reader's ears? Dayaam! I swear I remember writing that stuff. I must be getting old...)

In my world, you have to identify something correctly in order to evaluate it.

And... now here's the kicker, if you use the hierarchical system of organizing your knowledge (which I do, and, frankly it is one of the best things I learned from Ayn Rand), meaning you base ethics, government, etc., on human nature as one of the foundations (lets call it a fundament, and I admit Rand did not use human nature as a separate category in her philosophical hierarchies), it only stands to reason that when you uncover parts of human nature that are different than formerly presumed, you have to reexamine the knowledge constructs you built on top that premise.

In other words: in MSK-land, human nature is the foundation. On top of that foundation you put ethics and politics.

If you find new discoveries about human nature, you reexamine what you put on top of that foundation just to make sure nothing needs to be realigned or corrected.

How about this way? If you find out that something about human nature is different than known before, some folks want to keep the same structure and arguments as before for ethics and politics without even checking them.

I say that is a flawed method. You seem to defend it.

I say, if the premise changes in any respect, you have to look at what you built on top of it.

In other words, at the extreme, it really doesn't matter what you put on top of a false premise. It will not be consistent with reality except by fluke.

But your own examples went far beyond psychology.

Damn straight they did. Like I have been saying over and over and over. But one thing's a trip with you. Since you could not pigeonhole me as talking ONLY about "the study of the physical brain," now you are trying to pigeonhole me as talking ONLY about psychology.

I find this curious.

What gives?

You don't want to understand what I am talking about? It's not like I haven't been saying certain things over and over.

You certainly don't need to distort the words of someone in order to argue. You are George Smith, for Pete's sake.

So what gives?

The study of the physical brain will yield no fundamental knowledge about ethics or political theory.

Once again, I hold this is a dogmatic statement.

If the "study of the physical brain" happens to yield important knowledge about human nature previously not taken into account, you're damn straight it would yield fundamental knowledge about ethics. (And I can think of some things worth discussing, but not in this climate.)

At the very least, it would yield some presumptions that need to be examined. That is if you use the hierarchical system of knowledge. If you use some other system (and God knows what that would be), I agree you can make up your own rules of logic and say whatever the hell you like. But I don't think that way.

All we need to know (again, with some possible exceptions involving abnormalities) we can get from psychology...

All we need to know we can get from psychology? (For grounding ethics, I presume you mean.)

Dayaamm!

Speak for yourself.

I'm seriously surprised to see this dogmatic side in your thinking.

You are really quick to use the phrase "all we need to know." Are you omniscient or have superpowers?

I just don't think like this. I'm a mere mortal and my knowledge is always open to addition and, if necessary, alignment and/or correction.

I am done with this pointless exchange. You can have the last word. I need to get to work.

I'm fine with this. This thing also threw me way behind on an Internet marketing project.

I wish you well on your work.

Michael

A-wimoweh, a-wimoweh, a-wimoweh, a-wimoweh....

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

You wrote that the “US has benefited greatly from interventionism”, this prompted me to say that resources directed towards the military industrial complex are a malinvestment. In other words, it doesn’t benefit the US. I framed it with “What if I said…” because I don’t actually believe that all such resources go to waste. For example, some like to point out that the internet was an invention of the military industrial complex (not Al Gore), though I think the writers of Avenue Q have the real answer.

To get from the subject of malinvestment to that video was quite a stretch, but it was worth it. I haven't seen a segue like that since the 1980s, when I used a discussion of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology to talk a woman into bed.

Ghs

[9thdoctor]

I haven't seen a segue like that since the 1980s, when I used a discussion of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology to talk a woman into bed.

Oh come on! You think anyone’s going to believe a tall tale like that? Alright, I guess it’s possible, however cosmically improbable. It calls to mind a recent quote from physicist Lawrence Krauss: “The Universe is huge and old and rare things happen all the time, including” getting laid with pickup lines out of ITOE.

http://www.joketribe...up%20Lines.html

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

A-wimoweh, a-wimoweh, a-wimoweh, a-wimoweh....

It took some digging, but I got a good en'.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/u5MopiY1VHY?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Michael

PS - As a benefit of looking for something lizard-like, I also found a rich source of mashup techniques to study for my upcoming video stuff. The Wreck & Salvage folks are as weird as six-tailed horses flying on Venus and eating cotton candy, but after looking at some of their stuff, I think they rock. Not always, but often enough to keep my inner lizard looking.

[George H. Smith]

I haven't seen a segue like that since the 1980s, when I used a discussion of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology to talk a woman into bed.

Oh come on! You think anyone’s going to believe a tall tale like that? Alright, I guess it’s possible, however cosmically improbable. It calls to mind a recent quote from physicist Lawrence Krauss: “The Universe is huge and old and rare things happen all the time, including” getting laid with pickup lines out of ITOE.

http://www.joketribe...up%20Lines.html

I said nothing about "pickup lines out of ITOE." I was more ingenious than that. If getting laid required nothing more than quoting something out of ITOE, then the success rate among horny and single O'ist men would be greater than ten percent.

Ghs

[Martin Radwin]

Martin:

O'biwan just announced that he dispatched one hundred (100) US troops to Uganda to "be peacekeepers" against the LRA [Lord's Resistance Army], http://en.wikipedia....Resistance_Army,a mystical Christian movement fighting to establish a religious state based on the Ten Commandments. This is in the security interests of the US according to the dictator in chief!

So does that make this the 5th or 6th war?

Adam

Adam,

Like George, I've also lost count. Obama is a murderous war criminal and sociopath. But then again, so was his predecessor, GWB, so was his opponent for the democratic nomination, Hilary Clinton, so was his opponent for the presidential election, McCain, and so is every one of the existing republican presidential candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul. This is the choice we are given. During the presidential debates, there will be no debate at all about the continuation of U.S. foreign policy. Ending the wars and bringing home the troops is not even "on the table" for discussion. Ron Paul is the only candidate who even brings this up, and he is thus labeled as the fringe candidate of the group. TAS wrote a lead article viciously attacking Paul for daring to suggest that maybe, just maybe, the U.S. government should end the wars and stop murdering innocent people abroad. Michael has decided to reject his arguments because they are political propoganda, even though he never seemed to be bothered by the political propoganda of Glen Beck.

It's kind of ironic the extent to whcih so many republicans hate Obama so much, given that Obama has followed pretty much every policy of his predecessor and in many cases escalated these policies to new heights of evil, from promising to close Guantanamo Bay and then breaking this promise, to continuing the occupation of Iraq, to escalating the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, to escalating the use of drone attacks in Pakistan, to starting a new war in Libya, and now this latest BS in Uganda. Obama has also stepped up immigration enforcement, deporting far more illegal immigrants than Bush ever did, a policy that is generally enthusiastically supported by republicans. He has escalated the drug war in Mexico, leading to dramatically increasing levels of carnage in Mexico, as tens of thousands of Mexicans have been killed in the cross fire in just the last four years. And Obama has completely lied about medical marijuana enforcement by the DEA, something he promised federal laws would not be enforced in the clubs that were in compliance with state laws and something which the DEA is now enforcing even against clubs that are completely in compliance with state law. Obama has proven himself to be an even more loathsome, despicable dictator than Bush, something that most of his supporters would not have believed possible.

I regret that there was ever a time in the past when I actually was a financial supporter of TAS. Right now, I'd rather take my money and flush it down the toilet than contribute a penny to either ARI or TAS. As long as either of these organizations are supporting existing U.S. foreign policy and providing moral justifications for the continuing murderous wars fought abroad, they are undeserving of any financial support and unfit to exist.

Martin

[George H. Smith]

Sorry to repeat the same tune, but this segment from the old Tracey Ullman Show (an early hit on Fox) is priceless. I was a big fan of that show, and this was one of my favorite skits. It nicely captures the infectious nature of the song.

The Simpsons (you catch a brief glimpse of them at the end) began as brief interludes on the Tracey Ullman Show.

The characters looked much different then.

Ghs

[Martin Radwin]

I take your point of the separation of government and citizenry, but if it were 'sold' to the citizens that the US was doing what was 'best' for the world and democracy, it STILL amounts to altruism playing a large part.

Making involvement in other nations palatable, so to speak.

Labeling this as altruism is ridiculous. Of course the wars are going to be sold to Americans as doing good for whatever part of the world the war is being fought. What else is the government supposed to say? That they are starting a new war to expand the empire, create new U.S. military bases, and enrich their friends in the military-industrial complex? Every war the U.S. has ever fought has been justified with a pack of lies. The government never admits its true motives in starting any war, since to do so would immediately bring about fervent opposition by Americans, not to mention that it would make the military have a really hard time recruiting cannon fodder for its wars if the young men and women who volunteered for military service knew just what they were fighting for.

What matters are not the lies told by the government to justify the wars, but the actual truth behind the wars. And the truth is that there is absolutely nothing altruistic about the motives or the actual results of any of the wars fought by the U.S. government. I can't imagine any of the Iraqis or Pakistanis or Afghanis or Yemenis, with bombs falling over their heads and killing their famiies and friends, thinking to themselves, "Those Americans sure are a bunch of altruists!"

Martin

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael has decided to reject his arguments because they are political propoganda, even though he never seemed to be bothered by the political propoganda of Glen Beck.

Martin,

This is exactly what I find tiresome in discussing politics.

1. Re Ron Paul, I did not "reject his arguments because they are political propoganda." Which "arguments" did I reject? I said I did not grant one of his ads any status other than propaganda, and even then I said it presented a view Americans need to think about, since most of them do not.

Do you want quotes? There are plenty.

Why do political zealots do that? Do you really believe you will convince me, or anybody who agrees with me, by attributing to me wrong crap like what you just did?

I do reject the epistemology that leads a person to do what you just did.

It is simply not accurate.

For the record, I agree with Ron Paul on a lot. I do not believe he is a political animal enough to push through any reforms should he be elected. I also don't agree with some of his foreign policy things, but I also agree with some of them. Read my posts if you want to know where. There are plenty of them that deal with this stuff. And one more thing about Paul--I have said several times I want to see him on the cabinet of the new President, where he can simply make and/or remove many rules without having to manipulate Congress.

I will not make an opinion at this point as to whether attributing wrong stuff to me is an error due to excessive zeal, or an outright lie to promote an agenda under false pretenses.

But it is one or the other. Because your attribution is totally false.

2. Which political party do you think Glenn Beck is shilling for?

Republican?

(Incidentally, I have complained a few times about the lopsidedness of some of the reporting of The Blaze because it borders on propaganda. But according to you, I "never seemed to be bothered" by it.)

I am so weary of saying to zealots over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

"I didn't say that."

And then serve up quotes to prove it.

I wonder why I bother, because the same old wrong attribution crap always comes back--from the same people, to the same extent, at the same times, for the same motives, and in the same way.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Sorry to repeat the same tune, but this segment from the old Tracey Ullman Show (an early hit on Fox) is priceless. I was a big fan of that show, and this was one of my favorite skits. It nicely captures the infectious nature of the song.

George,

That was hilarious.

LOL...

I had not seen that show before. Frankly, before now, I had never even heard of Tracey Ullman. (Probably because of my time in Brazil.)

I'm going to look him or her up.

Michael

[Bryce]

George,

I love the simplicity of this idea.

I just can't help but think about relevance. This is a system made for non-humans, where no one learned authority habits growing up and people are not innately tempted by power.

I prefer to stay with the notion of taming the authority by restrictions instead of redefining it and pretending authority is not embedded in human nature.

The problem, in my view, is that we cannot lobotomize the lower parts of our brains, which seek certain things like power and authority. We can pretend this don't exist, but every case where i have seen that put into practice did not end well.

Even on the simple level of productive projects I have built, every time I ignored the authority thing, other people showed up to destroy my efforts. Bad people act. They don't just react.

We can use the upper part of our brain to devise systems to restrict actions of authority systems, but we cannot blank the very nature of the human response to authority out of existence. It doesn't work.

Here's an interesting thought experiment. Suppose you took a group of criminals--say about a thousand--out of a prison, gave them classes in individual freedom, NIOF, etc., put them on a desert island, then came back in a year. What do you think you will find? Anarcho-capitalism?

Heh.

Michael

Michael,

I gather from your posts (from not just this thread) that to you market anarchism is not a viable society. The best arguments against anarchism seem to still rely on a concept of human nature devolving under anarchy into a gangland or totalitarianism. My concept of anarchy is the beginnings of the highest form of man, a result of his upward existence but not necessarily the pinnacle of his achievements. I see it as a society (for lack of another description) capable of existing only on the condition that man is capable of his utmost intellectual discipline, a trait shared by every man in the society. Anything less from man would never grow into anarchy.

Going back to your experiment: Your example seems to matter only in the context that men who know nothing but a state will form their island society accordingly. I don't know what that education is worth or why you chose criminals over dog-groomers or astronauts. But I believe that human nature moves all men in rational directions when the burden of reason is heaviest. So can you prove that if the criminals each had the intellectual fortitude of the men I described above that market anarchism there, on that island, would not exist?

[George H. Smith]

Sorry to repeat the same tune, but this segment from the old Tracey Ullman Show (an early hit on Fox) is priceless. I was a big fan of that show, and this was one of my favorite skits. It nicely captures the infectious nature of the song.

George,

That was hilarious.

LOL...

I had not seen that show before. Frankly, before now, I had never even heard of Tracey Ullman. (Probably because of my time in Brazil.)

I'm going to look him or her up.

Michael

When the Fox Network started up in 1987, it generated some remarkable (and sometimes controversial) shows, beginning with The Tracey Ullman Show and Married With Children. The Simpsons (a spinoff form Ullman) premiered in 1989 as a midseason replacement show, and it was followed by In Living Color (one of the best skit comedy shows of all time) in 1990.

Tracey Ullman is an amazing and versatile performer. I have always regarded her as a successor of sorts to Carol Burnett.

Ghs

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bryce,

Nobody can prove anything like that.

But we can look at history.

I have never seen any isolated group of people end up in anarcho-capitalism.

I have always seen them end up in some kind of government arrangement.

You draw your own conclusion about human nature. Is your view of human nature to be based on observation, then draw principles from that, or is it to be based on what you think man should be according to principles you find attractive? I go with identify reality first, then build on that.

I have said frequently that if we could eliminate the urge to bully from human nature, I would be an anarchist. In an imaginary world where bullying does not exist, I believe it is the best form of social organization I have seen.

Since people choose their actions--and I would never support anything like social engineering through forced reeducation camps and things like that to make sure they chose the "right" actions and thought the "right" thoughts--we have to deal with man as he comes. I hold that it is best to encourage him to aim higher and protect all people from the lower, not design a structure fit only for the highest that the lower can easily tear down.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

When the Fox Network started up in 1987, it generated some remarkable (and sometimes controversial) shows, beginning with The Tracey Ullman Show and Married With Children.

George,

This is outside the discussion, but a curious fact about Married With Children.

I study a direct marketing genius named Dan Kennedy. One of the disciplines you have to master for direct marketing is to make a persona--which is an imaginary customer who is a composite of your target market--and you write all your copy with that persona in mind. There are many ways to arrive at this persona and you have to look at a butt-load of data to do it right, so people are always looking for shortcuts that work.

Dan said in one of his lectures that if you want to sell low-end get-rich-quick schemes to the market (which tend not to work), you will not find a better persona than Al Bundy.

Michael

[George H. Smith]

When the Fox Network started up in 1987, it generated some remarkable (and sometimes controversial) shows, beginning with The Tracey Ullman Show and Married With Children.

George, This is outside the discussion, but a curious fact about Married With Children. I study a direct marketing genius named Dan Kennedy. One of the disciplines you have to master for direct marketing is to make a persona--which is an imaginary customer who is a composite of your target market--and you write all your copy with that persona in mind. There are many ways to arrive at this persona and you have to look at a butt-load of data to do it right, so people are always looking for shortcuts that work. Dan said in one of his lectures that if you want to sell low-end get-rich-quick schemes to the market (which tend not to work), you will not find a better persona than Al Bundy. Michael

That is a perceptive observation, unfortunately.

I liked Married With Children immediately, but my girlfriend had problems with it. It's not that she didn't think it was funny -- she did -- but she thought it was so exaggerated that she couldn't understand why she liked it. I suggested she view it as a cartoon, but one that used real instead of animated characters. That advice worked like a charm.

Ghs

[Reidy]

Gail Wynand knew about persona nearly a century ago. He found the perfect one and brought him into the office (or was it the boardroom?) to show him around.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Pete,

Precisely.

I think Wynand showed him to the entire writing staff.

The more I study this stuff, the more I see that Rand knew a lot more about publicity and propaganda and even hype than people who are into the romantic image of her like to imagine.

I have no doubt she studied Bernays. He even wrote a widely read book called Propaganda, published in 1928 (As a side note, later in life, after Bernays learned that Goebbels has studied his book and used some of his own techniques for Nazi propaganda, he changed the name of the field to "public relations." There's even a video of him on YouTube talking about this.)

Rand's idea of using the cigarette as a symbol--of putting fire at man's fingertips for his pleasure--rings very similar to me to an event Bernays staged to make it acceptable for women to smoke, A lot of society women were marching in an Easter parade in 1929, and at a strategic moment, they all stopped, took out hidden matches and cigarette and lit up their "Torches of Freedom." Of course the press was already there, having been advised that something newsworthy was about to happen. This was discussed in the press all over the country for weeks.

I'm not saying Rand manipulated the cigarette symbol for the same ends Bernays did, but I don't see how she could have avoided the news about the parade. And, knowing her mentality, "Torch of Freedom" would have been an extremely compelling image to her. Through the creative process, I believe this became a "torch of man's creative genius" in Atlas Shrugged.

That's just a detail, though. You may agree or disagree. Where you can see Bernays all over her work is in the way Ellsworth Toohey organized his groups and power grab. She almost goes step-by-step according to Bernays's instructions.

I have never seen Rand reference Bernays, but the more I study direct response advertising and public relations, the more I see the parallels between Bernays and Rand (him, actually using these ideas to manipulate the public, and her mostly when she discussed and/or bashed public manipulation by others).

Michael

[Bryce]

I have never seen any isolated group of people end up in anarcho-capitalism.

I have always seen them end up in some kind of government arrangement.

So have I. But I'm not aware of any group having not come from a government arrangement.

I have said frequently that if we could eliminate the urge to bully from human nature, I would be an anarchist. In an imaginary world where bullying does not exist, I believe it is the best form of social organization I have seen.

My view of human nature is government is an accelerator to bullying. Laws don't promote self-interest and actually disincentivize, in measure to the severity and nature of the law, the need to be self-interested. I'll explain if that sounds like bullshit.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

But I'm not aware of any group having not come from a government arrangement.

Bryce,

I don't understand what you mean.

My view of human nature is government is an accelerator to bullying.

I agree with this. That's why I support slicing and dicing power through checks and balances in a republic.

I do not agree that we can eliminate government altogether, since I observe that social hierarchical power structures stem from human nature.

Even on something as benign as an Internet discussion forum, you always have people showing up who want to take over.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I took over OL many years ago, but nobody can believe it.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

I do not like George, but he is overwhelmingly correct on this one.

By the great Henry Mancini....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI7PIg0jp7g&feature=related

Ghs

[9thdoctor]

By the great Henry Mancini....

What did they do to Tom's voice! Ugh!! Here's what he's supposed to sound like:

[George H. Smith]

What did they do to Tom's voice! Ugh!! Here's what he's supposed to sound like:...

Ghs

[Bryce]

.

But I'm not aware of any group having not come from a government arrangement.

Bryce,

I don't understand what you mean.

I should've replaced "group" with people. People have been born under governance for all of known history.

I agree with this. That's why I support slicing and dicing power through checks and balances in a republic.

I do not agree that we can eliminate government altogether, since I observe that social hierarchical power structures stem from human nature.

Even on something as benign as an Internet discussion forum, you always have people showing up who want to take over.

Michael

I'm sure. I would take them into the context of the society they live in. I deleted the rest of this post because I had a blank out moment when I thought about it more. Freer people desire less power was the gist of it.