Brant Gaede Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 I don't think it's "rot," William. I think it's concrete.In any case for value, you need to refine Greg. I give him his due; there's value there. Mines have slag heaps. Not to judge the ore by the slag. Thanks for examining the slag in detail, however. It makes it all easier, at least for the likes of lazy me. If I had you for a room-mate in college I'd devise all kinds of ways to set you off and do my research, even critical thinking, for me. While you're down at the library I'd party, party, party--proving Greg about some point--me getting what I deserve, especially when you figure out what I'm up to.--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 3, 2015 Author Share Posted February 3, 2015 And then there is me in that 10000 acres trying to take pics of the above mentioned animals trying to rip off each other's heads and eating them! Not sure you would want to be there when a mountain lion takes down a deer. It might mistake you for its next happy meal. Nature's food chain is extremely efficient. All my wife and I see when we're hiking are tufts of fur and scattered feathers. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jules Troy Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Well I did get my 400mm f2.8 add the 2X TC and I don't really need to be thattt close to get the shot from a safe distance.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 3, 2015 Author Share Posted February 3, 2015 Since the U.S. government has already been created (some 225 years ago), you must be referring to another government being created in someone's "own image today."The government constantly grows in direct response to people's failure to properly live their lives. It's size is directly proportional to parasitism. It takes a lot of losers to make a government this large.Given that many of the creators of the U.S. government were slaveholders, it is only fitting that today 57% of the population is forced to pay for the government benefits of the other 43%: in other words, tax slavery.The Founding Fathers were wise enough and pious enough to create something of a higher order than their own personal failings. If you aren't smart enough to include all of your taxes as the cost of doing business in what you charge for the goods and services you provide, that's your own fault, not mine. The beauty of American Capitalism is that businesses don't pay taxes, their customers do.1. If people do not commit theft or murder or other crimes, there is no justification for referring to their natures (that they are supposed to rise above) as "evil." This is a conclusion that you have sneaked in without supporting evidence.In my view, people who don't overcome their evil nature are evil. Those who do are good. You're welcome to your own view. 2. Men "who don't steal and murder" are not the ones in command of the U.S. government, an institution you described a day ago as "an instrument of perfect justice."That's because it is an instrument of perfect moral justice. It's perfect moral justice that the government is as unjust as the people who created it in their own unjust image. It's perfect moral justice that people deserve to get what they created... and they are getting it right now. As we speak, both you and I are experiencing exactly the government we each deserve, because it is how each of us lives that determines each of our totally different experiences of getting the government we each deserve.Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 3, 2015 Author Share Posted February 3, 2015 Well I did get my 400mm f2.8 add the 2X TC and I don't really need to be thattt close to get the shot from a safe distance.. Just be sure not to crouch down so you don't trigger their "cat and mouse" response! Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 3, 2015 Author Share Posted February 3, 2015 So, government today is a magical reincarnation of perfectly awful failure of people who were perfectly awful in the past.Wrong, William. You're arguing against something you made up.Government today is the creation of people who fail to live their own lives properly today. (since government parasitism is sensitive enough of an issue to set you off on a long rant, I'll hit the high spots. )You do appear to be transfixed if not disgusted by the feminine. Female is bad. Male is good.Why do you need to make up things just to argue against them? Female is good... in women. Liberal socialist government is created when a female nature resides within males who failed to become men. It's thus kind of odd that you pretend you are special, or specially exempted from the same dang government that has its fangs in the rest of us here at OL.Government has its fangs into you because of your own need of it. Blaming (unjustly accusing) the government for your own improper relation to it only keeps those fangs where they rightfully belong... until you realize the truth that you freely chose to offer up your own neck to the vampire... or never, if you'd rather believe the lie that it's not your own damn fault.Of course, you might say that all this government you obey can be folded in to the cost of doing business, the cost of living in a society together with other people.Yes. That's Capitalist Business 101. I'm happy living in the world just as it is right now, because I understand that it is my own personal responsibility to properly deal with the world as it is by being in it without being of it.That means to live in the world... without deriving my responses from it.Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Ferrer Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Since the U.S. government has already been created (some 225 years ago), you must be referring to another government being created in someone's "own image today."The government constantly grows in direct response to people's failure to properly live their lives. It's size is directly proportional to parasitism. It takes a lot of losers to make a government this large. Getting bigger and bigger must be part of the Divine Plan for the gang that rules us--oops, I mean "the American People." After all, you have described the institution that now regulates every aspect of American life as "an instrument of perfect justice." Marvelous thing that government. It expands in response to failure, parasitism and the growing number of losers. And yet it still remains perfect.And if the current size of government is perfect, then anything smaller (say, as Rand recommended, scaling down to providing only for "the protection of individual rights") would be less than perfect. Given that many of the creators of the U.S. government were slaveholders, it is only fitting that today 57% of the population is forced to pay for the government benefits of the other 43%: in other words, tax slavery. The Founding Fathers were wise enough and pious enough to create something of a higher order than their own personal failings. They were wise and pious enough to include in the Constitution of their Instrument of Perfect Justice the Fugitive Slave Clause, which forced non-slaveholders to return runaway African men, women and children to their masters. That way those wise, pious men could have their "personal failings" continue to pick cotton for them. If you aren't smart enough to include all of your taxes as the cost of doing business in what you charge for the goods and services you provide, that's your own fault, not mine.The beauty of American Capitalism is that businesses don't pay taxes, their customers do. If a family operates a market in a high crime neighborhood and the store is continually victimized by holdups and shoplifting, it is understandable if the owners raise the price of the goods in the store.However, the owners are not so stupid as to refer to their predators as Instruments of Perfect Justice. 1. If people do not commit theft or murder or other crimes, there is no justification for referring to their natures (that they are supposed to rise above) as "evil." This is a conclusion that you have sneaked in without supporting evidence.In my view, people who don't overcome their evil nature are evil. Those who do are good. You're welcome to your own view. If there is no evidence that a man has stolen or killed or committed some other transgression, why should we suppose that he has an evil nature in need of overcoming? 2. Men "who don't steal and murder" are not the ones in command of the U.S. government, an institution you described a day ago as "an instrument of perfect justice." That's because it is an instrument of perfect moral justice.It's perfect moral justice that the government is as unjust as the people who created it in their own unjust image. It's perfect moral justice that people deserve to get what they created... and they are getting it right now.As we speak, both you and I are experiencing exactly the government we each deserve, because it is how each of us lives that determines each of our totally different experiences of getting the government we each deserve.Greg Then surely America should return to the practice of one human being holding property title in another human being. Since it is "perfect moral justice" that the slaveholders created the U.S. government in their own unjust image, it must follow that injustice would be in undoing that perfect form of government. And certainly no one would want to repeal Obamacare. How can people get what they "deserve" if government-forced health insurance purchases are abolished? you and I are experiencing exactly the government we each deserve How dare you use the queenly "we" on me, you crypto-feminist! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 3, 2015 Author Share Posted February 3, 2015 Getting bigger and bigger must be part of the Divine Plan for the gang that rules us--oops, I mean "the American People." After all, you have described the institution that now regulates every aspect of American life as "an instrument of perfect justice." Marvelous thing that government. It expands in response to failure, parasitism and the growing number of losers. And yet it still remains perfect.The government can only be as "perfect" as the people it governs, for how they live is what created it. It's perfect moral justice that people get the government they deserve.Half the nation now feeds off government means tested benefits, and their numbers grow every day.This is the value people live by that creates the big government people deserve.And if the current size of government is perfect, then anything smaller (say, as Rand recommended, scaling down to providing only for "the protection of individual rights") would be less than perfect.The current size of government perfectly matches the failure of people to govern themselves. Government will only "scale down" when people first change how they are living.This process is not top down, but bottom up.They were wise and pious enough to include in the Constitution of their Instrument of Perfect Justice the Fugitive Slave Clause, which forced non-slaveholders to return runaway African men, women and children to their masters. That way those wise, pious men could have their "personal failings" continue to pick cotton for them.Pssst... just a heads up, Frank. You're living now, and not in the dead past. The Constitution allows for moral growth. The only slavery there is today is self imposed, where people have enslaved themselves to government, drugs, debt, and the need to angrily blame (unjustly accuse) others for their own personal failure to live right.If a family operates a market in a high crime neighborhood and the store is continually victimized by holdups and shoplifting, it is understandable if the owners raise the price of the goods in the store.Yes. The price of every good and service sold always includes the cost of theft, fraud, and cheating.However, the owners are not so stupid as to refer to their predators as Instruments of Perfect Justice.It doesn't matter how they refer, Frank. The fact remains that the owners freely chose to do business in an area where people have rotten values. That's the cost of business they freely chose to assume. They chose to make themselves prey to the predators. Sanction of the victim.How dare you use the queenly "we" on me, you crypto-feminist!Very funny. The term was "we each", and only refers to you and me. Not an imaginary group of a self elected liberal spokesperson. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Ferrer Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 The government can only be as "perfect" as the people it governs, for how they live is what created it. It's perfect moral justice that people get the government they deserve. Then the American people today must be perfect. How else can we have a government that you call a “perfect moral instrument” unless everyone is Little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay?. . . how they live is what created it.Perhaps the way those at the Constitutional Convention lived their lives in the 1780’s determined what kind of government they created. But there is no evidence that the way people live their lives today “is what created” the U.S. government. To establish your absurd and astonishing claim, you can start by discussing the feasibility of time travel or precognition.Half the nation now feeds of[f] government.That must mean that if one has spent his life feeding off government, he deserves a government that feeds him. Conversely, if he has been made to subsidize those who collect dole, he deserves a government that feeds off him.It is quite easy to prove that something is perfect when perfection is reflexively defined to mean whatever the status quo happens to be.The current size of the government perfectly matches the failure of the people to govern themselves.First of all, there have been quite a few people who wanted to be left alone by the federal government to govern themselves and they have often paid dearly.Moreover, to follow your logic, one would have to eschew any advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism. Reducing government to its size at the time of, say, the Founding would be a reprehensible idea. To do so would not allow the feds to match their programs to what the people today deserve. In fact, expanding Leviathan to provide Obama’s “free” high-speed internet, “free” child care, and “free” college might make government just the right size.Thus Ayn Rand, free market economists and most of the contributors on this forum would have to be viewed as enemies of your "perfect justice."By your theory there can be no moral objection even to a government of Stalinist or Orwellian proportions. Every government is exactly the right size and dishes out precisely the right amount of misery and torture and murder for the people it serves.Barack Obama spent his early adult years attempting to expand the welfare state. Obviously, the government he deserves is one that would make him president. Steve Jobs spent his early adult years building products that people love and creating a multi-billion dollar company. He deserved a government that would suck his wealth for all it could get."Perfect moral instrument."The only slavery today is self-imposed.If slavery can be called “self-imposed,” why not say the same thing about rape, child molestation, and death by acts of terrorism? Why not sneer at the recipients of those actions and say they too had it coming? Why should you admit any discrepancies in your “magical pink pony ride” world? (Thanks for the bon mot, William Scherk.)In order to escape tax slavery, you say all one has to do is raise his prices? Tell anyone serving in the military, the police department or the fire department that the solution to high taxes is to charge more from the "customer." And let me know how that conversation goes.The notion is preposterous not only because millions of wage earners haven't the ability to set their income at will, but also because the prices of services and goods are not infinitely elastic. If automakers see their taxes doubled, they cannot dramatically raise the price of cars without also experiencing a steep decline in sales and thus revenues. The advice is shot through with economic ignorance.Furthermore, there is a stultifying web of regulations centered in DC that can never be passed on to any customer. The FDA's refusal to permit a life-saving drug, the BATF's refusal to allow the sale of an automatic rifle, the FCC's regulations over information technology, the Anti-Trust Division's regulations of business, the EPA's regulations over private property--none of these can simply be transferred to another citizen.And even if they could, the fact that someone else is paying a price for government tyranny is itself proof that there is nothing perfect or just about American government.It doesn't matter how they refer, Frank. The fact remains that the owners freely chose to do business in an area where people have rotten values.Naturally--and perfectly--you miss the point. A predator is a person who takes what is not his to take. The predator acts unjustly no matter how foolishly or dangerously the victim acts. A bank guard, for example, is necessary to the security of a financial institution, but his job entails the possibility of injury of death. If a guard is shot in the head by a robber, the appropriate conclusion is not that his head wound was "self-imposed" or that his wound perfectly matches "the failure of the people to govern themselves" or that how he lived determined how he died.No, the appropriate response is that the thug who did it needs to be put in a cold, dark prison. And such a fate is the same one that the criminal gang in Washington deserves. Yes, in this case, "deserve" is the right word. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 5, 2015 Author Share Posted February 5, 2015 Then the American people today must be perfect. People are not any more perfect than the government they created in their own image by how they live. The reason our two views differ is because you believe the lie that the government creates people in its own image... ...while I know that people create the government in their own image. Your view is Top Down. My view is Bottom Up. It's perfect moral justice that the government should make people suffer the consequences they deserve from their own failure to govern themselves, for it is their failure which created the government in the first place. If people governed themselves, the government would be small. But they don't, and so it isn't. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Ferrer Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 Then the American people today must be perfect.People are not any more perfect than the government they created in their own image by how they live. Your Post #40: Government is an "instrument of perfect moral justice."Your Post #58: "The government can only be as 'perfect' as the people it governs."Ergo, if the government is perfect, the people whom it governs (including union members, liberal college professors and radical feminists) must be perfect too. You would make an excellent propagandist for the Democrats.The reason our two views differ is because you believe the lie that the government creates people in its own image......while I know that people create the government in their own image.Straw man. Cite one instance where I have said that "government creates people in its own image."Your view is Top Down.My view is Bottom Up.It's perfect moral justice that the government should make people suffer the consequences they deserve from their own failure to govern themselves, for it is their failure which created the government in the first place.Yes, Obama and his whole family (including the mother-in-law) are being made to suffer for their sins by having to live in the White House which has a bowling alley, a movie screening room, basketball courts, a jogging track, a putting green, and servants galore, including a 24-hour cooking staff.We have a vengeful God.If people governed themselves,the government would be small.But they don't,and so it isn't.No, as I've shown with examples, when people attempt to live outside the control of Washington, they are murdered or placed in a cage and their property confiscated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 Frank, if you don't acknowledge where Greg is or might be right in his basic conclusion, tying him up in epistemological knots won't make him wrong where he is right. You cannot rationally criticize the motor of a car because the car has a bad transmission. You can criticize the car--for the transmission. Greg has little or no reason and logic. Many of his "facts" are questionable. We have a lot of fun with his transmission, but insofar as it's fixable--I don't think it is--only Greg can do that. And he's not asking for help.--BrantI do get a kick out of your slashing and burning Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted February 5, 2015 Share Posted February 5, 2015 The Founding Fathers were wise enough and pious enough to create something of a higher order than their own personal failings.Greg,This is the core of my fierce admiration of them.Also, I am always moved by the story of Washington stepping down after two terms as president.It takes a great man to do that when there is no precedent other than an untested idea. He put his power where his mouth was.I don't know many politicians who would do that today. But I know a hell of a lot who say they would. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 6, 2015 Author Share Posted February 6, 2015 Greg,This is the core of my fierce admiration of them.Also, I am always moved by the story of Washington stepping down after two terms as president.It takes a great man to do that when there is no precedent other than an untested idea.He put his power where his mouth was.I don't know many politicians who would do that today. But I know a hell of a lot who say they would. Michael"We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose profiting from dearly bought experience."--George WashingtonExceptional men like Washington are the reason why America has lasted this long despite the millions of termites chewing away at its foundation.Frank will never appreciate America because all he sees is "Washington owned slaves". That's his own self imposed slavery, and he deserves it.Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Ferrer Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 On the contrary, I applaud Washington for releasing his slaves from bondage, but criticize him for reviving a recently rejected form of bondage, the hated internal tax. Rejection of British authority had grown largely because of the public's opposition to the Stamp Tax of 1765 on internal documents and transactions. Now Washington was imposing a tax on whiskey even higher than the one on tea. The whiskey tax was followed by the new president's use of a 13,000-man army to suppress tax refusal.Self-governance is an admirable virtue, but few, I think, practice it from a prison cell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 What the Founding Fathers, with the possible exception of Hamilton (that I know of), never faced up to is the President is an elected king. Hypocrisy or irony? Both? Not?The real disaster of the Constitution was the consequential "Civil War." The King refused to give up any of his power or dominion. The native populations would have been slaughtered--mostly by disease--and displaced regardless. The economic paradigm was you use or lose the land you occupy plus legal title held by a person or legal economic entity. Treaties were observed mostly in the breach--just like today--with the stronger party doing the breaching.--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 Brant,Do you know of any large scale cooperative communities that exist without a leader?The need for a leader to lead groups is just as much a part of human nature as conceptual volition is. That need is in all of us. Even Rand led her collective and thought women would be psychologically damaged if they wanted to be president--what's more, that such a leader had to be a man.The wisdom of the Founding Fathers was in slicing and dicing power the power of the leader, doling out parts to competitors through a conceptual division (executive, legislative and judiciary), and allotting a small term to the person occupies the role of the top leader so there would be a constant turnover.I see the Civil War as more complicated than a power grab. But power-wise, it did not enthrone a king. It merely kept the power divisions in place and enforced growth of the union over a split-off.Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 Brant,Do you know of any large scale cooperative communities that exist without a leader?The need for a leader to lead groups is just as much a part of human nature as conceptual volition is. That need is in all of us. Even Rand led her collective and thought women would be psychologically damaged if they wanted to be president--what's more, that such a leader had to be a man.The wisdom of the Founding Fathers was in slicing and dicing power the power of the leader, doling out parts to competitors through a conceptual division (executive, legislative and judiciary), and allotting a small term to the person occupies the role of the top leader so there would be a constant turnover.I see the Civil War as more complicated than a power grab. But power-wise, it did not enthrone a king. It merely kept the power divisions in place and enforced growth of the union over a split-off.MichaelThere was no limitation on how many times a President could be re-elected until after WWII, no allocation of a "small term" unless you mean four years. George Washington was not the first President. Being a leader is merely a facet of the division of labor. Just because a country needs a leader doesn't mean a citizen or resident of that country needs to be led. The psychological issue is varied and complex. Rand's "Collective" helped her deal with her social-intellectual existential needs while writing AS. It was perfect for that purpose, including the relative respective ages of its members to her. It turned out to be a very bad template for her post-AS life, which was the 1960s' world of Objectivism. The Civil War was not a power grab. It was keeping power in Washington. You say as much. I do have a sophisticated understanding of what caused that war, with problems in an hierarchy that grew over time.You can slice and dice the leader's power all you want, but if the power overall is retained by the edifice called the Federal Government it tends to settle in one main place. In today's world that is the executive branch and the Federal bureaucracy. For the other two branches: no balls. If there were balls it wouldn't make much difference, which is a no-balls re-enforcement. Nice pay and benefits, though, especially no Obamacare, aka bribes.Rand's views on a woman as President--Commander-in-Chief--was only a statement that she herself shouldn't have the job, whatever the real reason. It was not a real sexual bifurcation but rationalization out of an artificial psychological matrix. When it comes to combat, I don't want to see any woman between me as, say, a private and the CIC. The CIC can be a woman because the CIC wears two hats, one being civilian. Below that, however, it's tear the heads off the enemy. The male brain is very good for that. The female brain suspect. I'm not ruling out some sexism on my part. I was always late getting to the feminist party because feminists offended me into defensiveness. I still remember the mid-70s war on men. I remember giving one offensive woman a verbal straight arm. I remember tying up another in factual and logical knots when she knocked on my door seeking my signature on a petition for the Equal Rights Amendment.--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 6, 2015 Author Share Posted February 6, 2015 The need for a leader to lead groups is just as much a part of human nature as conceptual volition is. That need is in all of us. Even Rand led her collective and thought women would be psychologically damaged if they wanted to be president--what's more, that such a leader had to be a man. ...and she was on the right track. The government today is led by a weak feminized male who failed to become a man. Weak feminized males capitulate to evil as they try to appease America's enemies... ...and those enemies can positively ~smell~ America's weakness. Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 The day Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President in 1981 was the day the Iranians released the American hostages.--Brantthey didn't want to find out what he was going to do; they knew he wasn't Jimmy Carter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Ferrer Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 The U.S. government is led by a "weak feminized male."The U.S. government is an "instrument of perfect moral justice."Hooray for weak feminized males! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Stuart Kelly Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 Just because a country needs a leader doesn't mean a citizen or resident of that country needs to be led.Brant,I disagree. I think a country needs a leader precisely because humans need leaders when they get in groups. They need to be led as part of their makeup.A crowd gathers around the jailhouse. The prisoner inside gulps. He hears the nasty horse-thieving names they are calling him. He hears the words "hang him" cut through the jumble like a knife through a hog's belly. He prays for the first time since he can remember but he can't concentrate long enough to form the words. He's scared. This time he's scared for real. The sheriff walks out on to the street and glares at the men, moving his gaze slowly from one end of the mob to the other. He's toting a two-barrel shotgun. "Go on. Get out of here!" he barks out. "Just give us that low down rotten skunk in there and we'll be on our way!" says an angry man. His eyes burn over top a broken nose. The sheriff points his shotgun at the man. "Any one of you moves another inch and I will blow a hole in his belly!" "You can't take us all," says the tall man next to broken nose. "But you'll be next," says the sheriff. They stare at each other for a long time. Nobody moves. Finally the tall man spits. He looks away, then around at the crowd. "We'll deal with this later," he says. "It ain't over." He grabs the shoulder of broken nose and they walk away. "Go on, go on back home. Get out of here," says the sheriff to the rest of the men. Like the night slowly falling, they disperse.You see?With no leader, the crowd doesn't know what to do.Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 You really set me up.--Brantgrump! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted February 7, 2015 Author Share Posted February 7, 2015 The U.S. government is led by a "weak feminized male."It sure is, Frank.The U.S. government is an "instrument of perfect moral justice."And you already have proof that the government is an instrument of perfect moral justice... ...because it's exactly the government you deserve. :laugh:Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jules Troy Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 I'm pretty sure Greg invented the "Merry-Go-Round". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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