Rudy speaks what every American knows...

[moralist]

Wow... just wow...

http://nation.foxnews.com/2015/02/19/watch-giuliani-destroys-obama-epic-speech-netanyahu-man-who-fights-his-people-unlike-our

[zantonavitch]

Barack Obama is fundamentally anti-American. It's as simple as that. He rejects and despises America's basic philosophy and culture. Obama's a European socialist at heart. Or a traditional dictator. Like Robert Mugabe.

[moralist]

...and he didn't get elected twice just by accident.

The political majority who share Obama's view of America have spoken loudly. He represents millions of people who live in America, but who do not live by American values. This is a red flag warning, and that's why I'm a proponent of protecting yourself in a similar manner as to what the protagonists did in Atlas Shrugged. Physical protection is impossible like they did in the story by going off somewhere where they couldn't be found... however economic protection is realistically feasible and an absolute necessity.

Rudy's speech was awesome. It's good to hear an American for a change.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

He was probably re-elected by massive vote fraud. Media bias also helped push him over the top.

--Brant

that's why Kennedy was elected in 1960 (Texas and Illinois)

[BaalChatzaf]

Barack Obama is fundamentally anti-American. It's as simple as that. He rejects and despises America's basic philosophy and culture. Obama's a European socialist at heart. Or a traditional dictator. Like Robert Mugabe.

Obama was an acolyte of Saul Alinsky.

Alinsky hated America with a gut hatred. Obama was an apt pupil.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[william.scherk]

Barack Obama is fundamentally anti-American. It's as simple as that. He rejects and despises America's basic philosophy and culture. Obama's a European socialist at heart. Or a traditional dictator. Like Robert Mugabe.

Obama was an acolyte of Saul Alinsky.

Alinsky hated America with a gut hatred. Obama was an apt pupil.

I love the Mugabe reference -- zany and overwrought.

Re the Rules for Radicals, John Hawkins at Town Hall suggested "12 Ways To Use Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals Against Liberals" (from 2012):

1) Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have. Boycotts have fallen out of favor on the Right because the Left has used that tactic to target conservative radio. This is a mistake. That's because there are a lot more conservatives than there are liberals and we're much more capable of using the tactic effectively. There are roughly 120 million people who identify with conservatism in this country and almost twice as many Christians. When there are threats that Christians and conservatives will refuse to go see movies, stop buying products, or cancel subscriptions, it will scare some people straight. That threat should be used and carried out much more often.

2) Never go outside the experience of your people. Want to know why Republicans are so terrible at reaching out to minorities? Because identity politics works really, really well and conservatives tend to oppose it on principle. So, white Republicans are constantly trying to go outside of their experience and reach out to minorities who are generally disinclined to listen to them because they have the wrong skin color. When the GOP accepts reality, adopts the tactics of the Democratic Party, and starts paying off our own Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons to reach out to minority groups and call Democrats racists, we'll start making inroads with minorities for the first time in decades.

3) Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. The GOP often foolishly retreats from social issues. This is a huge mistake in an era when 76% of the country is Christian and most liberals find sincere Christian beliefs to be repellent. We don't have to preach at anyone, wag our fingers, or turn into legions of Ned Flanders, but we shouldn't be afraid to talk about our Christian beliefs, stick up for Christians who are under attack, and hammer the Left for its anti-Christian bigotry. Conservatism is a pro-Christian ideology and liberalism is an anti-Christian ideology. We should never be afraid to drive that point home.

4) Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. This is something conservatives have gotten much better at in the last few years, but we seldom take it far enough. If we did, a tax cheat who advocates higher taxes could certainly never be our Treasury Secretary, Barack Obama would be afraid to associate with race hustlers like Al Sharpton or one percenters like Warren Buffet, and Al Gore would have either given up his mansion or his status as the leader of the cult of global warming.

[...]

13) Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Conservatives tend to do well with this one until they get to the last part. Polarization is at the core of the Left's strategy. According to liberals, if you're conservative, you hate blacks, Hispanics, gays, Jews, Muslims, women, the poor, the middle class, the environment, and probably a half dozen other groups I've forgotten. Even when something is in front of our face, conservatives shy away from polarization. What's wrong with pointing out how hostile the Democratic Party has become to Christianity? Why not point out the truth: that most white liberals are racists who think black Americas are too stupid and incompetent to compete with white Americans, which is why they push Affirmative Action and racial set asides? Why not note that liberals want poor Americans to stay poor and dependent, because as long as they do, they'll keep voting for the Democrat Party? There's a reason Barack Obama bows to foreign leaders, is constantly apologizing for America, attended an anti-white, anti-American church for 20 years, and it's why his wife was proud of the country for the FIRST TIME because she thought it was going to elect her husband. The sad truth is that these are people who hate and despise this country. Why do you think "hope and change" appealed so much to Obama that he made it his theme? When you look at America as an evil, racist, unfair, horrible place to live inhabited by ignorant trash and "bitter clingers," what else would you do other than hope for change? If you love this country and the values it represents, the people in the White House not only don't share your values, they hold people like you in utter contempt.

Edited February 23, 2015 by william.scherk

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

My favorite Alinsky quote from Rules for Radicals:

In Rules for Radicals, Allinsky said:

Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.

The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's "conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action"; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind. The choice must always be for the latter. Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's personal salvation. He who sacrifices the mass good for his personal conscience has a peculiar conception of "personal salvation"; he doesn't care enough for people to be "corrupted" for them.

These folks tell you who they are up front.

"He who fears corruption fears life..."

That would probably make a good meme for Alinsky followers.

I wonder how it would look on a flag...

This too:

"Action is for mass salvation and not for the individual's personal salvation."

Michael

[Robert_Bumbalough]

// What's wrong with pointing out how hostile the Democratic Party has become to Christianity? //

It's wrong to believe Christianity's story because it's false as in not true. The Christian God is alleged to be a form of consciousness that magically created existence. This is an explicit stolen concept fallacy. Since consciousness is an activity that something does, consciousness does not exist independent of the something else meaning consciousness is 100% dependent upon existence. When religious believers of any faith tradition claim consciousness is a thing apart from existence as in substance dualism, they're committing a performative inconsistency fallacy. Ayn Rand identified this when she discussed the Prior Certainty of Consciousness Fallacy. The reason PCC is a fallacy is that it is contrary to the primacy of existence. Objectivists should be hostile to all lies including those of religious faith heads. The dems are correct to be hostile to Christianity and should be hostile to Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and all forms of theism or deism.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Objectivists should be hostile to all lies including those of religious faith heads. The dems are correct to be hostile to Christianity and should be hostile to Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and all forms of theism or deism.

Robert,

I was more or less with you up to here.

I don't like being told what to think and how to think. I fact, I got that from Objectivism.

(Actually, I've always been that way. This just got reinforced through reading Rand.)

Also, I'm not a big fan of mind-control by hostility and peer pressure. I much prefer rational persuasion, freedom to let people figure things out on their own, including thinking out loud, and so on.

I admit, that takes time and patience. In our remote-control, instant-gratification culture, it is not the most popular approach. Much better for most people is to try to force others through spite to think like they do. Or at least SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!

That's not my way.

When people start mixing politics with religion, atheism, mind-control and so on regarding what one "should do" about how others think when such thoughts do not affect them, I'm off the reservation. I want nothing to do with that.

The proper way--in my world--to change a culture is with stories and ideas, not laws and guns.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

// What's wrong with pointing out how hostile the Democratic Party has become to Christianity? //

It's wrong to believe Christianity's story because it's false as in not true. The Christian God is alleged to be a form of consciousness that magically created existence. This is an explicit stolen concept fallacy. Since consciousness is an activity that something does, consciousness does not exist independent of the something else meaning consciousness is 100% dependent upon existence. When religious believers of any faith tradition claim consciousness is a thing apart from existence as in substance dualism, they're committing a performative inconsistency fallacy. Ayn Rand identified this when she discussed the Prior Certainty of Consciousness Fallacy. The reason PCC is a fallacy is that it is contrary to the primacy of existence. Objectivists should be hostile to all lies including those of religious faith heads. The dems are correct to be hostile to Christianity and should be hostile to Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and all forms of theism or deism.

Another reason not to call yourself an Objectivist. Objectivists can't get there from here because they think their philosophy dictates life no matter how deficient their own education either in the living or simply the learning.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I want to add to my comment.

The thing that destroys a free community, society, country is when people don't want to be good anymore. Freedom goes right down the drain when people don't want to be good.

The moment you call someone out for a fight, you are calling on them to not be good.

Lots and lots and lots of religious people are good productive people. The reason they go to church is to keep reminding themselves to be good. Why on earth would someone want them to stop doing that, to stop being good?

Telling people to stop doing what they do to be good, when it works, is supremely irrational.

The best way, in my view, to get good religious people on board with more rational values is to show them how they can be good and moral in a rational manner and maybe enjoy even more happiness than before. Entice them, don't bash them. Befriend them, don't mock them.

It is stupid to call good people nasty names and try to fight with them.

Now... charlatans who are exploiting people to gain money, sex, power and other goodies through fraud and manipulative bullshit--and note: groups that are religious, Objectivist, atheist, etc., all have their charlatans--I agree that hostility toward these people is in order.

I consider religious fundamentalists of all stripes--including Objectivist fundamentalists--to be charlatans. They are not concerned with any individual people they claim to love, admire or serve. All individuals are food for fodder in their view and no one is irreplaceable. Any and all friends, lovers, family members, whoever, they can be sacrificed from one moment to the next if they run counter to the religion or ideology. No one to the fundamentalist is ever "the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated" (to use Rand's phrase from The Fountainhead--and look how much crap Wynand threw at Roark and he still said this). Love is not exception-making to them.

They are only interested in living within a vicious dogmatic storyline, gaining the unearned from others and controlling it through their agenda...

Michael

[Jules Troy]

Brilliant observation Michael!

[anthony]

// What's wrong with pointing out how hostile the Democratic Party has become to Christianity? //

... Objectivists should be hostile to all lies including those of religious faith heads. The dems are correct to be hostile to Christianity and should be hostile to Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and all forms of theism or deism.

By which you mean an intellectual "hostility", I take it. Unless there is another world we Objectivists can inhabit, free from the (ha) terrible repression we suffer under Christians, etc., this is what there is... Nevertheless, in any world in my opinion, objectivity isn't reactive or confrontational to what 'others' choose to think and believe -- as a primary. That seems the direction to second-handedness and righteous finger-pointing. It is the subtle but important difference between 'for' -and- 'against'. Openly and candidly, an Objectivist needs to live by and for his own good and true ideas - first - way I see it.

You are a bit late. "Dems" or their more extreme cousins on the wider stage most everywhere, are already "hostile" to Christianity and recently, Judaism. If you hadn't noticed it's the secular Left which is running things. Ideologically this is the largest threat, because politically they hold all the power and jealously don't look like letting it go. Perhaps (intellectual) "hostility" should be directed their way too? We could note that there's only one religion and one political system presently most threatening to our freedoms. Both Progressivism and 'radical' Islam are top priorities for intellectual oppostion. As seen, paradoxically, the former enables or tacitly sanctions the other, by its craven appeasement and apologism.

You include Judaism, the one religion whose members do not seek converts and theocratic rule in any country, the least numerous and traditionally the most peace-loving. Why not Buddhism, too?

It's both superfluous and gratuitous to oppose Jews or their faith -- that's already happening in many countries, personally, socially, politically and sometimes violently, by one or other of those two groups I mentioned.

[moralist]

Robert wrote:

Since consciousness is an activity that something does, consciousness does not exist independent of the something else meaning consciousness is 100% dependent upon existence.

From where did the logic of that law of existence originate?

Did you make it?

Or did you simply discover what was already there to be true?

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

Robert wrote:

Since consciousness is an activity that something does, consciousness does not exist independent of the something else meaning consciousness is 100% dependent upon existence.

From where did the logic of that law of existence originate?

Did you make it?

Or did you simply discover what was already there to be true?

Greg

Everything is 100% dependent on existence. It's axiomatic.

--Brant

[Francisco Ferrer]

Rudy Giuliani has a clear, uncompromising vision of what America should look like. In it there is no place for Barack Obama or, for that matter, innovative capitalists like Michael Milken:

Michael Milken’s achievements are well known, or ought to be. In essence, he revolutionized the bond market by promoting the insight that high-risk bonds compensate for their default potential by their superior rate of interest. The subsequent acceptance of high-risk bonds provided takeover groups with a tool for ousting entrenched and stodgy management. That, of course, made Milken many enemies among corporate traditionalists in the executive suites and on Wall Street. Not for nothing is the most insightful book on Milken’s ordeal called Payback: The Conspiracy to Destroy Michael Milken and His Financial Revolution (Daniel Fischel, HarperCollins, 1995).

By the time U.S. Attorney Rudy Giulani got through with Milken, he was facing a ninety-eight-count indictment. In the prevailing anti-business, witch-hunt atmosphere, no twelve jurors would unanimously acquit him of every single charge. Probably, they would not even understand the charges involving complex financial deals. In one of Giulani’s earlier financial cases, the prosecutors had told the jury to forget about the complex technicalities and look at the defendants’ “sleaziness.” What jury would understand bond selling and bond trading as legitimate finance rather than as sleazy paper-shuffling for personal gain? Worst of all, from Milken’s viewpoint, Giulani had started to go after his family. His younger brother Lowell Milken had already been indicted, and FBI agents had been sent to interrogate his ninety-year-old grandfather. Consequently, after much soul-searching, Milken gave up his fight and agreed to plead guilty to six counts of violating securities regulations.

http://www.atlassociety.org/tni/ayn-rands-persecuted-minority

[Brant Gaede]

Yep. First class, ruthless SOB.

--Brant

[moralist]

It's axiomatic.

I understand... like God.

Greg

[syrakusos]

This is an example of the fallacy of "No true Scotsman" (Wikipedia here). Rudolph Giuliani prosecuted Michael Milken. Everyone has ignored or missed the logical contradiction in Giuliani's admitting that the President might be a patriot, but asserting that the President does not love America. Of course, what you love about America, depends on what you consider essential about America. That leaves unaddressed those who value the lesser and minority values of "America." That in itself requires admitting the reification of "America" which is easily challenged as a fallacy.

Myself, when it comes to what "America" is, I agree with Richard Hofstadter:" ...shared a belief in the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the value of competition... [T]hey have accepted the economic virtues of a capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man." (American Political Tradition here.)

That said, I acknowledge that my comrades on left extrapolate from Jefferson through Jackson to the early labor and populist movements of the 1880s and forward. I disagree with their conclusions, but I grant that they are valid in finding those threads within the America Political Tradition.

[BaalChatzaf]

Myself, when it comes to what "America" is, I agree with Richard Hofstadter:" ...shared a belief in the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the value of competition... [T]hey have accepted the economic virtues of a capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man." (American Political Tradition here.)

It is a damned shame we do not have capitalist economy or a capitalist culture.....