Donald Trump

[Jules Troy]

You don't extend your hand to a rabid dog and expect to pet it.  You just shoot it.

[Peter]

Case One. You are lost on a desert island. You see a fellow islander abduct your child or spouse. You later capture the kidnapper but the child or spouse is nowhere to be found AND the kidnapper says your loved one is buried alive and has a limited time to breath. If you don’t come up with his ransom demand now, he will allow your loved one to suffocate. You, the parent or spouse, do not have the amount of the ransom. Would you use torture to extract the location of your loved one from the kidnapper?

Case Two. Intelligence sources are sure a dirty atomic manufactured in North Korea and given to a Syrian refugee in the United States is set to go off in Manhattan. The authorities have the Syrian terrorist at Manhattan Police Headquarters. He boasts the bomb is set to go off in three hours, which leaves little time to evacuate yourself or the inhabitants of Manhattan to avoid destruction. “Allah is great! All you infidels are going to die!” he screams. You have a way of extracting information, using a drug that will make the terrorist talk, but the drugs will cause the terrorist to die a horrible death. Would you administer the drug?  

Care to come up with a Case Three to Case One-Hundred? Jules Troy wrote: You don't extend your hand to a rabid dog and expect to pet it.  You just shoot it. end quote

Those people who have ceased to deserve our reciprocal rights can be listed, but the category of “mad dog” is one of those “catch all’s” that can suffice. It would be moral to study the mad dog. A new or different sort of rabid human should be made available for experimental interrogation techniques by our security and military forces. I am reluctant to say Ayn Rand would explicitly endorse a government to utilize torture (or national conscription) but she was all for James Bond doing his job, no matter who’s head he cracked. Ayn Rand as an individual would definitely *use* whatever means were necessary in many different scenarios. But to allow government to use torture should be done reluctantly and under scrutiny, sort of like a quality control project, but I would call it “morality control.”

Peter  

Ayn Rand appreciated a lot of Cold War, American and British authors including spies and private detectives who used retaliatory violence.

Mickey Spillane's description of New York at night: The rain was misty enough to be almost fog like, a cold gray curtain that separated me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Even the brilliance that was Manhattan by night was reduced to a few sleepy yellow lights off in the distance. end quote

Ayn Rand responded to the passage: There is not a single emotional word or adjective in Spillane's description; he presents nothing save visual facts; but he selects only those facts, only those eloquent details, which convey the visual reality of the scene and create a mood of desolate loneliness . . . . end quote

I think Rand would be very appreciative of the author Lee Child. A letter to OL I wrote five years ago: I have noticed some people say they would take the law into their own hands if no law was available. For example, if they were lost on a desert island they would take care of themselves, but would defer to legal authorities if protection and recourse were available. I agree that it is moral to defend oneself when the law is not around. Self preservation necessitates that we counter violence to ourselves, our family or to our property in an emergency, even if it means we personally harm the wrong doer. I also think it is moral to defend a stranger from violence, in an emergency.

Some people have mentioned a preference for justice in the style of The Old West, as part of the right to bear arms. An excellent writer who depicts a person very ready, willing, and able to take the law into his own hands, is Lee Child.

Lee Child also thinks it is moral to counter violence to a stranger, in an emergency, but what makes his hero, Jack Reacher so compelling is the difference between him and an average citizen. All of us might stop a bullying child from harming another child. An average citizen might stop an injustice to another if he felt no threat to himself, but what if there were a threat to you if you interfered? How far would you go to defend yourself or someone else if you might be harmed? Isn’t it personal fear that stops us from acting in an emergency, rather than our belief in putting the use of force into the hands of legitimate authority? How brave are you? 

The hero, in all of Child’s books, is a former military policeman, who sees no necessity in calling 911. His father was a career officer in the Army and his older brother became a Secret Service Agent in charge of anti-counterfeiting. In a style reminiscent of Donald Hamilton, Mickey Spillane, and Ian Fleming, Child’s hero is always morally right before he acts.

Child brings up some other issues that dramatize those difficult gray areas between justice, the law and vengeance. His hero is in the romantic tradition of the old west but the books are set in modern times. I highly recommend them all.

Tom Cruise is an odd choice to play him because his physical presence is such a necessary part of his character. The script would need to start by showing Tom Cruise as a person who is overwhelmingly deadly, not from a kung foo, Jackie Chan way, but with a “John Wayne” incident where he physically overcomes a large, villainous person, preferably a man and not Janet Napolitano.

Peter Taylor

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, Peter said:

Case One. You are lost on a desert island. You see a fellow islander abduct your child or spouse. You later capture the kidnapper but the child or spouse is nowhere to be found AND the kidnapper says your loved one is buried alive and has a limited time to breath. If you don’t come up with his ransom demand now, he will allow your loved one to suffocate. You, the parent or spouse, do not have the amount of the ransom. Would you use torture to extract the location of your loved one from the kidnapper?

Case Two. Intelligence sources are sure a dirty atomic manufactured in North Korea and given to a Syrian refugee in the United States is set to go off in Manhattan. The authorities have the Syrian terrorist at Manhattan Police Headquarters. He boasts the bomb is set to go off in three hours, which leaves little time to evacuate yourself or the inhabitants of Manhattan to avoid destruction. “Allah is great! All you infidels are going to die!” he screams. You have a way of extracting information, using a drug that will make the terrorist talk, but the drugs will cause the terrorist to die a horrible death. Would you administer the drug?  

To one and two,  yes and yes.

If thine enemy smite thee on thy cheek,  tear his head off,  shit down his neck,  then kill his wives and children.  

This procedure  apply consistently  will soon render cheek smiting  extinct. 

[Peter]

Smite? The Holy Bibbble? Bob the science guy wrote: To one and two, yes and yes. end quote

Since this Trump thread has a lot of space to fill up I will ask everyone a few questions. I am deliberately not separating the fictional from the actual. Would Starfleet exonerate an officer who used enhanced interrogation techniques if it were only for the direst of reasons?

Would the Android on Star Trek named Data use enhanced interrogation techniques? Would a Vulcan like Mr. Spock torture a sentient being?

Would one of Isaac Asimov’s *robots* use torture on a human?  Consider the four laws of robotics.

Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics: 0) A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. *this zeroth law was added at a later date.* 1) A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection, does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”

Would Donald Trump act like Jack Reacher if his family were threatened?

One more ambiguity. Miles Stevenson once wrote: I don't consider myself an Objectivist, because as I understand it, it's an "all or nothing" philosophy. Or in other words, if you don't agree with ALL of the fundamental ideals of Objectivism as defined by Ayn Rand, you are not an Objectivist. end quote

I don't think taste in art disqualifies you from being an OBJ. So my question to everyone is what disqualifies a person from identifying as an Objectivist? Does being an Objectivist depend on the opinion of others?

 Peter

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, Peter said:

?

Would the Android on Star Trek named Data use enhanced interrogation techniques? Would a Vulcan like Mr. Spock torture a sentient being?

Vulcans are telepathic.  He would not have to.  He would just do the old Vulcan Mind Meld.

Data could not.  He has a positronic brain that operates under Asimov rules. 

[KorbenDallas]

 

[Wolf DeVoon]

15 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Wolf,

So do I.

Foreign monsters who make videos of gruesome executions and use them as recruiting tools on US assets to wage war against the US are fair game in my world. The constitution does not cover them except for the word "Enemies" (for instance, as given in Article III, Section 3).

American citizens who watch those videos have all the rights of American citizens under the constitution until they commit treason (once again, as given in Article III, Section 3). Then they get to experience the punishment part.

I'm perfectly fine with those constitutional distinctions.

Michael

Foreign publication of anything, gruesome or not, does not create a compelling foreign affairs or national security interest IMO. But it's possible and I can understand that certain politicians and opinion leaders such as yourself favor discretionary wars, covert killing, international Coalitions of The Willing, detention and interrogation. At home on U.S. soil, citizen or not, due process has nothing to do with treason, nor is treason something easily proved against a private citizen, even a mass murderer.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

32 minutes ago, wolfdevoon said:

... citizen or not, due process has nothing to do with treason, nor is treason something easily proved against a private citizen...

Wolf,

Quoting the Constitution:

"No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."

Those cases seem to me to be pretty easy to prove (too easy, in fact) and "open court" certainly implies due process.

I did not read any restrictions exempting private citizens so I don't know why this is difficult particularly regarding them. Unless, maybe, a body of case law has become accumulated through due process...

I'm not trying to be difficult, but I read what I read.

btw - I am unsure what a discretionary war is when someone says I favor this. I am against war for profit, especially endless war.

I am in favor of retaliatory war when attacked. We should not have been meddling in the Middle East to protect oil interests (it makes me sick to think about that). But I see no way around responding to terrorist attacks except by doing to the fanatical terrorists what we did to the Nazis.

We probably disagree on how to deal with the fact that exhibiting publications to a recruitment pool in the US radicalizes some of them enough so they kill--through terrorist attacks--US citizens during their daily activities. Some would call that free speech and say the principle is sacred and too bad for the murdered innocent Americans. Others, like me, think that a dose of common sense goes a long way in keeping the peace and prefer to hunt down and kill enough of the murderers and their creators to discourage that activity.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

 

We probably disagree on how to deal with the fact that exhibiting publications to a recruitment pool in the US radicalizes some of them enough so they kill--through terrorist attacks--US citizens during their daily activities. Some would call that free speech and say the principle is sacred and too bad for the murdered innocent Americans. Others, like me, think that a dose of common sense goes a long way in keeping the peace and prefer to hunt down and kill enough of the murderers and their creators to discourage that activity.

Michael

If the murdering sharks swim among relatively innocent non-violent folk,  the only way to get to the Bad Guys is to inflict a certain level of collateral damage. 

If you are serious about killing the Bad Guys then we will end up killing women and children too.  You can always say that the collateral deaths are the fault of the Bad Guys.  Pray do that,  if that makes you feel better about inflicting collateral damage. 

[BaalChatzaf]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

 

I am in favor of retaliatory war when attacked. We should not have been meddling in the Middle East to protect oil interests (it makes me sick to think about that). But I see no way around responding to terrorist attacks except by doing to the fanatical terrorists what we did to the Nazis.

What we did to the Nazis and Japanese  was to bomb them flat, burn their cities to the ground,  wreck their infrastructure and ruin their crops in addition to killing not only troops, but civilian workers,  women and children.  That is what warfare is.  Killing the enemy and busting up his shit.  

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

7 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

You can always say that the collateral deaths are the fault of the Bad Guys.

Bob,

That is a typical ortho-Objectivist argument that I have never bought.

They inject morality where no morality exists in order to affect a pose of indifference to the pain, suffering and death of innocents.

That's bullshit.

In war (except for the modern American endless war crap), you do the best you can to win with as much common sense as you can muster and that's about it for morality. Fighting competency with a pumped up attitude to get the bad guy is far more valuable than rationalizations about blame.

The aftermath of a war is like breaking a bone. The fight might have been heady stuff while it happened, but, even to the fighters on the winning side, the clean-up is like physical therapy.

It sucks and it hurts and it pisses you off.

Collateral damage be damned. It's awful, one of the worst things in human affairs, and if there is any moral position to apply, the correct one is to avoid it if you can. If you can't, get a decent therapist later.

It doesn't matter who's to blame for innocents killed. People can't use morality to eliminate collateral damage where morality is out the window and they sure as hell should not try to use morality to turn killing innocents into a moral good. Sometimes bad shit happens to good people. It's always horrible. The dead are just as dead regardless of who blames who later.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Get a load of this:

CONFIRMED: GEORGE H.W. BUSH IS VOTING FOR HILLARY CLINTON

Read it. It seems to be true.

It's on a Drudge site (not his main one) and I think he's floating it to see what the pushback is (and further corroboration is) before going mainstream.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

6 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Bob,

That is a typical ortho-Objectivist argument that I have never bought.

They inject morality where no morality exists in order to affect a pose of indifference to the pain, suffering and death of innocents.

Collateral damage be damned. It's awful, one of the worst things in human affairs, and if there is any moral position to apply, the correct one is to avoid it if you can. If you can't, get a decent therapist later.

I fully concur.  And it is well you never  resorted to that rationalization.  Any human human is going to feel some pain if he slaughters the innocent.  But if the Bad Guys force that happenstance,  so much more the reason they are the Bad Guys. 

[Peter]

Thanks for the video link to Star Trek on torture. I remember TNG also showed Capitan Jean Luc Picard being tortured. The only society however, that seemed civilized and did not use enhanced interrogation methods was 24^th century human society. The Klingons, Crystal-ine Entities, and the Romulans were quite nasty, and as mentioned the Vulcans almost tortured themselves at times with their “mind melds.”  

Don’t count your chickens being they are hatched? I'm not chicken! I am starting to see movement in the electoral college. All the states except Nebraska and Maine have a winner-take-all electoral vote system. The tossup column can be influenced by former candidate Rubio in Florida and I think Kasich can influence Midwest states like Ohio, and Iowa. I worry and hope for a Trump victory in the toss up states of Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina and Maine. Per Republican Chairman Reeses Pieces IT IS TIME for all Republican candidates to honor their pledge to support the winning candidate Donald Trump but especially Kasich, Rubio, and Cruz must honor their pledge. Fellas? Is that personal dislike of the candidate being put before your country? Sure, it would be tough if Trump made fun of your wife, but say reluctantly, I know we cannot afford four more years of creeping totalitarian rule. And I think former candidate and continuing “fan of Rand,” Paul Ryan needs to speak up for the candidate. Peter

Notes. From Rush. 11 percent of voters think Hillary is honest and trustworthy.  The lame stream media is starting to get worried, which is why they are attacking Matt Lauer for asking Clinton too many hardball questions  and Jimmy Fallon for being too funny and not scathing enough, when Donald Trump was recently on his show.

From Real Clear Politics, Tuesday, September 20^th . With no tossup states: Clinton 272, Trump 266.

With tossups: Clinton 200, Trump 164, Tossups 174. These are the current electoral college tossup States: Ohio 18. Florida 29. Iowa 6. Colorado 9. Nevada 6. Arizona 11. Michigan 16. Wisconsin 10. Pennsylvania 20. New Hampshire 4. Virginia 13. North Carolina 15. Georgia 16. Maine 1.

An email from Trump to me: Peter, The media keeps asking what I’m doing to prepare for my debate. Here’s my answer: While Hillary is listening to a team of psychologists and advisors to teach her what to say, I’m turning to the very people who got me where I am today… YOU. I’m asking you to take the TRUMP Debate Preparation Survey within the next 24 hours to help me prepare for the biggest night of our campaign.

[Brant Gaede]

54 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I fully concur.  And it is well you never  resorted to that rationalization.  Any human human is going to feel some pain if he slaughters the innocent.  But if the Bad Guys force that happenstance,  so much more the reason they are the Bad Guys. 

 

54 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I fully concur.  And it is well you never  resorted to that rationalization.  Any human human is going to feel some pain if he slaughters the innocent.  But if the Bad Guys force that happenstance,  so much more the reason they are the Bad Guys. 

America has made most of its "bad guys"--just because they're bad guys doesn't mean they had to be "our" bad guys. After "we" made them we slaughtered them with gusto--I mean the "we" back in Washington.

On the same level you talk about war I will now talk to you about mathematics: 1 + 1 = 2 -- or 3.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

32 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

 

America has made most of its "bad guys"--just because they're bad guys doesn't mean they had to be "our" bad guys. After "we" made them we slaughtered them with gusto--I mean the "we" back in Washington.

On the same level you talk about war I will now talk to you about mathematics: 1 + 1 = 2 -- or 3.

--Brant

Here is something that might amuse you.   

 

[jts]

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Heh.

Laura Ingram on how Trump should handle a gotcha question during the debate on the names of world leaders. Just say he might not know all of them yet because he hasn't been going around collecting donations.

  

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I was going to post some things about Trump from the media, but a comment is all that is needed right now.

There are the typical attack spin articles, but the heavy-hitters seem to be going into a different psychological state. The are starting to believe that Trump is winning and he is on the path to increasing his lead. Their comments all seem to have the enthusiasm of a strong hangover.

And they are deathly afraid of the debate. They say they aren't with their words, but their tone says different.

And I'm sitting here content...

 

My dirty little secret, though, is that I'll be glad when this election is over. I want to get back to discussing stuff about Rand, neuroscience, story, etc. In fact, I am in Part 3 of AS in the audio version right now. Man, do I see things I never saw the other times I read it. And I've come across some great quotes that are not her typical ones. Here's just one as a teaser (Hank Rearden says it):

Quote

He felt that he could forgive anything to anyone, because happiness was the greatest agent of purification.

I think that's pretty darn cool...

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

12 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I was going to post some things about Trump from the media, but a comment is all that is needed right now.

There are the typical attack spin articles, but the heavy-hitters seem to be going into a different psychological state. The are starting to believe that Trump is winning and he is on the path to increasing his lead. Their comments all seem to have the enthusiasm of a strong hangover.

And they are deathly afraid of the debate. They say they aren't with their words, but their tone says different.

And I'm sitting here content...

 

My dirty little secret, though, is that I'll be glad when this election is over. I want to get back to discussing stuff about Rand, neuroscience, story, etc. In fact, I am in Part 3 of AS in the audio version right now. Man, do I see things I never saw the other times I read it. And I've come across some great quotes that are not her typical ones. Here's just one as a teaser (Hank Rearden says it):

I think that's pretty darn cool...

Michael

Can't you just smell the stink of fear???

[Roger Bissell]

On 9/20/2016 at 5:49 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Get a load of this:

CONFIRMED: GEORGE H.W. BUSH IS VOTING FOR HILLARY CLINTON

Read it. It seems to be true.

It's on a Drudge site (not his main one) and I think he's floating it to see what the pushback is (and further corroboration is) before going mainstream.

Michael

 

Dayammmm - yet another vote robbed from Gary Johnson!

REB

[KorbenDallas]

8 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I was going to post some things about Trump from the media, but a comment is all that is needed right now.

There are the typical attack spin articles, but the heavy-hitters seem to be going into a different psychological state. The are starting to believe that Trump is winning and he is on the path to increasing his lead. Their comments all seem to have the enthusiasm of a strong hangover.

And they are deathly afraid of the debate. They say they aren't with their words, but their tone says different.

And I'm sitting here content...

 

My dirty little secret, though, is that I'll be glad when this election is over. I want to get back to discussing stuff about Rand, neuroscience, story, etc. In fact, I am in Part 3 of AS in the audio version right now. Man, do I see things I never saw the other times I read it. And I've come across some great quotes that are not her typical ones. Here's just one as a teaser (Hank Rearden says it):

I think that's pretty darn cool...

Michael

MSK,

Don't know if you've seen this video (it's dated Oct 15, 2015), but it's Ann Coulter on The View and the attacks start around 4:25.  Around 8:10 you can see her lips shaking, and I have to say I admire her ability to remain in focus and rely on reason throughout the ordeal.

I haven't liked Ann much in the past and likely won't like her in the future, but for right now, in this video I say: Bravo.

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just to stir the pot a little with one of my favorite campaign quotes from Trump:

I think I like this because I had family who worked in the car assemblers in Flint back in the good times. In fact, I might still have some. I've been out of touch with my roots for a long time, now...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I was going to mention the spate of articles on the left falling off into the silliness of Godwin's Law, but Bill O'Reilly, of all people, did it for me.

(btw - Godwin himself doesn't mind comparing Trump to Hitler--see the Wikipedia article I linked.  )

Bob asked above: "Can't you just smell the stink of fear???"

When all that's left for the left to do to cause an impact is to sling around the word, Hitler, you know you can. I think even Godwin is afraid...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

OMG.

If this is how Hillary Clinton is going to perform during the debate, Trump will not even have to wipe the floor with her. A good-natured quip here and there and she's toast.

Here she's groveling on the bottom in a weirdly conceited manner and bitching about it. And sounding like she's bitching about it. And looking scared...

Even I'm feeling sorry for her. And I can't stand her.

Michael