The New Individualist on Ron Paul

[Brant Gaede]

Listening to this Presidential debate, it is obvious both candidates are lucky not to be debating Ron Paul.

--Brant

[algernonsidney]

Listening to this Presidential debate, it is obvious both candidates are lucky not to be debating Ron Paul.

If he was in the debates, the moderators would pretend that he isn't there. They would cut him off, just like they did during the primary.

[Barbara Branden]

I, too, listened to the debate tonight. I was sickened by the failure of both candidates to have a clue about the sources of the present financial crisis -- although, without understanding the cause, they were emphatic in claiming to know the solution: More governmental regulation of the economy. As Rand used to say about collectivists, "They believe that the cure for the illness of America is to give it more of the poison that is making it sick."

See Robert Bidinotto's blog - http://bidinotto.journalspace.com/ -- for a valuable audio by the Managing Director of Lehman Brothers.

Barbara

[Selene]

Folks:

Random thoughts:

To call this a debate assaults everything that I taught for five years at Queens College.

Barbara, I could not agree with you more. Additionally, this is the socialization of the private housing stock of this nation.

A call came in to the Mark Levin show on ABC in NY last night. The caller asked if Mark had ever read Atlas Shrugged. Mark responded of course and I recommend it to everyone along with Von Mises, Hyak, Burke and he named a few others. The caller then said that isn't reading Atlas Srhugged just like reading today's newspapers?

And of course the answer is YES indeed.

Finally, Mr. Baker: "Some do. Interestingly enough, Objectivism has long been under-represented in the South", do you ever have any sources for your assertions?

Adam

[emb021]

In discussing the right of secession while it is not addressed in the Constitution the Constitution dose say in article 4 section 3 that states can be broken up or brought without the consent of the legislature of the states and the Congress. This suggest to me that states can not succeed with out the consent of Congress.

Uh, don't know where you're getting that from. I took a look at AIV S 3, and it doesn't say that.

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

[emb021]

There is no "right to secession." States do not have rights, people do. The purpose of Southern secession was to maintain a right-violating regime in power. Even to have to mention this on an Objectivist website is obscene.

This discussion of the right to secede takes the state as primary, and the purpose of the state, protection of individual rights, as secondary.

This has nothing to do with Objectivism.

The states do have the right to seceed. This is because our federal government was formed by the states, not by the individual citizens, and thus they have the right to leave.

Do you think the nations which formed the UN aren't allowed to leave?

What difference does it make why they wanted to seceed? That, to me, is spliting hairs.

Did the component states of the USSR have a right to seceed?

If Georgia had the right to seceed from the USSR, does South Ossetia (sp?) have the right to seceed from Georgia?

While the CSA was a rights-violating regime in some senses, the USA under Lincoln was ALSO a rights-violating regime as well. Lincoln suspended habeus corpus, sensored northern newspapers, and the like. So it isn't all black/white, CSA-evil, USA-good that some of would like to think.

[algernonsidney]

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

They threw this out in 1820 when they formed Maine from Massachusetts.

[algernonsidney]

This discussion of the right to secede takes the state as primary, and the purpose of the state, protection of individual rights, as secondary.

It was meant to be a system of checks and balances. The Civil War destroyed many of those checks and balances. As far as individual rights are concerned, many of the individuals alive in 1860 were not alive when the Constitution was ratified. They never consented to be in the Union.

While the CSA was a rights-violating regime in some senses, the USA under Lincoln was ALSO a rights-violating regime as well. Lincoln suspended habeus corpus, censored northern newspapers, and the like. So it isn't all black/white, CSA-evil, USA-good that some of would like to think.

Most things never are black and white. Both sides also had drafts.