Is Ron Paul as dangerous as Bidinotto claims?

[Brant Gaede]

For years the Greenspan Fed fought the business cycle, then Greenspan had the brains to get out before the chickens came home to roost!

--Brant

I've often wondered if Greenspan did it deliberately to make good Atlas, drive it over a cliff?

W.

I don't know why; he always seemed to go along to get along. Paul Volker was by far the better Fed Chairman. The basic problem is the existence of the Fed (central bank) itself. I am not an admirer of AG. He chose the form of power over real power. So did AR, who celebrated the rise of AG in government, forgetting the message of her AS: the deadliness of the sanction of the victim.

Real power is the truth. They tortured Galt to rule the nation. They didn't torture AG. AG came accepting.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Wolf,

From what I have read from Bernstein and Greenspan, in addition to his Objectivist convictions, he took his oath of office seriously. Part of that oath entails maintaining a stable money supply as the purpose of the Fed.

Michael

Where is that by statute? I think that there are contradictions in the legal Fed mandate.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

I have to look it up, but it's there. Later.

Michael

[Martin Radwin]

Martin, do you primarily judge the threat something poses purely by it's economic status? Do you guage an attacker yielding a gun as less of a threat if he appears poor than if he appears wealthy?

Rapid technological growth has allowed more and more people to be killed with fewer and fewer resources, a nation can be an 'economic basket case' yet still easily kill millions of people. In the future a single person will be able to kill millions of people.

I agree with you about this. Unfortunately, the proliferation of cheap weapons of mass destruction is probably an unstoppable trend. How is your proposed solution of massive US government military intervention going to address this problem? The US government is in fact one of the principle agents responsible for the spread of military weaponry, including what are commonly labeled as WMDs, via its policy of both direct military and monetary aid given to some of the world's worst dictatorships, money which is used to buy weaponry. If, in the near future, a single terrorist will be able to kill millions of people, how are we going to prevent this? Do you think it's possible to preemptively identify and kill every possible terrorist?

The American attack, invasion, and occupation of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do protecting the US from attack either by the Iraqi government or by hypothetical terrorists provided with weapons by the Iraqi government. There was never any danger of either of these things happening. The purpose of the invasion was for the US government to gain control of Iraqi oil reserves, as well as Iraqi land to build multiple permanent military bases to be used as forward staging areas for future military interventions in the Persian Gulf; these permanent military bases are being constructed as we speak. Aside from any of the ethical considerations involved in the military occupation of a small, weak nation that never attacked us and never threatened us, how does maintaining a permanent garrison of military bases and thousands of soldiers in Iraq protect Americans against possible attacks by terrorists with cheap WMDs?

Martin

[sjw]

Why do people talk about how we "might" be heading into recession? Isn't it already a recession when the stock market is about where it was 6 1/2 years ago and the price of gold/oil is up steeply, indicating inflation and that the stock market is in effect a lot lower than it was back then?

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Why do people talk about how we "might" be heading into recession? Isn't it already a recession when the stock market is about where it was 6 1/2 years ago and the price of gold/oil is up steeply, indicating inflation and that the stock market is in effect a lot lower than it was back then?

Because the textbook definition of a recession is 2 consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth. I'm not sure if that is the best definition, but that's the one most people use.

Jim

[sjw]

Because the textbook definition of a recession is 2 consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth. I'm not sure if that is the best definition, but that's the one most people use.

Textbook definitions are probably not right. What would be relevant is real productivity per capita. So something like dollars created per capita adjusted for inflation. I'm not expert at economics, is there a term for that concept?

Shayne

Edited January 9, 2008 by sjw

[Matus1976]

1. I DID answer the question, you are simply too dishonest/incompetent to recognize it.

2. You keep using the word "obfuscation" for something it doesn't mean. Learn the English language.

3. I'm done dealing with your incoherent, context-dropping, off-topic rambling. And I'm done with your dishonest representations of what I've said (e.g., here, I EXPLICITLY answered that of course the US was better than North Korea later in my post, on top of that, you are being obtuse here because to call the question "insane" is to implicitly answer it).

Shayne

Out of all the comments that's what you choose to focus on?

Fine you implicitly agree that the US is better than North Korea. What about your repeated accusations that I am 'forcing' people to be free? Back that up. As I said above:

Your charge of me 'forcing freedom' on others is evidence of this, as the clear context of the first time you said this was that by your understanding of freedom I am advocating 'forcing' it on other people, and apparently upon reflection and discussion it seems you have come to agree that no meaningful definition of freedom can include 'forcing' it on someone and yet be logical, so instead you have replied with only vague evading remarks saying that "I" am the one advocating it, even though clearly you thought I was based on your understanding of freedom. Your false dichotomy of relative vs absolutist recognition of freedom is more evidence of this. Your refusal to define freedom is further evidence of this.

As for "obfuscation" Dictionary.com says:

1. to confuse, bewilder, or stupefy.

2. to make obscure or unclear: to obfuscate a problem with extraneous information.

3. to darken.

This is exactly what you are doing, intentionally making things unclear. You are doing this to hide the fact that you have no working definition of freedom and that you have't quite worked out your apparent contradiction between assessing the 'relative' freedom of nations and judging whether any particular individual freedom is respected. Additionally, you are trying apparently to hide the fact that your accusation of my 'forcing freedom' on other people was completely rediculous and unfounded, and it was only one that made sense to you because you had no decent definition of freedom worked out.

Learn the English language

[sjw]

Out of all the comments that's what you choose to focus on?

I stopped reading after that, and by the way, after this comment too. Your sloppiness combined with your arrogance combined with your ignorance combined with your refusal to take responsibility for mistakes makes for a huge waste of time. Go ahead, cut and paste this back at me like a little child.

[Matus1976]

Out of all the comments that's what you choose to focus on?

Your sloppiness combined with your arrogance combined with your ignorance combined with your refusal to take responsibility for mistakes makes for a huge waste of time.

Go ahead, cut and paste this back at me like a little child.

The point of copying and pasting comments like that back to you is to emphasize (obviously with too much subtlety for you) the worthlessness of such statements. If I can say the exact same thing back to you, and it makes just as much sense, then the comment you made in the first place was a huge waste of time. Such as:

You need to calm down and look at what I've actually said. I'm going to tire quickly of untangling your confusion between what I've actually said and what you in your emotionalism attribute to me. Irrationality is the root of all evil, stop indulging in it

Do you think I really care if you think I should come down? As if I was 'worked up' in the first place. Do you think anyone on this thread cares if you 'tire quickly by untangling my confusion' or my 'emotionalism' Or your accusation that I am indulging in irrationality? You love throwing around vague accusations, which are worthless and vague enough to be thrown right back at you and make just as much sense. Show me some concretes where I am being irrational or engaging in 'emotionalism' Otherwise, just stop pulling punches and go ahead and call me a big poopyhead so your real level of maturity will show through.

The simple fact is, as this conversation clearly shows, you have no good conception of freedom and have contradictory positions because of that, and were caught unable to defend your rediculous position. But lets go back and start from the basic principles of this discussion.

When did I say I would 'force people to be free' please quote me.

by accusing me of this, you must necessarily think such a statement is possible and logical, by what definition of freedom can I force someone to be so? You said freedom was individual rights - How do I force someone to have individual rights? All you ever responded was "I dont know, you said it" but of course I never said such a rediculous thing. Feel free to retract your sentiment.

I think you're just coping out because you can't defend your position and were starting from an unclear definition of freedom in the first place, and now you are just hiding behind hurt feelings about my alleged intentional misunderstanding of your points. Perhaps you are not making your points clearly? I make no effort to intentionally misinterpret something and communication problems can certainly come from both parties not being clear enough or through legitimate unintentional misunderstanding. Your continual refusal to answer simple questions even when asked multiple times, usually by trying to change the topic or drop the point, suggests to me, and I think any objective observer, where sloppiness is originating in this discussion.

My point in this discussion is to understand your idea of freedom and how it relates to foriegn policy, so I can hopefully form a clearer understanding of that relationship myself. You've hardly done more than repeat a few bromides and act all indignent.

[sjw]

Matus, you really need to learn how to spell "rediculous" given how much you overuse that word.

You also need to learn how to prioritize. You ramble so much about the petty and insignificant it buries whatever you're really trying to get at, if anything. I gather from skimming your post that you're bent because you think I haven't defined "freedom". But when I said I accept the Objectivist definition of individual rights and when I said "freedom" it was meant as a shorthand for that, you objected that I didn't write you a little student essay on what my own interpretation of individual rights was.

I ignored your request because it is stupid. This is an Objectivist forum. I don't need to reiterate basic Objectivism every time I make a point.

I'm not going to search for the first time I accused you of wanting to force people to be free, but I'm sure that I'd quoted you just before I said it, so if the connection between what you said and my accusation was too subtle for you then you do the work of finding that quote and I'll spell it out for you. (See, that's how to make a subtle insult out of someone else's--adapt it don't copy it verbatim like a stupid little monkey). You should have asked me at the time to spell it out instead of going on a big ramble fest.

[Matus1976]

Rapid technological growth has allowed more and more people to be killed with fewer and fewer resources, a nation can be an 'economic basket case' yet still easily kill millions of people. In the future a single person will be able to kill millions of people.

I agree with you about this. Unfortunately, the proliferation of cheap weapons of mass destruction is probably an unstoppable trend. How is your proposed solution of massive US government military intervention going to address this problem?

Thanks for your reply Martin, that is an excellent question and not a easy or short answer. As a member of the Lifeboat Foundation I was recently invited to meet and speak with the Navy War College's Strategic Studies Group in San Francisco, and I talked at length on this very topic. First, we acknowledge that technological growth allows weapons to become more powerfull and thus as time goes on it will enable fewer people to kill more and more people with ever smaller expenditures of resources. What should be done about this?

Well, what makes people want to kill other people? 1) The vast majority of killing this century has been governments killing their own people, where almost 4 times as many people were killed by their own governments than were killed in wars. This has always come from the centralization of power and in the worst cases control over the economy. The more free individuals within a nation are, the less internal violence occurs within the nation and the fewer wars that nation engages in, and the more limited those wars are in extent. For starters we should foster the growth of liberal constitutional representational governments.

2) Violent intolerance of other opinions as demonstrated by radical islamic fascists, christians, and radical anarchists / communists represents the worst growing threat, as these individuals as time goes on will be able to kill more and more people. These murderously intolerant people tend to come from the existence of totalitarian and theocratic oppressive hell hole regimes who through forced indoctrination, brutal political oppression and stifling economic regulations promulgate generations of angry, poor people with an ax to grind who think killing millions is their path to eternal glory.

3) The last point I'd make is that natural disasters, are always made worse by these regimes. Whether a mudslide, drought, or pandemic, the problems are always made much worse by the closed and oppressive nature of these regimes. It may very well be that a global pandemic spreads primarily from one of these nations. SARS killed virtually no one in any western nation (except 1 person in Canada, I blame their socialized medical system) but killed dozens in China, compensation for population their infection and death rates were an order of magnitude higher than the US and Britain. China refused to acknowledge the existence of this disease and did what it could to hide it's presence, thus making it spread to more people and kill more people. It's poor and stagnate infrastructure which comes from political and economic control amplified this problem.

The conclusion is obvious, a long term rational directed plan must be implemented, preferably by a coalition of liberal constiutional democracies (the freest, richest, and most militarily powerful part of the world) to move every nation on the planet toward ones of fundamental civil liberties and representational governments, probably through a progressive series of steps ending invasion. You might object, (as an Admiral at this meeting did) that this would incite the very terrorism it is trying to stop, and to that I repeated author Robert Wright's suggestion to "Take your bitter medicine early" Terrorism incited today, or in the next 10 or 15 years, will be much more limited in it's capacity to kill and maime than terrorism on 25 or 50 years will be able to. In acting in a manner fostering the creation and successful continuation of liberal constitutional democracies, we might incite terrorism in the near term, where the threat it poses is not as great, but virtually eliminate it in the long term, where it poses a much greater threat.

The existence of these murderous regimes does no one any good. The wars needed to fight and stop them kill far fewer people than those regimes do themselves. The terrorists they create kill tens of thousands now, and can just as easily kill many millions in the future. The pathetic infrastructure and secretive government of these nations promulgates deadly diseases and exacerbates natural disasters. It is simaltenously a valid humanitarian cause and in our own long term rational self interest to work in a practical and salient manner to get rid of these regimes.

The US government is in fact one of the principle agents responsible for the spread of military weaponry, including what are commonly labeled as WMDs, via its policy of both direct military and monetary aid given to some of the world's worst dictatorships, money which is used to buy weaponry. If, in the near future, a single terrorist will be able to kill millions of people, how are we going to prevent this? Do you think it's possible to preemptively identify and kill every possible terrorist?

It is disegenous to associate the ability to kill ever more people with ever fewer resources to only weapons. Biotechnology and nanotechnology will certainly enable mass murder on entirely new avenues. So this relates back to what drives this murderous intolerance and what best should be done to get rid of it.

Even in the absence of totalitarian and brutally oppressive regimes, there will still be people who are terrorists. I worry about the threat, in the long term, that anti-technologist luddites pose, we see a popular best seller "The world without humans" which talkes about how the cities will crumple if all humans just dissappeared. We see the "Voluntary Human Extinction movement" as an attempt to rid the earth of humanity. How much further will the Ted Kaczynski's of the future go?

So you asked how will we pre-emptively identify and stop all terrorists. The answer might be a form of universal recipricol survailance which people are referring to as sousveillance. Consider the proliferation survailance cameras and of mapping programs and aerial photographs, and satelitte imagery. Computers get perpetually smaller and lighter, MIT has been working on a project they refer to as "oxygen" which they hope will intergrate computers into our daily levels as regular as oxygen is. Many researches propose things like "smart dust" which will be computers so small as to simply float around in the air, yet record audio video and presumably other things. What is left is a sophisticated piece of software to intergrate all of this information, if it is just as accessible to citizens as it is to the government, the possiblity of government abuse and oppression through this system (which would truly be a horrific 24/7 thought policing) would be limited.

As a libertarian (except in foriegn policy) I am uncomfortable with this kind of survailance, but the fact of the matter is that it WILL happen, and what we need to do is to make sure that it works both ways, that people can keep an eye on their government (only feasible in liberal constitutional representational govnmt nations) just as much as government keep an eye on people, hopefully looking for terrorists.

The American attack, invasion, and occupation of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do protecting the US from attack either by the Iraqi government or by hypothetical terrorists provided with weapons by the Iraqi government. There was never any danger of either of these things happening. The purpose of the invasion was for the US government to gain control of Iraqi oil reserves, as well as Iraqi land to build multiple permanent military bases to be used as forward staging areas for future military interventions in the Persian Gulf; these permanent military bases are being constructed as we speak. Aside from any of the ethical considerations involved in the military occupation of a small, weak nation that never attacked us and never threatened us, how does maintaining a permanent garrison of military bases and thousands of soldiers in Iraq protect Americans against possible attacks by terrorists with cheap WMDs?

In light of my above comments, I ask you to reconsider this assessment of Iraq. No one ever suggested Iraq would be steaming a battleship up the hudson, but in this day of technological globalization that is not at all necessary to kill many people. As a murderous totalitarian government, Saddam's Iraq was using one of the worlds largest oil supplies (that which nearly everything runs on) to, surprise, murder people and invade other nations. Removing the control of a source of energy from a murderous tyrant to a liberal constitutional democracy is a valid thing to do. Had Iraq been a legitimate government in any way shape or form, such a thing would have been unjust. But Iraq, even by the UN's own standards, had violated numerous conditions the UN stands to which a nation must abide by to be considered a legitimate state.

Even so, the larger picture is what we are talking about. The biggest threat humanity faces right now it terrorism and totalitarianism. For the past 50 years it was Stalinistic Communism. The biggest source of of both of these is the middle east, which is a steaming rotting shit hole of absolute murderous oppression. 21 or the 23 nations in the middle east are ranked by Freedomhouse as completely unfree. To make the best blow we can against the worst enemy we face, we had to start somewhere. Because of the military history with Iraq, its continual egregious human rights violations, it's violations of no fly zone, its continual refusal to allow UN inspectors un restricted access, it's domination of a major world energy supply, UN resolution demanding 'severe consequences' and the UN's own standards by which Iraq was no longer a legitimate nation, it was a decent place to start. The best blow we can deal against this kind of totalitarianism and terrorism is to spread the very thing which almost completely elimates it, liberal constitutional democracy, to those areas. Perhaps Iran was a better place? Maybe Saudi Arabia? Who knows, but could a case be made to garner public support for those?

If Iraq becomes a halfway decent democracy and develops a thriving economy, it will undermine absolutely everything every shitty murderous tyrant in the middle east has been preaching for the past half century, and they know that, which is why Syria and Iran have played a strong roll in trying to make sure Iraq does NOT become a succesfull democracy.

Edited January 10, 2008 by Matus1976

[Matus1976]

Matus, you really need to learn how to spell "rediculous" given how much you overuse that word.

You need to stop nitpicking small irrelevent points because you can not defend any of the ones you've made.

You also need to learn how to prioritize. You ramble so much about the petty and insignificant it buries whatever you're really trying to get at, if anything. I gather from skimming your post that you're bent because you think I haven't defined "freedom". But when I said I accept the Objectivist definition of individual rights and when I said "freedom" it was meant as a shorthand for that, you objected that I didn't write you a little student essay on what my own interpretation of individual rights was.

I ignored your request because it is stupid. This is an Objectivist forum. I don't need to reiterate basic Objectivism every time I make a point.

Perhaps I do need to priotize more, I'll take that as constructive criticism. Your operating definition of freedom was such that you could say "you want to force freedom on others" the objectivist definition of freedom is not conducive to this. You keep just saying "I use the objectivist definition" but in reality you have never even paraphrased that or re-iterated it to your own understanding. The fact that you said someone can 'force' others to be free is a clear indication to me that you are NOT using the objectivist definition of freedom. STILL you try to evade having to state explicitly what you mean by freedom. Don't even play this ridiculous 'this is an objectivist forum bla bla' card, were both talking alot of crap that could be left off this forum as unecessary, to suddenly get militant about writing the definition of freedom out to save a few of those scarce bits on the the internet is obviously yet another attempt at obfuscation (that is, hiding and clouding the fact that you don't have one)

Plenty of definitions are here, none of which make any sense when used to in "forcing others to be free"

http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/freedom.html

For example

"you are forcing others to be [in a political context absent of physical coercion] "

You would not have accused me of forcing other to be free unless by your definition of freedom that made some sense.

I'm not going to search for the first time I accused you of wanting to force people to be free, but I'm sure that I'd quoted you just before I said it, so if the connection between what you said and my accusation was too subtle for you then you do the work of finding that quote and I'll spell it out for you. (See, that's how to make a subtle insult out of someone else's--adapt it don't copy it verbatim like a stupid little monkey). You should have asked me at the time to spell it out instead of going on a big ramble fest.

I've asked you a few times to spell it out. The fact that you have ADD shouldnt be a fault of mine. I'll tell you exactly where it was. I said, in post 41

As a "Freedom Lover" I love freedom so much that I extend that same basic courtesy to all people of the world.

to which you responded

"I extend that courtesy" is a euphemism for forcing others to value what you value.

and by post 49 you had solidified this opinion of me

Since you evidently believe in forcing people to be free

To which I responded in post 52

You can not "force" people to be free, you can only prevent other people from oppressing those people or forcing them to do something against their will. Please give me an example of how I might force someone to be free.

And so it goes...

So feel free to spell it out. There is nothing subtle about your connection, it is merely illogical. Show us your logical argument proving that I advocate forcing others to be free. And tell us what that means and how that even possibly makes sense.

[sjw]

Matus, you really need to learn how to spell "rediculous" given how much you overuse that word.

You need to stop nitpicking small irrelevent points because you can not defend any of the ones you've made.

You need to stop being so presumptuous. I can defend all my points or at a minimum give a coherent reason for them.

Perhaps I do need to priotize more, I'll take that as constructive criticism. Your operating definition of freedom was such that you could say "you want to force freedom on others" the objectivist definition of freedom is not conducive to this.

I'm well aware of that. It's a blatant contradiction. That's why I said it *and attributed it to you*.

Before we get into the reason I attributed it to you, I'm curious as to how you failed to grasp what I meant. I mean, if I say: "You want your cake and want to eat it too", would you accuse me of denying that A is A? I mean, why isn't it clear that what's really going on is that I'm accusing *you* of denying that A is A?

[Wolf DeVoon]

People will be able to read and create e-mail messages, eat breakfast, apply makeup, watch videos, and read newspapers while safely "driving" to work, General Motors Chief Executive Rick Wagoner promises. (Information Week)

Had to throw that in, too funny. My outlook has brightened considerably by blocking Obtuse1976.

[Matus1976]

Matus, you really need to learn how to spell "rediculous" given how much you overuse that word.

You need to stop nitpicking small irrelevent points because you can not defend any of the ones you've made.

You need to stop being so presumptuous. I can defend all my points or at a minimum give a coherent reason for them.

Funny that you profess to be so concerned about uncessary comments on an objectivist forum, like your definition of freedom, yet obsess over grammatical errors. Here you feel the need to post (rather unecessarily) that indeed you *could* defend your points. Gee, thanks for the notice, now go ahead and defend them all ready, any day now, or give a coherent reason for them. Stop talking about how great your defense and arguments will be and start making them.

Perhaps I do need to priotize more, I'll take that as constructive criticism. Your operating definition of freedom was such that you could say "you want to force freedom on others" the objectivist definition of freedom is not conducive to this.

I'm well aware of that. It's a blatant contradiction. That's why I said it *and attributed it to you*.

Yeah, nice try, too bad you've all ready established that you feel your assessment of my attitude about freedom is logical. Your little attempt to pretend you didnt mean what you actually meant presented below:

Before we get into the reason I attributed it to you, I'm curious as to how you failed to grasp what I meant. I mean, if I say: "You want your cake and want to eat it too", would you accuse me of denying that A is A? I mean, why isn't it clear that what's really going on is that I'm accusing *you* of denying that A is A?

is wholly underscored by the fact that you said my "forcing others to be free" was also my attempt to "force others to value what I value" IN FACT you said the latter FIRST here and then later starting saying forcing others to be free.

So which is it, were you telling telling me "you want your cake and want to eat it too" or were you telling me that I am trying to tell others what to do, by force. Since you explicitly said the latter, it's pretty clear what you meant. It's also clear that was based on your incorrect definition of freedom. You are trying really hard now to avoid admitting that. What twist will you pull out next?

[Matus1976]

Had to throw that in, too funny. My outlook has brightened considerably by blocking Obtuse1976.

ooh, oh, ouch, I'm hurt!

[sjw]

So which is it, were you telling telling me "you want your cake and want to eat it too" or were you telling me that I am trying to tell others what to do, by force.

Wow, I can't even get an answer to a simple standalone question without it going through the Matus Mindwarp.

I simply asked:

If I say: "You want your cake and want to eat it too", would you accuse me of denying that A is A?

and you've muddled this simple, stand-alone question with everything that came before.

This is, yet again, why I can't bother with all of the other twisted BS you're spewing. I think I've given you far too many chances to prove whether or not you are sane.

[Johnny]

Because the textbook definition of a recession is 2 consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth. I'm not sure if that is the best definition, but that's the one most people use.

Textbook definitions are probably not right. What would be relevant is real productivity per capita. So something like dollars created per capita adjusted for inflation. I'm not expert at economics, is there a term for that concept?

Shayne

I would disagree textbook definitions are probably not right? They usually are actually. James is correct, the economic definition of recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. The term your looking for is simply Real GDP growth per capita. "Real" means adjusted for inflation in economics terms. Although I don't understand why looking at Real GDP growth as a per capita statistic makes any difference on the definition of a recession? If the country is losing wealth, that means the economy is shrinking, and negative Real GDP growth is indicative of lost wealth. So a per capita measurement of that lost wealth is not relevant to the concept of a recession. Per capita measurements are meaningful if one is comparing different populations. For example the per capita income of Connecticut as compared to the per capita income of California, or the per capita income of the United States compared to the per capita income of China, etc.

[Matus1976]

So which is it, were you telling telling me "you want your cake and want to eat it too" or were you telling me that I am trying to tell others what to do, by force.

Wow, I can't even get an answer to a simple standalone question without it going through the Matus Mindwarp.

I simply asked:

If I say: "You want your cake and want to eat it too", would you accuse me of denying that A is A?

and you've muddled this simple, stand-alone question with everything that came before.

This is, yet again, why I can't bother with all of the other twisted BS you're spewing. I think I've given you far too many chances to prove whether or not you are sane.

Oh I did not anticpate you not being able to make this particular conceptual step. To answer your question, no, I would not accuse you of denying the law of identiy. To which you would have no doubt stated something along the line that you were just telling me what particular logical fallacy I was embracing and not that it was something you yourself believed. To which I would have responded in the manner that I did above, it's clear that this is something you believed was logical because you directly equated it with forcing someone else to value what I value; a completely logical statement.

In other words, to you my 'forcing others to be free' was the same thing as 'forcing others to value what I value' You can not state that the former was not logical and not representative of your ideas of freedom while stating that the latter was logical and comes from your understanding of values and coercion, yet also state the two were the same thing. Remember, you first said I was forcing others to value what I value, and then simplified that as 'forcing others to be free' and NOW you are implying that your accusation of my forcing people to be free did *not* represent your understanding of freedom and coercion, even though one was just simplified restating by you of the other.

But hey, maybe I am wrong, WHY were you asking that if not to go in this obvious direction? please elaborate and I will answer your questions singularly without responding to the direction I think it is obvious you are going to go.

This whole thread has been twisted BS from you, first I'm forcing people to value what I value, and then I'm forcing people to be free, then you say that's not a logical statement, then you say it's not what you believed anyway, and was only what you thought I was advocating, then it wasnt based on your defination of freedom, even though you never offered one, then you dragged your feet before acknowledging you are more free than a North Korean, then you dragged before acknowledging the legitimacy of making collective assessment of freedoms, then you were obsessing over grammar and wasting valuable bits on the web, then obsessing over hurt feelings, on and on.

Just come out with it, what is your definition of freedom? Can someone force someone to be free? What is your logical argument showing I advocate such a ridiculous position? Demonstrate even remotely what evidence you have suggesting I embraced a definition of freedom which would even make this make sense? I clearly defined freedom in the context of this discussion very early on and once I did your charge of my forcing freedom on others went from what you thought I was actually doing (which necessarily included your definition of freedom and that statement being a logical one) to a merely pointing out an alleged logical fallacy I was committing, without showing any reason for believing that or any evidence supporting it.

Just come out and admit it all ready so we can move on, your definition of freedom at first was wrong, or not clearly identified, and originally forcing freedom was logical to you, and now after further discussion it is not. This is absolutely the simplest explanation to this thread full of vague insults and obfuscations by you.

Edited January 10, 2008 by Matus1976

[Matus1976]

Oh yeah Shayne, AND I think I've given you far too many chances to prove whether or not you are sane.

Boy you love those vague exaggerated insults.

Well, I've given you far too many chances to prove you are rational. I've given you far too many chances to prove you can make a logical argument, or defend your positions, or make love to a woman, or pee while standing up, or that you are not retarded, or that you have more than one brain cell, or that you are not one big poopy head, etc etc.

Now let's pretend you've called me lots of silly names too, and I got all indignant as well, and then we've moved on to productive discussion. How about those definitions and logical proofs of my forcing freedom on others and evidence for my embracing a definition of freedom where that statement even remotely makes sense?

[Chris Grieb]

Did anyone else notice how badly Ron Paul did last night?

Do any of the Ron Paul supporters on OL have any comment on the New Republic report? The article that has all these anti-black and anti-semitic quotes from the Ron Paul Report.

[sjw]

To answer your question [finally], no, I would not accuse you of denying the law of identiy. To which you would have no doubt stated something along the line <snip>

Are you going to stop being presumptuous and stop rambling on, or are you going to answer my questions exactly as I put them to you? Because at this point I am not interested in any sort of exchange except you answering my questions. Or you if want to post your ramblings in a separate post that I can ignore, that is fine too. But in your replies to me, I just want your answers. Those are my terms, take them or leave them.

[sjw]

Did anyone else notice how badly Ron Paul did last night?

Do any of the Ron Paul supporters on OL have any comment on the New Republic report? The article that has all these anti-black and anti-semitic quotes from the Ron Paul Report.

Ron Paul addressed that smear article on his site. Vodkapundit also addressed it and properly identified it as an unjust smear, published at just the right time to hurt Ron Paul most.

[Johnny]

I gather from skimming your post that you're bent because you think I haven't defined "freedom". But when I said I accept the Objectivist definition of individual rights and when I said "freedom" it was meant as a shorthand for that, you objected that I didn't write you a little student essay on what my own interpretation of individual rights was.

I ignored your request because it is stupid. This is an Objectivist forum. I don't need to reiterate basic Objectivism every time I make a point.

You do if you demonstrate your ignorance of Objectivism. You can't possibly force someone to be free from coercion, it's a contradiction. The fact that you accused matus of forcing freedom on others, a self-refuting argument, demonstrates you don't have nearly as a coherent understanding of Objectivism as you think you do.