L W HALL

Thanks for the explanations Michael, there are several pieces of useful information and a couple of analogies I can relate to in there -- ideas I've had on my mind but which needed confirmation from an external source.

Mirror neurons, higher and lower-brain conflict, 40:11,000,000 sensory inputs. To hear the science and research behind the topic is a lot more valuable than mysticism.

I don't mind AA, and even before I went in there I understood that group therapy, and not mysticism or procedure, was the effective element in such programs. My own group has a healthy subgroup of atheists who, while not Objectivists by any stretch, have an approach I can relate better to.

Anyway, once again, glad to see people here have similar experiences and that an effective program like AA is not dismissed outright -- that would have bothered me.

Moving from a mindset fermented in alcohol to one where we finally think of ourselves as non-users or even alcoholics who do not drink anymore is the paradigm shift necessary to stop and stay stopped in my opinion. I have heard many people claim to have experienced that shift within a very short time and perhaps to a degree that is true. However, I believe it takes a longer period of time for the real deep rooted changes to take place. Often these are accomplished in small increments that build one upon the other until major changes occur in our thinking and our reactions to the world around us. These changes are necessary because just removing the alcohol from the system is not enough to turn most alcoholics into sober people. If this were so we could get ourselves locked up a month or so and everything would be fine. The amount of relapses which occur with those trying to become sober or clean attest to the fact it is just not that easy for majority of people.

The last thing I wish to do is to come off like I am bragging but I experienced the depths of alcohol abuse and the resultant destruction which it brought about in my life and have now experienced over 20 years without a drink. I was one of those who were able to recover by attending the rooms of AA and I do believe the program can work. I am not, however, a person who believes AA's way is the only way or maybe I would go so far to say it may not even be the best way. The trouble is while looking for the "best way" we can often wind up dead or with serious mental and physical ailments. Thus if you are in AA you have a decent chance of living a life free of addiction or at least the practice of that addiction.

The way I look at AA is it is a program that can be molded to fit around most anyone. I do not prescribe to the Procrustean Method that often runs rampant in the rooms. In other words I don't think a person should be forced into a certain AA approach that someone else has found, which works for them, but rather I feel the steps should be used with the individual in mind. I often think the ego of some of AA's members override better judgment when working with other members.

When I stopped smoking 10 years ago I was able to use the things I had learned while recovering from an alcoholic mind to put the cigarettes down and not pick them up again.

I see no reason you cannot employ what you read here in these forums into your quest for sobriety.

In borrowing from an old AA saying "Use what you can and leave the rest." You might find at a later time that you will revisit what you have left early on.

The very best of luck to you.

Through all of this I am still trying to figure out the accomplishments of one George Bush.

Tax cuts and a growing economy you say!! If you haven't looked around lately you might be missing out on one of the greatest recessions this country has seen for awhile.

Keeping OBL and co. in line!! Last I heard the Taliban and Al Qaeda have been gaining strength in Afghanistan and are a threat to Pakistan and it's stockpile of nuclear weapons. Don't remember OBL's head on a platter either.

Maybe it's Iraq. Just maybe we squashed those bad ole Muslim extremists in Iraq. Only problem with that is although Sadaam may have been one sick mother he was fairly much a secularist and had at one time been our buddy when he was facing the real extremists in Iran. Did the great "Flypaper Theory" work or did we create extremists where there weren't any before we invaded.

Let's try oil independence or fiscal conservatism. Whoops no ground to stand on there.

Maybe, just maybe it is not those of us who are on the case of one George W Bush that need to wake up. Keep in mind I am not a Democrat and have not been for a long time. I am one of those who voted twice for the man. I woke up and I didn't like what I saw. Not only has he set the Rep party back a long way those bunch of book cooking crooks and CEOs who run their companies into the dirt and then walk away with millions have set Free Market Capitalism back to a point it may never recover in this country.

A plague on both houses, the Democrats and Republicans alike. I will write in the only candidate who talks like he may truly care just how much more money this country can borrow and spend before it goes bankrupt. I don't like some of the things he stands for but at least Ron Paul knows you cannot spend like there is no tomorrow without paying the fiddler sooner or later.

Or you can vote for the socialist of your choice in Obama or McCain.

To make the question somewhat related to the real world, I will reframe it in two parts:

1. You have to select someone to run a business you have worked your whole life trying to build. The only available candidates are George W. Bush and Al Gore. Whom would you select? Bush, hands down.

2. Same question, in re George W. Bush and John Kerry...Bush, hands down.

This does ~not~ mean that I would not be worried about the fate of my business, just that I would have ~greater~ reason to fear for it if Gore or Kerry were running it.

Nor does this mean that I do not wish that any of the other people who would like to run it instead were viable candidates. But we're talking about the real world here, about the lesser of two evils.

Again, guys, I did not say Bush was a ~great~ President. But this mantra of his "string of failures" or bad decisions is a bit over-wrought and a bit under-exemplified.

His "No Child Left Behind" and Prescription Medicaid for Seniors were nasty programs, and the Iraq War was a costly mistake, as was the Wall Street bail-out. No argument there.

But on the other side: his tax cuts (which grew the economy, as well) and his attempts to privatize Social Security (as Barbara pointed out) were really ~good~ things. Particularly the latter was a truly ~courageous~ position to take, politically. (It's not for nothing that it's known as the "third rail of politics.")

I feel somewhat the same about Bush Jr. that I did about Nixon. Nixon was atrocious in many ways. The Watergate scandal was totally uncalled for, as were his invoking wage and price controls when inflation was at the astronomical level of....FOUR percent!

Shades of all the moaning about our economy, whose unemployment and other "misery index" figures are a small fraction of what they reached during Carter's blessedly short reign -- and shades of all the moaning about the casualty levels of the Iraq War, which have yet to reach 10% of those from the Vietnam War, which itself did not reach 10% of those of World War II.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Maybe it was the drinking water. Or...all those tranq's and pot folks started ingesting in the 60s? I'm not faulting people for not wanting to have unnecessary "sacrifices" and suffering laid upon them, but there has been a disturbing general trend over the last half century toward more immediate gratification and unwillingness to accept temporary discomfort.

Perhaps it is the media exposing and exaggerating everything, hyping it up in order to manipulate public opinion in furtherance of their liberal political agenda. Interestingly, the mainstream media has been overwhelmingly in the tank for Obama, and the polls, which were consistently overstating Obama support, are now tightening -- i.e., returning to an accurate reflection of reality -- because it is in their overall interest for their final polls before election to be as close as possible to the actual outcome, so that they retain a semblance of credibility for the next exercise in voter manipulation.

Are you starting to see where I put the chief blame for our ills? Yes, the mainstream media, but more fundamentally, the intellectuals (you can preface that with "pseudo", if you like) who recruited/inspired them. Interestingly, the last three Democratic candidates have all been "smart" guys, intellectuals who would have made Bush or McCain administrations look like Barry Goldwater or Thomas Jefferson.

The worst thing about Bush is not his errors, but the fact that he is the excuse for Leftists to scapegoat liberty, capitalism, and libertarianism -- and that "our side" apparently does not have adequate resources to successfully combat this barrage of lies. Tibor Machan had a nice piece in today's Orange County Register, and I know others are speaking out, but the Big Lie of "laissez faire has been tried and failed" is difficult to fight. We can only keep trying.

In other news, Becky and I are taking our (just about) 14 year old daughter Rachel with us tonight to hear Craig Biddle speak on "McBama vs. America." (Biddle's talk is also in the current issue of The Objective Standard.) As does Peikoff (see his recent podcast at peikoff.com), Biddle says that neither candidate is worthy of a vote, and that we should concentrate instead on intellectual activism and hope that decent Presidential candidates emerge by 2012. (Apparently ARI ~now~ thinks that Democrats do ~not~ automatically get a vote in order to stop the evil theocrats from gaining power. Heh.)

Sorry for the rambling nature of this post, but at least you won't have to read bits and pieces of it elsewhere!

REB

Why wouldn't the question I asked be relevant to the real world? Is Bush not called the "Chief Executive" of our county? What larger enterprise could you put someone in charge of other than the country with the greatest GNP in the world? The Question is highly relevant to my point. I wouldn't put this man in charge of a business I had built based on his current track record and if I had it to do over again I wouldn't most definitely have voted for Al Gore as much as I disliked the Democrats at the time.

Insofar as how his tax cuts have worked it's as spoken of below. When you balance it against his out of control spending it amounts to little or nothing.

I see where you and Phil speak of reading and researching unbiased sites and I would ask you what makes you believe you are the only ones that are doing so? The reason I have came to where I am is I quit feeding into the neo con bs and started reading a variety of sites with a more open mind about what I was reading.

I'll also ask each of you taking up for him a question:

Would you put him in charge of a business you have worked your whole life trying to build?

Thanks, Barbara. I've read this before, but it bears repeating. Those who repeat the canard "Bush Lied" forget that implicit in that verb is that ones lies to someone about something. Those variables always remain unstated, unsupported and unexplained. The only lie here is the Big Lie - a falsehood repeated so often even some Objectivists end up repeating it.

It's totally irrelevant to me whether he made up lies, cherry picked the info or is just a bumbling fool led around by others the result is the same. He was elected POTUS to make sound decisions. I do not believe he has done so. The list of things he said concerning Iraq, the threat it posed and then what really came to pass is lengthy.

I spent his first term taking up for him, but after I voted for him the second time and things continuously came out about the decision to invade Iraq and how it was made I put on my glasses and started examining the criticisms with a more objective view. To say that what I see now is grossly dissimilar to what I saw just a couple of years ago is an understatement to the nth degree.

I also thought that with a Republican President and a Republican Congress we could embark on a path of true fiscal responsibility and that sure as heck has happened. We have spent money we didn't have like a credit addict on a binge. What we do have is a party that is under the influence of neo cons and the Religious Right. Or to put it in simple terms pretty much a damn disaster.

Michael, the WMD "scare" was perpetrated and believed in by all the chief Democratic figures, including Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and Pres. Bill Clinton. Bush did not make it up. He just pushed an agenda based on the same misinformation they ALL had, and that they ALL trumpeted repeatedly, in the media and the Congress. So, if you want to cast Bush as the SCAPEGOAT, the Christ-figure, for the sins of ALL (or many), that's fine.

But I return to my second, and more insistent, question: why does the Congress get a pass on all this? They postured and bellowed about WMD at the time -- and currently (and for some time), their popularity rating has been even further in the dumps than Bush's. Yet, they will get to keep their jobs. No one has prominently called for a complete "turn the rascals out" in Congress -- which would seem to me to be a logical corollary to "no more Bush" (i.e., anti-McCain).

Can you explain that, Michael? Anyone? Why isn't Congress hoisted by the same petard as Pres. Bush (and McCain)?

REB

Here's the problem I see with the argument you are advancing Roger:

Rather than ask who went along let's ask who really pushed the agenda. Was it the Dems or was it Bush and his cohorts? I believe you will find the answer to that is it was the neo cons. Those in Congress who went along with it don't get a pass in my book but then I didn't vote for Hillary or a lot of the others who did vote in favor the war. I did however vote for Bush and that is why I am taking him to task. He was the one I put my trust in, not Hillary Clinton.

Michael,

I agree things can get worse. My mother has recounted too many times to me what it was like growing up in the Great Depression. My father did not have it as bad, but it was no cakewalk for his family either. I don't think (hope?) that we are going to go that far down however I don't believe we have seen the worst of it yet.

With respect to voting I am going to write in Ron Paul simply because I do not care for the policies of either of the two major party candidates.

If you want to look at the culprits for the rise of Obama look no further than the leaders of the Republican party. The Reps had a very strong base and managed to screw it up so badly it may take years to overcome it. Maybe instead of recovering a viable third party will finally come about but I really think that is just wishful thinking on my part.

Anyway nice to speak to you again.

As to whether Bush practiced The Big Lie or not, irrespective of who is right, this is how the public views him. Just look at the numbers and look at his present influence. No one can do what he did, lying or not lying, but filling the pockets of his cronies while constantly dishing out a ton load of wrong information to the public, and keep his reputation. All this is on record.

Whether is was outright lying, manipulation to make things appear as he wanted them or just buying into some poor information the outcome is the same. Many many people put a lot of trust in him and many many people feel totally betrayed by him and the Rep party.

I have been a registered Republican for over 35 years after starting out with the Democratic party. In all my years of voting I have never regretted casting a vote for anyone as much as I have the two I cast for GWB. That is coming from someone who crossed party lines and voted for Carter and I never thought I could make a bigger blunder than I did then. If I could go back to 8 years ago I would most definitely change my vote to Al Gore.

Evanescent wealth. The stock market has always struck me as risky in its very makeup and idea.

The Federal government is about to waste multiples of hundreds of billions of ultimately taxpayer dollars trying to save banks that can't be saved or do much more than re-enforce their horrible balance sheets. This is becoming generally recognized as true information by professionals and the investing public. This will leave the government with virtually no ammo to prop up the economy or equities. This bear market cannot be stopped or reversed anytime soon. There will probably be a crash on Monday if the bailout bill fails to pass--or even tomorrow if the vote in the House fails while markets are still open. If it is passed, it's almost guaranteed to, the crash will simply take three months as the best case scenario. After that the big grind down will continue. There is no refuge in any foreign market I can think of.

--Brant

Bonds except for short-term T-bills are the most dangerous things you can own. They can destroy you. They will not protect your income stream.

I'm not an economist nor do I claim any great knowledge of it. What I can do though is read and I have read a lot of different takes on this bailout and I am no more convinced it should be done now than I was when they first started talking about it. Rewarding poor business practices is not what I understand a free-market economy is all about.

Here's how I see it and it's part of what you wrote about above:

If we don't do the bailout then there's a good chance the market will take a big hit. However we will still have the money in reserve(maybe not a good way to put it) that they are going to use to shore up what you yourself said was businesses that very well may fail anyway. If we wait this thing out then we still have this money and it can be applied in the areas which are shaky but able to pull themselves out. I don't believe it gambling everything you have on one roll of the dice when there are other options available.

Don't know if this has been posted, but I like the take this guy has on it from Lew Rockwell site:

Bailout Truth

Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well.

I write this post here rather than on the thread where Michael posts an apology for deleting a post of mine because this seems to be the ongoing thread concerning Victor's behavior.

First of all I want to publicly thank Michael for his apology which was sent to me in a E-Mail with an attached linK to the targeted thread. As i stated to him I did not agree with the deletion but I respected his right to do so based on administering the forum.

I do not have much to say other than I became more than a little suspicious of Victor with a post he made over at SOLO in referece to Quantum Physics. One which I notice Ellen made a link to in one of her earlier posts on this thread. At the time I read his post in SOLO something about it rang a strong bell, but I never could place just why it sounded so familiar and I dropped it. After being banned from there and chastised here for his plagirizing another I just could not shake the feeling something about him was amiss.

I won't add anymore as I am not here to beat up on him now that he is gone nor to ring my own bell in the matter. Overall it is a shame because I don't believe he is a bad person, just one who is seriously misguided.

As I told Michael I have been making some changes in my life which are consuming a lot of time and I did not just abandon the site but more a case of spending a lot of time studying.

Best wishes to everyone,

LW

Michael,

I read this article when I found it over on RoR sometime last year. I thought it was well written and offered some good insights into the workings of addiction from a first person view. At the time you wrote and posted it I felt you got some good feedback, but at the same time some undeserved criticism for posting what was basically your own thoughts. I want to take the time and reread it, as well as follow up with you and Paul on the other thread. I am going to try and find the time this week to get to it if possible, but with next weeks election looming large I have been following the threads on SOLO and The Forum which are dealing with Peikoff's views of the election with the little time I have found to stay online. Again though, thanks for posting this and I hope we can generate some real interest in this subject in the future.

L W

Paul,

Sorry about being slow to get back, this has been a busy weekend. I have a couple of questions, but I will post this one for right now untill I have more time to word the other one better: In reference to what you were saying in the quote below:

I am quite interested in this subject on at least a couple of levels. I have a friend, and now a new business partner, who has substance abuse in his past and still has a sub-self that can look to alcohol or energy drinks to elevate his social flow

I understand you are saying that your friend had substance abuse problems in the past, but I am unsure if by the latter part of your statement when you speak of his sub-self looking to alcohol or energy drinks you mean he specifically still uses alcohol. I kind of got lost there. In more plain language does he still drink and was his substance abuse problems in the past alcohol or other chemicals?

L W

Michael,

First of all I would like to say I enjoyed your treatment of the Twelve Steps in regards to an Objectivist view of them. In regards the guilt that is associated not only with an addictive lifestle, but other less tumultuous ones as well this, I believe, is at the root of holding a large portion of the population back from what could be much more productive and fulfilling lives.

I also have some questions I want to ask Paul in regards to his situation, in addition to exploring your ideas more.

L W

Hi Trevor,

As a person who was raised in the deep South amid a religious Baptist family, married a woman who was Pentecoastal, and traveled A mystical path for many years after that, I am well aware of the demons(pardon the pun) we are faced with when trying to look at life in an objective manner. The struggle for myself(and it has definitely been a struggle) has been a long one, but the rewards are well worth the effort.

One of the good things, as I am sure you are learning, is that we don't forsake moral values just because they are not dictated by some Godlike entity, and we don't slip into the sins of perversity when we cast aside religion in favor of rational and logical thinking. I have found rather that my values are more truly recognizable today precisely because they are my own and not ones which are foisted upon me by others.

I envy you your early start on this journey and wish you well.

L W

Hi Laure,

I would also like to add my belated welcome. I have always enjoyed reading your posts.

L W

Perigo was given permission by Brook to "paraphrase" what he told him privately, but Linz has decided not to as a "waste" of his time. This after a post making fun of various people, including myself. As a humorist he should stick to name calling, even though he was almost funny.

I suspect his last response was nothing but a smokescreen, and they were hoping the matter would simply fade away. I made my feelings on the initial reply Linz put up obvious, and I have not changed my mind any since then.

L W

Fran,

This was a good article to post, and although I don't necessarily agree with all of it, I do agree with the premise that happiness is mostly a mind set which emanates from within us rather than a thing which we acquire from outer sources. The key to the problem if we are unhappy, and live in a country where we enjoy freedoms of choice, is to start changing the way we think by focusing on and understading how negative thoughts directly influence our everyday lives.

L W

Ross,

I am glad you started this thread. The time between 63 and the early seventies was such a period of change that when I look back on it, it seems almost impossible for all the various happenings to occur in such a short span of years.

With the advent of the Beatles following on the heels of the Rock N Roll era, life seemed to go into fast forward for me; the music, musclecars, Vietnam, long hairstyles on guys, the Cold War still in full swing, The US landing on the Moon, and the Watergate debacle shattering the last of any adolescent naivete I held concerning politicians there was then and still is now a plethora of topics concerning that period.

I had also just entered my teenage years when I first heard about the Beatles, and as did so many other kids became an immediate fan. Although I enjoyed most all of their music, the ladder years- due probably to the difference in my age- did not hold the same magic as I felt during the early ones. My son and my girlfriend who is quite a few years younger than me both have made the statement that they would have loved to experience the sixties and early seventies, and for myself I totally agree it was a great time in many ways to grow up.

L W

This is where they were right but also why they were so wrong: They properly argue that it is immoral to require of ourselves to take great risks of defeat and loss of our own lives in order to prevent innocent deaths on the other side, but also in effect argue that it is immoral to take even a minimal risk or cost in order to prevent loss of innocent life. Clearly they don't want innocents to die, but by their method of thinking (simplistic deduction from principles) they could not figure out a principled way out, so they in effect said: To hell with innocents

This is the wall that many of us wind up running into; to what extent do we go to try and avoid the death of innocents in an aggressor nation. I don't see anyone calling for the senseless slaughter of our troops in order to save innocent lives, however, I do see many calling for a reasoned approach to how we deal with these same innocents in wartime.

I would also like to read your proposal, Shayne.

L W

Thanks Michael, great title for the thread!

In the interest of doing justice to the discourse with George Smith, it would be nice to see the last several posts which are directed at George, as well as his replies moved to their own thread. Someone who is browsing the site and is familiar with him may miss out on a good discusssion by it being hidden(contained?) within one which appears to be mainly centered on Adam Reed.

It is not my intent to tell Michael or Kat how to run their site, but more to do justice to the exchanges between George and other knowledgeable posters on OL.

L W

(Note from Administrator: This post has been copied from here.)

In the interest of doing justice to the discourse with George Smith, it would be nice to see the last several posts which are directed at George, as well as his replies moved to their own thread. Someone who is browsing the site and is familiar with him may miss out on a good discusssion by it being hidden(contained?) within one which appears to be mainly centered on Adam Reed.

It is not my intent to tell Michael or Kat how to run their site, but more to do justice to the exchanges between George and other knowledgeable posters on OL.

L W

I appreciate your posting of this, Roger. Aesthetics is a long way from being one of my strong suits insofar as on a discussional level, but as with a lot of people I know what I find pleasing even if I can't always say why.

I also enjoyed the fact that Jeff wrote the review, I like reading his posts from Solo, especially when he is in a somewhat combative mood.

L W

Sure, why not!