Matus1976

Fair enough, but do you not consider "life qua man" to be the objective standard of morality? I thought that a universal amongst objectivists. "Qua man" raises the question of what does that mean? I decline to participate in such a discussion as I don't have time. --Brant That is a good topic for an interesting discussion, but in the context of this discussion, whether your objective basis for morality is an abstraction of environmentalism or 'life qua man', the difference possibly of what I might consider "life qua man" and what you might consider it to be are probably orders of magnitude smaller than what we collectively share in 'life qua man' and the vague environmentalists abstraction of a proper existence. i.e. it's unimportant to the essence of the article, which I'm wondering if you have any constructive criticisms or comments on that?

Fair enough, but do you not consider "life qua man" to be the objective standard of morality? I thought that a universal amongst objectivists.

Objectivists consider Life as the objective standard of morality, the basis of ethical judgment. Anything which harms life is evil, anything which is beneficial to life is good. Now by “Life” objectivists do not mean the mere mechanical perpetuation of existence, but a particular kind of life, a fulfilling Aristotlean Eudaemonic life proper to rational beings living in the real world in voluntary co-operation with other rational beings. Those beings must have goals, values, and engage in a productive course in life to achieve that which they value and not be co-dependant or exploitative. Someone who values their mechanical existence over their ‘good life’ will find himself quickly betraying those things that make life enjoyable for the sake of things that allow him to exist, leading in a perpetual spiral toward a less meaningful existence. Rand clarifies this as ‘Life qua Man’ that is, the thing’s proper to life in the context of an individual’s values and Man’s nature. Nihilistic skeptics, atheists, and philosophers throughout the ages have insisted that there is no such thing as an ‘objective’ morality. Theists will make a claim that the word of god handed down as moral commandments are in fact an ‘objective’ basis for morality, and in their case they use ‘objective’ to mean something like ‘absolute’ and ‘irrefutable’ in this their use of the term objective has infiltrated the skeptical philosophers, like Michael Shermer, using the religious definition of objective also insists there is no ‘objective’ basis for morality and justifies this by saying how can you say this or that is right or wrong, according to what? Shermer misunderstands ‘objective morality’ when he uses this a criticism of Objectivism, as if Objectivism has identified through revelation the one true morality, instead of identifying the only one proper to rational beings in the real world. But when theists use ‘objective’ morality they hijack the concept of truth and deliberation through reason and usurp it with revealed dogma. To them, ‘objective’ morality is something that demands obedience no matter what and achieves it only through an omniscient omnipotent being as revealed through an elite aristocratic few only possible to those few. But skeptics are wrong to use this as the idea for ‘objective’ morality. We do not say that the ‘objective’ mass of 1 cubic centimeter of water is 1 g because it is announced by the fabric of space-time or decreed by an omniscient being and revealed through divination. They are ‘objective’ because they are the product of reason, logic, and observation. Objective in the context of science is something that is strived for that is removed from subjective interpretation and bias. An “Objective” morality is not something ingrained into the fabric of the universe in the sense that it can be deduced through Newton’s laws of motion or quantum mechanics, as skeptics seem to think is a requirement for morality to be objective, (in doing so rendering the very concept of objective pointless) but it is objective in the sense that it is removed from subjective interpretation or bias, it is objective because it is the natural logical consequence of the laws of physics and the nature of rational beings that exist in a real universe. Liberals are still confused about this, theists have it easy, they look it up in their book, argue a little about interpretation, then decree something as ‘objectively’ immoral. But nothing that only an elite few have access to who provide official interpretations is ‘objective’, it is not something discernable by any person using their mind, reason, and observation - as anything that is called ‘objective’ should by definition be. Liberals aren’t sure where to go, they know that, for instance, killing someone is wrong, but not sure if it is right to say someone in another country is wrong to kill someone else when their culture makes it ok, such as ‘honor killing’, the inhumane treatment of the ‘untouchables’ in India, etc. Richard Dawkins wrestles with this contradiction in ‘the God Delusion’ where he associates religious indoctrination with child abuse, but then is a little confused about what that demands of him morally, if one is witnessing child abuse, expending a reasonable amount of energy to stop it is moral to him, so if a country is indoctrinating children with a hate filled ideology, abusing them essentially, it should be morally defensible to remove from power the tyrants of that nation. But this get’s in the way of the moral relativism, ‘tolerance’ and ‘multi-culturalism’ liberals profess so strongly (but rarely extend to inhabitants of their own nation who hold different opinions!) Some Liberals though, I realized, do have an objective basis for morality, which they seemingly adopt whole heartedly, that of environmentalism. In the way that Life qua Man is the objective standard of morality to Objectivists, some vague platonic ideal abstraction of a pure and pristine environment is the objective standard of morality to liberal environmentalists. Whatever nation, culture, or creed, regardless of multi-culturalism and ‘tolerance’, if you’re burning down trees, killing cuddly animals, or dumping trash in rivers, all that bottled up moral rage and condemnation that liberals have been holding comes billowing forth. Now, you could be killing people because of their ethnicity, holding the people in your nation as literal hostages and running it like a prison camp, etc, but moral condemnation is sparse. They just say “who are we to say they are wrong” or “That’s just their culture” But if you’re burning coal, forget it! You are the incarnate of all that is evil! This falls right into line with the growing criticism that environmentalism is just filling the psychological void of religious thought that secularism in the west has left gaping wide open. It has their garden of Eden – “Sustainability”, the fall of man from that where everyone lived in blissful harmony with nature (and not the painful disgusting short brutish lives they actually lived), it’s emotional disregard for facts, it’s original sin, and now, it’s ‘objective’ basis for morality. One might try to argue that environmental degradation affects everyone and that’s why it’s morally objectionable to everyone everywhere, but this argument fails for two reasons. First it implies that unless something directly affects ME then I make no moral judgment on it, so what if you’re raping my next door neighbor! In fact an assault on any person on the planet is an assault on everyone’s rights because leaving it alone promulgates a world where that kind of thing is ok, where rights in general are not respected. It is always in your best interest to oppose the assault and infringement on rights any where in the world, because when you do not it will always, eventually, come back to bite you. Which leads to the second, the harm which comes from the promulgation of murderous tyranny, which is so often ignored because of ‘multi-culturalism’ and things like ‘self determination’ (as if a small group of thugs getting hundreds of billions in weapons from an expansionistic murderous tyranny like the Soviet Union and using that to enslave and force to war an entire nation, such as was the case of Vietnam, was anything remotely like ‘self determination’) is far more detrimental to your average person’s well being than coal power is. While it is true that these kinds of nations, the most unjust when life is your standard of morality, are also the worst polluters, it is also very true that they are the source and primary fuel for aggression, democide, famines, wars, terrorism, and pandemics. At the end of WWI, Winston Churchill insisted that British Troops assist the Czars in defending themselves against the revolution which brought Lenin and communism to power, but the war weary west labeled him a war monger. Less than a thousand troops took the Czars with little resistance. It is said that in the making of a movie some years later glorifying the revolution more people were injured than in the actual revolution itself. A little opposition may have gone a long way, but instead what rose to power was the most murderous tyranny in the history of humanity. At the end of WWII, Winston Churchill again warned that we should move on the Soviet Union, while it is now at it’s weakest, and they again called him a war monger, and so we were thrust into an existential prisoners dilemma game with a murderous expansionistic tyranny that brought the entire world to the brink of complete nuclear annihilation. It was not the Soviet Union’s dirty coal plants or poorly designed nuclear power plants that killed 60 million people this century (more than twice as many as were killed in World War II) and motivated the invasion of 1/3rd of the nations on the planet, thrusting dozens into civil wars and perpetual slavery. It was not the emissions of the crematoriums in Auschwitz that did not meet EPA guidelines that enabled Hitler to kill 20 million Jews, Gypsies, ‘unfits’ and homosexuals (incidentally, Stalin killed more Jews than Hitler did, but he just killed them along with other people, so it was not ‘genocide’ in the eyes of the semantically obsessed morally confused west) It was not raping the earth for steel that started the most dreadful war in all of humanity, it was the alliance of two militaristic tyrannical xenophobic megalomaniacal cultures and one merely power hungry expansionist culture. It was appeasement, indifference, moral relativism, isolationism, and utopian wishful thinking that ignored these murderous tyrannies and every reasonable warning sign until too late that wreaked this havoc upon humanity and the inhabitants of the world, and it will be those same characteristics that will wreak havoc upon humanity and indeed all life on earth in the future.

Nice piece of work, there, especially on the atoms. We freely admit that we have only lecture notes, that the corpus is lost, and then excoriate the man for what he did not say. Thanks. I've read that Kuhn in rejecting out of context dismissals of Aristotle like Baal's here instigated his formulating his 'paradigm shifts' concept. Baal should take note. and, ironically, the same people who justify in the exact same way slavery in their own day. Aristotle wrote that slavery was moral if the slave lived, objectively, a better life as a slave than if he was a free man. The exact same justification liberals have for their paternalism. But in the context of ancient greece, most slaves came from the defeated opponents in war, and slavery was seen as humane because the alternative was merely execution. Good comments. I've taken an significant interest in the renaissance period lately as I'll be traveling to Italy and Greece in the spring of 09, and after listening to a few lectures on the topic have a different assessment than my previous blanket dismissal. One lecturer made a compelling case that the middle ages fostered an environment of debate and founded the first universities. I'd object however that most of that debate was theological in nature, and not discussions of natural philosophy. Where they debated Aristotle was reconciling his notion of Pride as a virtue against the christian virtue of humility. I"d probably agree on the relationship of Roman mysticism to the middle ages, however there was one major difference, that of the monotheism of Christianity, which promulgated greater and greater debates over less and less important things, as any monolithic religion would demand, and also celebrated (unlike Islam) meekness, passivity, humility, and even suffering. What middle ages peasant, who throughout their life witnessed the glorification of saints tortured to death and christ suffering a brutal death for their sins, being told that suffering in this life is irrelevant when compared to an eternity in heaven, would stand up and risk his life in opposition of a murderous tyrant? especially when great medieval philosophers insisted that tyrants were placed in power by god to test the faith of their subjects. Romans, while still mystical, had a profound concern with the practical real world, and their material achievements reflected that. Greeks and Romans celebrated strength of body, mind, and will. Christianity celebrated suffering and passivity. This certainly contributed to the diminishing of the Roman empire. However, Roman's appeared to have virtually no interest in science beyond the immediate material gains of the moment, and read Greek philosophy almost as pop culture without developing and introspecting it on their own. Beyond Cicero, who was mostly a moral philosopher, we have little to no contributions from Rome in the arena of philosophy. It was really the culture of intellectual questioning (originating in questioning theology) of the middle ages later combined with a revival of interest in natural philosophy that sparked the renaissance period and the science, material progress on earth, and philosophical progress that would soon follow. Without the obsession of passivity and discerning the one true 'revealed' narrative (Romans would simply add another God, Christians would go to war to determine if Jesus was God, or God's son, or the blood of sacrament was considered cannibalism) this renaissance might have happened much earlier.

The motion pictures butchered the contents of the novel. Ba'al Chatzaf Only the dumb parts.

I agree whole heartedly, the LOTR series is probably the best series of movies yet made, certainly some of the best movies (story, acting, cinematography, directing, score, theme, philosophy, etc) by every salient measurement is a great accomplishment, except, perhaps in 'staying perfectly true to the book' Baal and Ted's reactions are what my friend Johnny calls "Nerd Rage" I re-watch the series once or twice a year. Have you seen the extended versions? Even better... Exactly! Tolkien was a linguist and a luddite, his point of writing the LOTR series was to come up with some inspiring English lore, attack modernization and technology (that is what he was quoted as saying the goblins and armies of mordor represented) and make up his own languages. The movies took that crap out and left the good story.

Exactly, this is the problem with the 'world peace' nuts, they don't particular care WHY people are fighting, only that they are, and they should stop. They don't care about Justice, or self defense, it's all irrelevant. This I believe is a remnant of the christian 'virtue' of meekness, passivity, and suffering, which still resides even in these allegedly free spirited hippies. You won't see muslim's coming across a battle and saying 'ah, please stop fighting!' they'll say, 'whose right, and let me join in!'

Ah, BaalChatzaf loves his out of context Aristotle bashing... Actually Aristotle reasoned that the natural tendency was for all objects to move toward the center of the Earth, which he argued was a sphere, because it was the natural tendency for all matter to clump together and the natural shape of that clumping would be a sphere (he also presented numerous empirical proofs that the earth was a sphere, that we see the masts of ships before the hull, that in traveling south we see constellations that we do not see further north, and that the shadow cast by the earth on the moon was round) and within the context of the observational abilities of the ancient world, it was a reasonable extrapolation to think that heavier items fell faster, since it was rare to find two objects of the same volume but which had largely different rates, and even rarer to be in a situation to drop them any significant distance to determine the different rates Atoms as defined by the ancients, not 'atoms' as we use the term today. Those atomists atoms were indivisible entities which retained their identity and were separated by the void. 'Atoms' of today are not individisible, and in fact aristotle proposed that an arrangement of a minute amount of material is required for an entity to have an identity, which is much more similar to today's atomic theory than the atomic theory of democratus. Just a lucky guess of course though. Again, he was not discounting the 'vacuum' of modern physics (which is not a void but is in fact filled with quantum fluctuations) and a region of 'space-time' but was discrediting the ancient argument of a 'void' which was an area of non-existence between individisble entities. Aristotle was an observational first and foremost. His father was a physician, he texts on animals were nothing but observations and descriptions. Taxonomy of living organisms, which he basically founded, was by it's nature observational. He identified the fact that the male octopus inseminated the female using the tip of a tentacle, something not confirmed until the 18th century. His evidence that the Earth was round was clear and observational. The notion that Aristotle sat around and imagined everything is ludicrous. He likely spent nearly every waking moment engaging in his passionate curiosity, examining anything and everything he could. It is more likely that some of these things were simply too difficult to test, too difficult to observe, or believed too obvious by the ancients to spend a significant amount of time examining. Why don't you write a text predicting the state of scientific knowledge 2000 years after your death and see how well you score? As where his descriptions of physical phenomea, such as the evidence of the spherical nature of the Earth. So now you hold it against Aristotle that he didnt also invent the microscope and glass lenses? Jeez. The idea that Aristotle was responsible for this is also absurd. Aristotle did not arrogantly proclaim he was the final arbiter of all that was true, his writings are full or reasoned arguments and discussions about ideas with other contemporary greeks, reflecting the notion that in ancient greece debates and discussions on natural philosophy were normal. It was the christian theology of the middle ages that largely dominated the serious lack of development of natural philosophy, an idealogy that focused on debating matters of biblical interpretation and theology, not matters of the practical world and natural philosophy. The same behavior was seen with the adopting of Galen's medical texts for nearly a thousands years lauded as pure and complete (Galen actually did arrogantly proclaim himself to be the final arbiter of knowledge) This stagnation in knowledge was a product of the middle ages. Isaac Newton, a devout admirer of Aristotle, himself wrestled with the fact that his own ideas contradicted Aristotle, but ultimately appealed to Aristotle in his final rejection of Aristotle, quoting Aristotle he wrote in his own notes "Aristotle is dear to me, but dearer still is the truth" paraphrasing Aristotle's rejection of Plato.

I don't know... Michelangelo pretty much sucked at painting women, unless they were all body builders with bad breast implants.

Bob, That's easy. 1. You start with public disclosure so evident it cannot be ignored. This creates public outrage. 2. Then you send in a military and take out the bad guys. 3. Then you send in some relief to get the starving and sick people back on their feet and organized. 4. Once they are productive, you stop the relief and start trading with them. 5. The good guys win. Getting this ball rolling is where the Internet is taking the bad guys out in closed off regions. There is no sovereign right to commit genocide. Preventing it is one of the few legitimate reasons for a UN to exist. Exactly. I would add 1) form an international coalition of free nations, which happen to be the richest and most militarily powerful ones. 2) organize and identify a '12 step' program which forces nations to move from shitty murderous dictatorships to representative market based constitutional democracies 2a) demand international monitoring groups have unrestricted access 2b) all foreign aide will be distributed by the international coalition or sponsored NGO organizations. 3) Start with an equally applicable rule of law, then constitutionally defined civil liberties, then market reforms / representative democracy. Nations much abide by strict timelines or suffer military consequences. 4) military actions will be strategic and directed against the ruling elite. 5) occupying force will be international and focused establishing the above (rule of law, etc) Co-operative dictators should be rewarded with amnesty (sad to suggest this, but ultimately it may make things much better much quicker) etc. Bob's matra seems to be Homer Simpsons - "The First step of failure is trying!"

Arrows meant for people have tips arranged horizontally with respect to the notch, because an upright human's rib cage is roughly horizontal. Arrows meant for quadraped animals have vertical tips because their rib cages are roughly vertical. Possibly what Ted was referring to?

What exactly are you doing to translate your opposition of US sponsored military conflicts into action? Are you funding enemies? Are you sabotaging military supply lines? Are you attacking domestic military installations? This is the military that is confiscating your tax dollars and using it to kill thousands of innocent people! And you sit idly by patting yourself on the back for your internet warrior hyperbole! What, oh, you have 'other' priorities? Let me know when you launch an attack against a US domestic base and I'll join the US Military (actually, could you let me know a few days in advance, I might want to let some 'friends' know) Your argument is based on the absurd premise that anything we believe or support we must devote our entire life to. I am pro-choice, does that mean I must march in parades, donate to organizations, volunteer with groups, harass congressman, etc? I like law enforcement and justice systems, does that mean I must become a police officer or a judge? I support firefighters, does that mean I must be a firefighter? As for what I do, not that I am morally obligated to do anything to justify my existence of my opinions, but most of my free time and extra money is dedicated to the Lifeboat Foundation whose explicit goal is to ensure the continuation of humanity and intelligent life on earth, a 'bigger' issue than war and democide. I spoke on their behalf to the Navy War College's Strategic Studies group, for over an hour, on this exact issue - A principled base foreign policy on the long term eradication of dictatorships because of the existential threats that dictatorships pose to all life on earth. Hundreds of thousands is a gross exaggeration and completely untrue. A more accurate estimate is probably 60,000, and the overwhelming majority of these (in excess of 98%) were killed by other wannabe tyrants trying to prevent a stable democracy in Iraq or to prop up their own murderous tyrant. Saddam Hussain killed 2 million people during his 30 year reign, which is about 5,000 people per month, his son's would have likely carried on an equally brutal reign, the average per month deaths in Iraq at the worst of the violence was around 2,000 per month, thus the US led invasion was saving over 3,000 lives per month, or >30,000 per year. Never mind the wars and genocidal campaigns Saddam would have launched in the future, and his state sponsoring of terrorism. Still, many fewer people would have been killed if all the free western nations were involved in the stabilization, instead they sit on their morally relativistic laurels like yourself conveniently excusing themselves for doing nothing. Oh, are you talking about the Kurds? Oh way, and this was different to Iraq before how? Yes, that's true. Yes, mostly by communists. More Vietnamese were killed in the six months following the fall of Saigon then were killed in the entire war. Over 200,000 Vietnamese soldiers died defending the right of South Vietnam to exist and to not have their property confiscated by an expansionist murderous government. The subsequent collapse of neighboring nations to communism led to the murders of 4.5 million more people. You, like most expediency of the moment pacifists, see two people fighting and whine 'why can't we just get along!' and never bother to find out that one is trying to kill the other to take his property and kill his family. All that matters to you is peace, i.e. that lack of conflict, not justice, not integrity, not freedom, just non-fighting. A prison state can be a pretty peaceful place, peace without justice is just a well run slave camp. Bull shit postmodernistic crap, get your history from somewhere other than movies. This narrative is that the bombing of Cambodia by American pissed off Cambodians enough that they killed 2.5 million other Cambodians. Yes it's as idiotic as it sounds. This originated with liberal dumbasses who tried to justify their opposition to the Vietnam War by blaming the horrific atrocities that befell the region after the abandonment on the US involvement in the first place, and not the murderous expansionist global empire of the Soviet Union bent on taking over every nation on earth and that scumbags who catapulted themselves to murderous tyrant status through aligning with this power, and the horrific utopian visions they held. The Khmere Rouge came to power because the US abandoned Lon Nol, because the democratically controlled congress demanded that they have 'peace, not guns' Yes, and many of those psychological casualties have come from post-modernistic morons who insisted that it was not right to assist a nation in defending itself against murderous communist expansionism. I oppose the draft. Yup, working to achieve your value of creating a safe free world without murderous communist expansionism actually costs money. A proper function of the military is self defense, and self defense is not waiting until bullets are flying at your head or enemy soldiers stomp on your land, self defense is not waiting until the soviet union invades and conquers every nation EXCEPT the US, until it poses absolutely no threat, and then upon being invaded respond with force, self defense IS the rational long term self interested action of all ways dealing the best blow you can against your worst enemy given finite resources and includes assisting allies with a harmony of interests in defending and defeating common threats.

Irrelevant No it's not, it requires a tremendous and near life long indoctrination and dehumanization of the perpetrators about the victims. Read about the "Rape of Nanking" and the lifelong indoctrination by the totalitarian xenophobic government of Japan that was required to make Japanese soldiers capable of such inhuman brutality. You are completely and utterly wrong here. If by genocide you confine it to it's popular connotation of purely ethnic persecution, then perhaps that is true. But DEMOCIDES, which is a much more appropriate term, includes in organized mass murder whether it is racial, religious, or national in origin. And DEMOCIDES have killed 4-6 times as many people in the 20th century as war has killed. Democide megamurderers Mao Ze Dong - 75 Million killed Joseph Stalin - 60 million (Stalin killed more Soviet Jews than Hitler killed Jews, he just killed them equally with everyone else) Hitler - 20 million etc These are deaths OUTSIDE of war caused intentionally by governments. The death toll from democide is far greater than the death toll from war. After studying over 8,000 reports of government caused deaths, Rummel estimates that there have been 262 million victims of democide in the last century. According to his figures, six times as many people have died from the inflictions of people working for governments than have died in battle.

The Vietnam war did a great deal to not only delay the expansion of the Soviet Empire but to also precipitate it's collapse. Today the territories making up the former soviet union constitute 6% of the worlds population and 3% of it's GDP. The US makes up 5% of the worlds population and >20% of the worlds GDP. Considering the extreme inefficiencies in command economies, to even reach that level of GDP required much more energy and effort than is obvious. Nations at similar economic levels of the Soviet Union have a GDP effeciency about 1/40th that of the United States (for every kWhr consumed X GDP per Capita is produced) While the height of spending in the Vietnam war for the US peaked at about 6% of GDP, the equated to almost 60% of the Soviet Unions GDP. Yes you read that correctly, at the height of the Vietnam War the Soviet Union was expending more than half it's entire GDP in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese did not fight with sticks in tunnels, they fought with tanks, artillery, MIG's and AK47's, and Anti-aircraft guns. The Vietnam war CRIPPLED the Soviet economy. The Afghan war and US supplied opposition disabled it, and the SDI program finally killed it. Cold War policy was to oppose and contain murderous expansionist communism anywhere possible, to always deal the best blow against our worst enemy with available resources. The Vietnam war was a strategic cold war victory, even though it was a defeat for South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Burma. It need not have been and the only reason defeat was regurgitated from the jaws of Victory was that the democratically controlled congress made military material aide to Indochina illegal. That's interesting. Do you have a source for that 60% figure? Yes, but not off the top of my head, I'll have to get back to you on that. But you can take the current economic status of the former soviet territories, now that they do not have the soviet propaganda machine lying about their productivity, and project it backward compared against our military spending in Vietnam and their estimated military spending.

You are unfamiliar with basic facts of history. The Vietnam war was OVER, it was WON, the nobel peace prizes where handed out (To Kissinger and a North Vietnamese General, who knowing they would turn around and invade again had the integrity to refuse it) Nixon's "Vietnamization" program was very successful, and should have been started much earlier. The last US combat troops left Vietnam in May of 1973, Saigon fell in April of 1975, that's TWO YEARS. South Vietnam could have defended itself indefinitely with US military material aide without a single combat troop. Instead, congress forbid any material aide, and South Vietnam fell, Laos fell, Burma fell, and Cambodia fell, precipitating one of the worst democides in human history. South Korea has been defended with minimal US military aide against Chinese and soviet communist aggression for over 50 years (although as the worlds 13th largest economy, it should do it on it's own now)

The Vietnam war did a great deal to not only delay the expansion of the Soviet Empire but to also precipitate it's collapse. Today the territories making up the former soviet union constitute 6% of the worlds population and 3% of it's GDP. The US makes up 5% of the worlds population and >20% of the worlds GDP. Considering the extreme inefficiencies in command economies, to even reach that level of GDP required much more energy and effort than is obvious. Nations at similar economic levels of the Soviet Union have a GDP effeciency about 1/40th that of the United States (for every kWhr consumed X GDP per Capita is produced) While the height of spending in the Vietnam war for the US peaked at about 6% of GDP, the equated to almost 60% of the Soviet Unions GDP. Yes you read that correctly, at the height of the Vietnam War the Soviet Union was expending more than half it's entire GDP in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese did not fight with sticks in tunnels, they fought with tanks, artillery, MIG's and AK47's, and Anti-aircraft guns. The Vietnam war CRIPPLED the Soviet economy. The Afghan war and US supplied opposition disabled it, and the SDI program finally killed it. Cold War policy was to oppose and contain murderous expansionist communism anywhere possible, to always deal the best blow against our worst enemy with available resources. The Vietnam war was a strategic cold war victory, even though it was a defeat for South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Burma. It need not have been and the only reason defeat was regurgitated from the jaws of Victory was that the democratically controlled congress made military material aide to Indochina illegal.

Of course you do, because it means you don't actually do anything except prance about looking good and patting yourself on the back for being a 'beacon of hope' I'm sure that if your next door neighbor was being beaten and raped, reminding her that you are a 'beacon of hope' will make her feel much better. First of all, a country which does not have free speech and a constitutional grantee of civil liberties and of emigration has no business being called a 'country' and is nothing more than a giant hostage camp ruled by thugs. Who gains is the free people of the world who enjoy the fruits of the labor of millions of more free people and the peace and prosperity which comes from the end of murderous dictatorial rule. Who pays is the murderous dictators. The obvious question it what is the proper rational reaction to the situation? It is for all the free nations of the world, which happen to be the richest and most militarily powerful, to form an international alliance which opposes the creation and promulgation of murderous dictatorships and enact change of these nations through various steps starting with diplomatic measure but ending always with the application of physical force strategically directed against the murderous rulers and the upper echelon of command. Liberal foreign policy is suicidally altruistic, conservative foreign policy is naively realpolitik sacrificing long term rational self interest for short term returns. A rational foreign policy is principle based opposition in our long term rational self interest to the assaults on individual civil liberties and threats that aggressive totalitarian nations pose. Just as individuals within a nation pool resources to oppose murderous thieves in their common interest, individuals in nations within the same planet are acting in their rational long term self interest opposing murderous dictatorships. You're friend should get out of that hippie coffee shop and travel to a nation which does not have rule of law nor constitutional protection of civil liberties to learn what a 'police' state is. Most nations which recieve foriegn aide refuse to let the donor nations actually distribute it or monitor the distribution. North Korea probably confiscates 3/4's of donated aid and resells it on the black market. This would be a good first demand of an alliance of free nations, we distribute our own aide, or monitor distribution by international NGO's. That way you ensure it get's where it is needed. Whether you agree with foreign aide or not, if there is going to be aide, it should not be handed blindly over to murderous thugs.

Korea, Vietnam (ten years of war!), Iraq I, Bosnia, IraqII. All undeclared wars wherein U.S. troops were killed, each one a citizen. Some end to war. Ba'al Chatzaf 1) The US did not start the Vietnam War, Korean War, or Iraq War (I or II) 2) The US has not gone to war with another liberal democratic constitutional republic 3) It is proper and just to assist allies with common interests in fighting common enemies (such as the South Vietnamese fighting Soviet Communism, or the South Koreans fighting the Chinese and Soviet backed communist North Koreans) I did not say "War has ended" and your reply is ignorant hyperbole and just cynical nihilism. War has ended between the US and Great Britain, Between the US and France, between the US and Germany, between the US and (any constitutional representative republic) The US does not run gulags or stasi, it does not imprison and work to death millions of it's own citizens for the crime of disagreeing with the government, or writing publications about free speech.

No, that's not your right. Whose posts are you reading? No, its not the same idea. One is an assault, the other is you choosing to no longer provide a service to someone. If you own a bank and 'call in a loan' because you don't like someone you have every right to do so, but you must suffer the consequences of your violation of contract. There is no such thing as 'rational self interest' in communism, it makes it illegal and punishable by death. Please familiarize yourself with communist nations.

It is empirically clear that the more representative a government is and the more it protects individual civil liberties the less likely it is to start a war, go to war, or kill it's own citizens. We have an end to war, it is the promulgation of constitutional market based democracies. From R.J. Rummel's "Power Kills" site - What specifically has been uncovered or verified about democracy and violence? First, well established democracies do not make war on and rarely commit lesser violence against each other. The relationship between democracy and international war has been the most thoroughly researched question and all who have investigated this have agreed--democracies do not fight among themselves. Possible exceptions to this, as of the war of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States, or the Spanish-American War, were found not to have been really between democracies or to have been cases in which one or another democracy was either newly established or marginally democratic. Second, the more two nations are democratic the less likely war or lesser violence between them. There is a scale of democraticness here, at one end of which are two undoubted democracies with no likelihood of war and virtually zero probability of lesser violence between them, and at the other end are those nations most undemocratic (the totalitarian ones) that have the greatest chance of war and other violence among themselves. This finding shows that democracy is not a simple dichotomy--democracy versus nondemocracy--but a continuum. The implications of this are profound, and will be sketched later. Third, the more a nation is democratic, the less severe its overall foreign violence. This finding in particular is disputed among researchers, but I will show in detail in Chapter 4** that on this there should be no disagreement--that the evidence, even in the studies of those who question it, is clear. Most of those investigating this, I will show, have defined war and violence in terms of frequencies and have been therefore misled. They have in effect equated the very small wars with total wars like World Wars I and II; and they have also equated a few dozen deaths in war for one country with that of several million killed for another. Fourth, in general the more democratic a nation, the less likely it will have domestic collective violence. Studies that include the relevant variables and indicators support this empirically. And those studies I have carried out specifically to test this are uniformly positive. Finally, in general the more democratic a nation, the less its democide. Although in the literature democracy has been suggested as a way of reducing genocide and mass murder, data for testing this empirically have been unavailable until recently. Indeed, so far I appear the only one to have explicitly tested this, and have found that democide is highly and inversely related to democracy. This holds up even when controls are introduced for economic development, education, national power, culture, and ethnic/racial and religious diversity. Case studies of the most extensive democides, such as that in the Soviet Union, communist China, Nazi Germany, and Cambodia support this conclusion.

Allowing or ingoring the growth of any form of murderous aggression is ALWAYS a danger to us. Whether it is in the short term by fomenting political instability or in the long term by promulgating the murderous dictatorships which breed the terrorists in the world, start all the wars, and originate all the epidemics, it is always in our long term rational self interest to oppose the growth of tyranny or the slaughter of innocents. Just as you find it reasonable to assist your next door neighbor when he is assaulted, or are ok with your money going to the apprehensions of his assailant, because ultimately it creates a safer world for you, you should do the same for your neighboring countries and human beings. Because it allows all the people who cause all the problems in the world, and may ultimately wipe out all life on earth, to grow in power. Not a good idea.

Jonathan loves putting words in Rand's mouth. What she said, from that quote was exactly this "If you are being punished by the government for being communist, that's different. But if private employers don't want to employ communists-if they, properly, consider them enemies of this country...the employee has no right to lie about it" If I am an employer, I should have every right to choose NOT to hire you for whatever reason I please, whether it is because you are a communist, an atheist, a kantianist, a born again christian, or a gay jewish black guy. You have no 'right' to be hired. If I ask you your affiliations and beliefs, and you refuse to answer, then I can refuse to hire you. Furthermore, you have no 'right' to be secretive about trying to over throw your government when you are planning to replace it with something much worse. The Venova cables revealed that virtually everyone questioned by the HUAC did in fact turn out to be a communist spy with direct ties to the Soviet Embassy. You seem to adopt the modern liberal post cold war mentality that the 'Red Scare' was just something a few silly people freaked out about for no reason, oblivious to the fact that soviet communism killed some 70 million people this century, communist spies stole the plans for the nuclear bomb and provided them to the soviet union, a communist assassinated a US president, and the Soviet Union had the official goal of turning every nation on the planet communist. A gay person has every right to be secretive with regard to his government, a wannabe murderous communist tyrant fomenting a revolution does not.

My god, they are going to start needing exponential notation on their currency soon.

There is actually a neurological disorder like this that manifests in the utter inability to make simple decisions. Sufferers may find themselves sitting on their bed staring at their shoes trying to decide which one to put on first for hours. I however attribute moments like your example to an internalized platonic idealism (I MUST find that 'perfect' meal!) and not adopting a good enough and best case scenario attitude which is a must for non-omniscient entities with a finite existence. Thanks Barbara! This is a great and critical point I was not aware of. Dragonfly, I think you are mixing two separate issues. 1) is the physical universe deterministic and predictable and 2) is human behavior deterministic and predictable if based on that universe. Modern physics shows that the universe is definitely not indefinitely predictable. But Artificial intelligence and computer science shows that a non-deterministic framework of the universe is not necessary for free will and decision making. Systems do not require fundamental randomness to be capable of choice. So even if there are no quantum mechanical random probabilistic functions of the brain, choices and decisions (as you suggest) can still be made and we can still have free will. The functional nature of choice is not clear yet, but you are right that a random universe is not necessary to achieve that, but it's unreasonable to then call a system capable of free will but based on a fixed mechanical predictable system to be 'deterministic' If an entity is capable of free will, however, in a mechanistic predictable universe, this implies that the results of the decisions of non-deterministic entities can have effects in the that mechanistic universe that are not ultimately predictable.

I agree the series has been decent so far, not great, and not as good as I would have hoped, but it's been ok. Babylon 5 remains one of the greatest shows ever made imo and yet the first season was terrible, so I'll give it a chance. For purists of the novels, many of the details of the plots have been changed, and most of the characters' psychology is different (except for Zedd's) But the details changed do not seem to be essentials to the theme, just plot particulars and seemingly primarily changed to make the story fit for self contained television episodes. I'm a little disappointed with the casting of Richard, and the way the character has been portrayed so far (imo a little whiny and immature) but hopefully the character will grow throughout the show.