bmacwilliam

No. Clearly no. I have not just explained why, I have PROVEN why. No, the burka/niqab is NOT a religious symbol, is a cultural thing. It is all about oppression and not about religion at all. Now you're just talkin' crazy. What's with all the killing? A single smack up side the head will do the trick. Wrong. Many symbols are universally crystal-clear. Umm... Men wear rings too. There's an equality thing here. If an equal propertion of men wore burkas/niqabs and walked behind their wives, and needed a female escort to go out in public and... and... and... you might have a beginning of a point. They don't - ever, and therefore you have no point. No it's not absurd at all. It's a clear, direct, unapologetic and open submission of subservience to men. What's also clear is that your irrational fear of government intrusion clouds even your fundamental libertarian restriction of choice/inalienable rights. That's what is truly absurd. Bob

I believe that when you read her work, you will see that while the logic of the above is rather solid, her premises are wrong. So how do you get there? Start with bad premises and good logic. This will take you to many fantasy worlds... Bob

You kill your own argument. Nuns and Priests are not laymen(women). Therfore, in most cases at least, this is an individual's choice. Muslim women cannot choose not to be muslim women - certainly not in a muslim country and practically not in a muslim family. The fact that this dress is NEVER chosen other than under religious influence definitively PROVES beyond a shadow of a doubt that the choice is coerced and is not free. If it was a free choice, then free people would choose it, however rarely. They don't - ever. This dress is both a symbol and an implementation of repression/submission(to men, not God) and even a libertarian says that you can't willingly submit to slavery. The other dress examples you cite are NOT slavery/submission symbols (at least to other men). Your argument dies several ways. Bob

Here's a little inconvenient "fact" for you Martin. In virtually every instance in a free society where Islam is not present now or in the past, almost every single woman who is alive now OR has EVER lived, has NOT chosen to dress in a manner with only her eyes showing. Sure there are religious orders that dress in ways approaching this, but the point is that outside of coercive pressure, women basically NEVER, EVER choose this. Therefore, the possibility that these women actively and properly (by your definition) choose this Objectively approaches zero. Bob

You are making wide generalizations regarding "common techniques" and attributing these to my arguments and that's inappropriate. The problem with 15 year old girls is that even when they're adults they're choice is tainted (and not inferred) because of a lifetime of oppression and abuse. So a 25 yo woman who chooses to remain in this situation does NOT have valid choice. I remind you this is your argument, not mine. You apply this same reasoning (rightly so) to Saudi Arabia. But then your argument completely jumps the shark. You say France is free. Try living life as a young girl in a fundamentalist Islamic family in France and tell me how free you are. Your argument says her choice is only a "so called" choice in Saudi Arabia, but a "real" choice in France. France being free is irrelevant. The individual's situation is the only relevant fact. What if she was locked up in a basement? In France this is different? Nonsense. Your argument is inconsistent and irrational. EDIT: And I only stated that prostitution is highly immoral - especially for the purchaser. Should it be illegal? Different question and I'm inclined to say no. Bob

Complete nonsense. "Has it ever occurred to you that the women who dress this way choose to do so of their own free will?" The same argument is used to describe 15 year old girls in plural marriages - both irrational. This nonsense in no way justifies abuse. It is foolish to believe that just because "free will" can be snuck into the scene that these women have "chosen" this path. The so-called "choice" is almost always a result of years of abuse and in the vast majority of cases simply doesn't count as a choice. Same with prostitution. Sure this is "choice" for some women, but most often (almost always) it's a choice of complete desperation, and while I do not defend arresting these women, I contend that it an immoral act of the highest(lowest) order for a man to hire one. Bob Or go to a Nevada brothel? Worse than rape or murder? Kidnapping, rape and then murder? Burning a family alive in an arson fire? Genocide? The hardest thing about reading stuff on line is people really not knowing what they are talking about. --Brant What the hell are you talking about? Nowhere did I say that that it is worse that the crimes you mention. However, it is indeed firmly in the abuse category and as a result is a very serious moral transgression. Would you rather have your daughter get beat up once, or become a prostitute? Bob

Complete nonsense. "Has it ever occurred to you that the women who dress this way choose to do so of their own free will?" The same argument is used to describe 15 year old girls in plural marriages - both irrational. This nonsense in no way justifies abuse. It is foolish to believe that just because "free will" can be snuck into the scene that these women have "chosen" this path. The so-called "choice" is almost always a result of years of abuse and in the vast majority of cases simply doesn't count as a choice. Same with prostitution. Sure this is "choice" for some women, but most often (almost always) it's a choice of complete desperation, and while I do not defend arresting these women, I contend that it an immoral act of the highest(lowest) order for a man to hire one. Bob

Well, it's hard to deny the traditional French "challenges" with racial issues - Quebec too of course ("l'argent et le vote ethnique..."). But I strongly support secular human rights trumping any religious or cultural practice. Dressing women in ninja-suits and treating them like crap is not acceptable - anywhere, anytime, period. Drawing a line is a good thing. Bob

You mean other than the integration of Quebec into the British Empire and the ongoing resentment of the English ruling class? Bob

Multiculturalism is a simple nonsensical contradiction. If the desired outcome of racial respect/harmony is desired, multiculturalism works directly against this. All that is required for racial or cultural discrimination to thrive is a disparity of value to exist. If 'Tony' the Italian business owner really doesn't like blacks, he preferentially hires Italians. If Tony likes blacks, but really embraces and loves his Italian culture more, he preferentially hires Italians. Same difference. People forget racism has two sides. "Embracing" your culture is racism, pure and simple. Bob

You are entitled to believe this, notwithstanding as profoundly nonsensical as it is. The west (at least officially) is tolerant of this within the boundaries of secular human rights and non-interference. However, it is also very clear that Muslims must learn to be tolerant of people that believe that Islam is pure rubbish and want nothing to do with it. Unless Muslims can accept this, conflict will be ever-present. Bob

Another.. Rothbard:"Other metaphors bodily and misleadingly transplanted from physics include: “equilibrium,” “elasticity,” “statics and dynamics,” “velocity of circulation,” and “friction.” So, it seems obvious that "elasticity" as defined in Economics is a no-no - a useless, misleading transplant from Physics. Rothbard: "The laws of human action are therefore qualitative, and, in fact, it should be clear that free will precludes quantitative laws. Thus, we may set forth the absolute economic law that an increase in the supply of a good, given the demand, will lower its price; but if we attempted to prescribe with similar generality how much the price would fall, given a definite increase in supply, we would shatter against the free-will rock of varying valuations by different individuals." Except that we now have a precise and quantified number for the mathematically defined elasticity constant he dismisses in the first case. The number may not mean a whole lot, but it means at the very least "the ratio of quantities, of which the intricate relationship we may not understand, nevertheless evaluates to exactly this number under these conditions". To be clear, it may be of limited utility - maybe, but outright dismissal I just don't understand. In fact, in the close proximity of the quantities in question, this determination could very well have excellent predictive value. Bob

Rothbard: "The Mathematical Method: Not only measurement but the use of mathematics in general in the social sciences and philosophy today, is an illegitimate transfer from physics. In the first place, a mathematical equation implies the existence of quantities that can be equated, which in turn implies a unit of measurement for these quantities." This is a very weak argument. It seems to me this is an under-appreciation of what type of information mathematical equations can relay. A mathematical equation describing human wants or other "free will" psychological traits may be problematic, but this is not what he asserts. He asserts much more, ie "but the use of mathematics in general in the social sciences and philosophy today, is an illegitimate transfer". This I think is flat out wrong. Mathematical equations may, and often do in Economics and Physics, state simple conservation laws that are indeed quite appropriately described with variables and equations. However, even a murkier quantity as he describes can also be expressed in mathematics without committing the error he describes at all. Rothbard: "All attempts to discover such constants (such as the strict quantity theory of money or the Keynesian “consumption function”) were inherently doomed to failure." Ok, this makes sense to me on one level. Here is the function: C = c0 + c1Yd The complexity (or simplicity for that matter) of the c1 quantity is not addressed, and perhaps maybe it can't be, so in that sense, Rothbard is correct. But he clearly throws out the baby with the bathwater here. The equation tells us this: What we consume equals what we consume independent of income plus what we consume due to some (not elaborated) relationship with income. So, again, to discover c1 may indeed be impossible (at least on an individual level), but the overall general assertion could be true and at the very least, it certainly doesn't mean that the math is a illegitimate transfer from Physics. At the highest level, it is a simple conservation law assertion. Thoughts? Bob

Peter, George has a legit beef with your posting style. I can't tell whose words these are. Either way, I think this misses the point again and doesn't help. FWIW, Bill Dwyer commits the fallacy I mentioned very readily. Ask him about tabula rasa and see how long it takes for this to appear. Bob

I'm not entirely clear on your description of the Objectivist position, but that's beside the point. Anyway, it doesn't fill me with confidence when I run up against things like this... Bob

I have read some of Rothbard's material, but certainly not in it's entirety and certainly in no systematic way. So what I thought I'd do is go back and read it in a more organised way. So, upon a recommendation, I am beginning with "The Mantle of Science". Dammit, I'm stumped! I think there are errors that are serious enough that I have to stop and solicit feedback from perhaps more learned folks on this topic in order that I can have confidence that continuing is worthwhile. Essentially, he's arguing that using standard deterministic scientific and mathematical approaches to economics is not appropriate - a position that I am admitedly skeptical of, but one I'd like to understand. Here's an example: Rothbard: "If we are determined in the ideas we accept, then X, the determinist, is determined to believe in determinism, while Y, the believer in free will, is also determined to believe in his own doctrine. Since man’s mind is, according to determinism, not free to think and come to conclusions about reality, it is absurd for X to try to convince Y or anyone else of the truth of determinism. In short, the determinist must rely, for the spread of his ideas, on the nondetermined, free-will choices of others, on their free will to adopt or reject ideas." The problem with this, I believe, is a textbook begging-the-question fallacy. The argument assumes that any "choice" must be a "free will choice" and so the person must have free will to change their mind and believe in determinism. This leaves out the obvious possibility that the 'choice' is simply the perception of choice and not truly free (however likely this is a different question and while relevant perhaps, is NOT relevant to the form of the argument). The consciousness argument of this form however I believe is NOT fallacious, but I digress. But regardless of any implications, isn't the form of his argument clearly fallacious? How am I wrong? Bob

Except that 'evolution' implies an increased level of success in a little endeavour called sexual reproduction. Until the physics department aspies get laid more that the football team I think your hypothesis is a little flawed. Bob

Sorry, I don't see this as consistent. If "it should not be the case that anyone has a right to judge which use is "better" or "higher" in order to determine whether it is property at all" then we need a very specific description of which "use" qualifies as an acceptable or "higher" use, or whether we need to move on to the "Who was there first?" rule no? Bob

She may have had a point that it is perhaps not a great idea to define one's ethical principles based on emergencies, but what I'm saying is that if your ethical principles don't apply in emergencies, then they're no good. I think she was struggling with the fact that her ethics broke down under such circumstances. Bob

It's not OK, it's one of the central problems of present systems. Again, see my book (I sound like a broken record, but you keep touching on key problems I've addressed there). Shayne Very interesting, and yes, I'll read the book. I assume this view of property rights must be received as heresy among those who have a stronger view on ownership?

If the answer to these questions are not clear, then the ethical rules that govern them are either incomprehensibly complex, or contradictory. Either way, not good. "Does the Captain on a ship or plane have the right to throw a stowaway overboard?" No. "Does a mother..." Don't understand the question. "Suppose a robber walks..." Great question! Short answer is no, can't shoot. Longer answer provided if you're interested. "What if you are a felon..." No. "Does the citizen..." Vague, need specifics what does "rebel" entail. I think these questions are good, but are quite easily and quickly answered with a morality that is consistent. Again, I think the 'dilemma' only arises if one's ethics are broken. FWIW, I think Rand's emergencies are a perfect example of a fatally flawed moral system. Bob

Better question: When the conflict is your liberty vs someone else's life, what gives?

They couldn't claim unlimited (time or space) ownership to the land, but only to the parcel they were using and only so long as they didn't abandon it, and should have remained free to hunt so long as that was a viable means of survival. They had a right to the property they carried with them or obtained through original acquisition (the buffalo). Shayne So, why is it OK to have a rightful ownership claim to land we don't use in this day and age? What has changed that we can own land and not use it now, but not then? Bob

But if morality includes the fundamental concept of non initiation of force, then isn't a morality that doesn't apply in this situation incomplete or fundamentally flawed? Doesn't morality come from a deeper place than "established method" ? Bob As I said in a later post, there are all sorts of different concepts with different meanings and presuppositions. The contemporary concept of title to real estate is the result of a very long process of cultural, intellectual, and historical evolution. The way things are now didn't just happen overnight or follow ipso facto from moral concepts. Had collective farming or the hunter-gatherer lifestyle proven superior, we would not have individually owned plots of land. Interesting, thank you. What constitutes 'proven superior'? What main factors are at the base of one concept supplanting another? Bob

If you want the fundamentals, read my book. If you do decide to read it I would be interested in your feedback, in particular, if it made any difference at all in your understanding the individualism stance. Shayne Ok then I will do that.