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Michael, I posted a link to her explaining her position on fascism -- she's opposed. She's opposed to Obama as well. She likes Ron Paul (George's last presidential favorite; now, inexplicably, he seems to like Romney instead). The way I view her is as a good hearted person whose eyes are in the process of being opened. I have as yet seen no evidence to the contrary, and in this thread all I've seen is ad hominem. Shayne

Michael, I'm sure the details will be forthcoming. The arrest just happened recently. I see no reason to distrust her account. When someone is victimized by a looming police state, then when we know that the police state is indeed looming, the benefit of the doubt must go with the victim, not the repeat-offender perpetrator. Shayne

I continue to fail to understand why a man of your stature stoops insults and evasions of this kind. Or perhaps I just misperceived your stature. Shayne

Mikee, thanks for the purchase, I hope you get something of value out of it. Shayne

It's called "For Individual Rights", and it's at Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Individual-Rights-Treatise-Human-Relations/dp/0984587004/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278694389&sr=8-1 It'd be hard to be worse than me at it... Come to think of it I'm not sure if I announced it here or not, though it's slipped into the conversation here and there. I sent George a free copy, but I think he's just being kind by not reading/reviewing it given his attitude about my posts. Shayne

Who would ever have thought that George was just a useful idiot for fascism. Shayne

Well, I think George just answered my question for Brant. Is George a shill or just stupid? Or perhaps this is just his "try to make Shayne appear small" bit. It should not need to be spelled out to a man with George's background why it's a good idea to fight tyranny at the earliest stages, or why it is tyrannical to be be arrested and threatened with your picture and fingerprints to be put into a Federal database if you don't start behaving as they demand. Shayne

Here is some of Naomi's anti-fascist work: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment Perhaps instead of ad hominem attacks on Naomi, someone might want to actually see what she says and review it. Or perhaps not. Perhaps they think it's not important to help to Americans identify the fact that their government is sliding toward fascism. Shayne

Maybe I should put REB in charge of marketing my book. I think only Brant bought a copy... Shayne

I have no idea what "hypocrisy for freedom" means. Reason and freedom are corollaries; to be a hypocrite is to be unreasonable and that can only undercut freedom. Shayne

George's knee-jerk ostracizing reaction to this reminds me of ARI's approach to so many things over the years. If someone said something wrong, then everything about them is suspect. George takes this to an extreme in being suspicious about an illegal arrest, where the backdrop is increasing tyranny that should make one think that illegal arrests are not uncommon. The opposite approach is at least as distasteful: always looking for common ground and never criticizing. And yet these are the the two prevailing approaches in the political realm. It is unsurprising that a rational approach is the minority view. What is perhaps surprising is that George wouldn't use a rational approach himself. Shayne

I am not impressed by people who oppose one kind of tyranny because they wish to impose another kind of tyrannny. History is full of such hypocrites. I have seen numerous interviews with Wolf, and I have read quite a bit of her stuff on the Net. I have no interest in reading her book. Ghs There's a time and a place for focusing on her hypocrisy. How would you like it if I pointed out your hypocrisies every time your name was mentioned? Your attacks on her just aren't relevant to this event. Shayne

I agree with that criticism, but her evasion is easily explained from subtle psychological issues, not as a bald-faced lie. I've seen you George engage in far worse evasions than that on OL. Shayne

None of that is relevant to this thread George. The subject here isn't Naomi, it's tyranny, and by all appearances, she's genuinely trying to fight it. If you want to make a case that she's not, she does have a book on the subject. Shayne

http://www.corporations.org/media/

While I appreciated REB's allusions to humane behavior, I can't but wonder whether calling someone a "degenerate Objectivist" on the grounds of their own independent thinking counts as humane behavior. If Phil is to be pitied for the response he got here, it is only on the grounds that he happens to be the one, whereas those who disagree with him are the many. How would Phil behave if he were in the majority, and a poor "degenerate Objectivist" went into his forum? He knew what he was getting into when he started all this. And what's more, in spite of there being a good point or other somewhere in what he said, overall, he's wrong, or at least his approach his wrong, because he's not emphasizing the right things in the right way. He could have approached this subject in a much more productive way. But if you try to tell him this he simply won't listen, and if anything is "degenerate", that is. Shayne

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73eRqA4-Yic

Interesting Tony, your analysis of the problems in Africa resonates with my conclusions in Chapter 3 of my book. Specifically, the problems of the world's governments most deeply result from megalomaniacs who think they can dictate for everyone in a given massive swath of land what rules they will follow, as opposed to reasonable human beings building localities with rules, and leaving the rest of the Earth as it was, and only enforcing natural rights on wild lands. Calling this "empire building" is whitewashes the actual evil: theft of the most precious natural resource, wild land (as opposed to a Lockean-style acquisition of it). Once the whole Earth was stolen, it created a "prison planet", where you are stuck on someone else's unjustly acquired property and thereby coerced into obeying his rules. If one doubts the megalomania, one can observe that international treaties specify that wherever you go in the Universe, the same megalomania applies. There is no escape, not on Earth, not in the farthest reaches of the Universe, where these insane governments have reach. Shayne

I didn't literally mean "hate" of course, I just mean that he gets piled on a lot. Not that he didn't start it. Shayne

As part of his therapy, Phil should exercise some independent thinking and answer this question for himself. Shayne

Phil missed his calling. He should have been an ARI philosopher. Shayne

I think the most relevant question for Phil is: Just what have you done with your deep knowledge of Objectivism? What have you created? And I used to wonder why there was so much "Phil hate" around here. But I don't hate Phil, he's too pathetic. Shayne

Selene, I don't know enough to fully agree with what you said, but your summary seems quite plausible. Shayne

While my memory is not unreliable in the sense of remembering wrongly (and perhaps that's not what you meant), my memory is not very good in the sense of simply not remembering certain details. But when I do remember my memory quite reliable. (Some people seem to have a "good memory" when really they're good at fabricating memories). Ever since I was very young I had a disdain for memory-oriented learning and instead preferred principle-oriented learning -- if I can predict or derive then I don't need to remember. This is partly why I tended toward science/engineering. I don't know whether the disdain caused a somewhat poor skill at remembering details, or whether the poor skill at remembering details caused the disdain. George obviously has an extremely good memory for details, so perhaps he can offer insight as to how that developed. I don't have a short attention span per se but if the subject is not interesting then I'd rather daydream. Perhaps you too didn't have a short attention span but simply weren't interested in the subject being taught. I had a particular "problem" in elementary school of not listening to the teachers and would get in trouble for it quite often. In kindergarten, one teacher thought I was mentally deficient, so they brought in a psychologist, who concluded that I was smarter than the teacher and simply bored with what she was saying and therefore didn't listen. Shayne

Selene, it's about making a case for the conclusion that was reached, not a statistical definition of "bulk." I don't see that any case has been made whatsoever. It is certainly a curious thing that tuition has gone up so much compared to everything else. Something is definitely rotten somewhere, but I don't know for sure where. Well, I do know for sure where in terms of ultimate root cause, I just don't know how to trace this cause to specific increases in college tuition. Shayne