equality72521

Jimmy Carter Doesnt scare me Shayne. FDR does. When Jimmy Carter runs the country you don't shrug. When FDR runs the country not only do you shrug, you go deep into the forest dig a deep deep hole, bury all your possessions, then plant claymores around the filled pit. Then you go deep into the mountains and hide until he is kicked out of office. well either that or move to Texas and wait for it to secede.

The Power of Fusion Voting Last election day, as thousands of New Yorkers bused out to Ohio on a mission to stop George W. Bush from being re-elected, a few dozen stayed behind in Albany and made sure David Soares won. The volunteers knocked on doors street by street; in the housing projects, hall by hall. The day John Kerry lost, the Working Families Party helped Soares take the job of Albany District Attorney away from a machine Democrat notorious for condemning drug offenders to extreme prison terms. With the rallying cry "Reform Rockefeller Drug Laws Now," the Soares campaign got voters to the polls by tapping into public outrage at seeing lives destroyed and billions wasted by the justice system. Soares had won the primary as a Democrat. In the general election he was still a Democrat, but on the ballot he was something else, too: the candidate of the Working Families Party. A few months earlier, the WFP operation hit Westchester County. Volunteers trawled suburban streets delivering the message: "We're telling State Senator Nick Spano that New Yorkers need a raise in the minimum wage." A few residents cursed and slammed doors. But more often than not they agreed, and received a sheet of paper, a pen and a chance to handwrite a plea to the Senator. "It's about time!" exclaimed an expensively groomed woman as she took a clipboard. That wasn't the first or last time Spano, a high-ranking Republican, heard from his constituents--and the greeting wasn't always so polite. A few weeks earlier, Spano had endured an "accountability session," a public event community organizers use to extract commitments from elected officials. In a YMCA hall packed with some 150 union members and other activists, filled with cries of "$5.15 is not enough!" Spano expressed surprise at the turnout--and, knowing he had little choice, signed a poster-size pledge to push legislation raising New York's minimum wage to $7.10. "I am on your side," Spano declared. "I will deliver this personally to the majority leader." But it was not just because he was caught on the spot that Spano came around on this issue--he knew that the Working Families Party, which organized the session, had a card to play: the ballot line in elections throughout New York State that it has wielded since 1998. In New York, election laws allow "fusion"--candidates for any public office can run as the nominee of more than one political party. The votes candidates receive are tallied separately by party, then combined. Like many candidates in New York State, Spano was hungry for the extra boost of that additional ballot line, which could make all the difference on election day. With the WFP's progressive seal of approval, Spano could expect some votes from people who might never otherwise support a Republican. Fusion is powerful. Voting in the Working Families column is no wasted gesture--every ballot counts. It sidesteps the Nader Effect, since voters can show their support for a progressive party agenda without spoiling the chances of a candidate--usually a Democrat--who has a shot at winning. And if there's an opportunity to take out a bad Democrat, like former Albany DA Paul Clyne, Working Families can run its own candidate. Fusion politics also gets complicated, and occasionally controversial. <!--pagebreak--> The Working Families Party gave Spano its ballot line--and with it the race. It turned into a contest so close that it had to be sorted out in court. Spano prevailed against Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a progressive African-American Democratic county legislator. He got 1,800 votes on the WFP line, and held on to his seat by just eighteen votes. This, in a state where Democrats have been laboring to retake the majority in the State Senate. But the Working Families leadership was satisfied. In exchange for the endorsement of Spano and other Republicans in a tight race, state Republicans relented after years of opposition and hiked the minimum wage, which raised pay for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. By wielding the power to make or break one of its top leaders, Working Families pushed the Republican Party to take a progressive stance. Much more often, that ballot line goes to a Democrat. The expectations are no different. Last November US Senator Chuck Schumer ran as both a Democrat and a Working Families nominee, and votes on either counted equally toward his re-election. But he got nearly 169,000 of his votes on the WFP line--3.6 percent of his total. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, running for governor in 2006, solicited Working Families as his first endorsement. "What this is about," said Spitzer as he accepted the party's support, "is embracing progressive politics. It's about embracing the ideas and the values that will change the lives of citizens across the state; being willing to challenge the status quo; being willing to say, If it's broken we will fix it.... You have proven that substance matters in politics." It's also about Spitzer buying into the WFP's sophisticated organizing apparatus. In acknowledgment of his cash contributions--the Attorney General was a keynote speaker at a party fundraiser--Spitzer can expect Working Families canvassers to go door to door or hold rallies in key districts he needs to win. And it's understood that Spitzer will have an obligation to deliver on Working Families' demands. Spitzer's a radical by Wall Street standards, but not by the WFP's. Items on the party's legislative agenda include universal healthcare, rent regulation, a living wage and closing the income gap through progressive taxation. Founded and led by a coalition of labor unions and community organizations--including the Northeast regions of the United Auto Workers and the Communications Workers of America (CWA), locals of the garment and hotel workers' union UNITE HERE and the service workers' SEIU, ACORN and Citizen Action--Working Families claims an organized bloc of voters committed to economic populism, and the party uses them to get major-party politicians to follow the Working Families agenda. Its organizers strive to appeal simultaneously to Nation-reading liberals, people of color alienated by the Democrats, and working-class whites. <!--pagebreak--> The WFP's ability to reach that third group, which Republicans have so successfully wrested from the Democrats, says a lot about what fusion can accomplish. A poll of New York State CWA members found that non-Democrats were likelier than Democrats to use the WFP ballot line to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton in 2000--of the 38 percent of that group who went for Clinton, eight in ten cast their vote under Working Families. Votes on the WFP line helped Democratic challenger Tim Bishop beat a conservative incumbent Republican Congressman on Long Island--in a district that went overwhelmingly for Republican Governor George Pataki on the same ballot. WFP executive director Dan Cantor and a leadership circle of labor union political directors, community organizers and staff hunt for practical legislative and policy campaigns that will resonate with the party's target constituencies. "What issues do you want to move?" asks Cantor. "What moral disgrace brings issues into the electoral moment?" They then put those issues into play with a one-two punch: a grassroots field operation anchored by local chapters in the state's biggest counties, coupled with the ability, through fusion voting, to cross-endorse Democrats or Republicans for public office. Targeted politicians can't afford to ignore the party's agenda. Less splashily, Working Families has become a fixture in local political races in the state's bigger cities and in the suburbs of New York City, delivering a get-out-the-vote apparatus and its progressive WF brand label in exchange for influence over candidates' policy agendas. Some of those relationships spawn legislative breakthroughs, including a 2002 living-wage law in Westchester. Many others simply rubber-stamp an undistinguished major-party favorite. The party has held off on this year's New York City mayoral race, where Democratic candidates are struggling. Republican Mayor Mike Bloomberg leads them in the polls--among Democratic voters. Some of the WFP's member unions have already endorsed Bloomberg, while others can't agree on which Democrat to support. The party is showing its influence in subtler ways--for example, in candidate Fernando Ferrer's proposal to revive a stock-transfer tax to increase funding for schools, an idea the WFP actively promoted. Starting with a campaign this year against Social Security privatization, Working Families has also begun targeting members of Congress in between election cycles. And it's not just assaulting Republicans: In August party leaders called for House minority leader Nancy Pelosi to remove two black Democratic Congressmen, Greg Meeks and Edolphus Towns, from their respective positions on the Financial Services and Energy and Commerce committees because they voted for CAFTA and other bills benefiting corporate powers. Prodded by Working Families, unions are sending letters to members in the Congressmen's districts informing them about the votes. They're doing all this on a shoestring; the WFP's entire budget is about $1.6 million a year, just $300,000 of which, according to the WFP, represents dues from its union affiliates. Revenues from door-to-door canvassing are growing steadily, a sign of broader public support. Even the party's opponents acknowledge its influence. Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the business-lobby group Partnership for New York City, fought the WFP's ultimately successful effort to require some companies under contract with New York City government to pay employees a minimum of $10 an hour. "When it comes to bringing resources, bringing influence to bear on important public policies," says Wylde, "their political success, in terms of electing and supporting people in key positions, makes them a force to be reckoned with." Working Families made 2004, of all years, a moment for progressive political gains in a state, governed by a Republican and a divided state legislature, that hasn't recently been out front on social and economic reforms. Now that it's proving its power to make things happen, the WFP is looking to export fusion voting to other states. "Common-sense progressivism is actually popular, but you need a way to make it visible," says Cantor. "Nothing's more powerful than a ballot line." <!--pagebreak--> Franchising fusion is an undertaking somewhere on the highway between ambitious and quixotic. Most states abolished cross-endorsements more than a century ago, as the major parties consolidated their power. Besides New York, fusion remains legal only in Connecticut, Delaware, Vermont, South Carolina, Mississippi and Utah, and in none is the ballot line so accessible and useful as in New York. In 1997 the US Supreme Court ruled in Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party that states cannot be compelled under the First Amendment to allow candidates to run on multiple party lines. So Working Families and its labor and community allies are bracing for a state-by-state slog. In Connecticut the party is already up and running. It has to qualify in each legislative district, by first running candidates exclusively on the Working Families line and getting at least 1 percent of the vote. If it passes the threshold, in subsequent elections in that district it can cross-endorse candidates from any other party, in any race. Working Families is now on the ballot in sixty-five out of the state's 187 districts. The party made a move for influence last fall: Leaders sat down with Connecticut State Representative Jim Amann, a Democrat who was enmeshed in a fight for House leadership, and agreed to pull Working Families nominees out of races where the Democratic candidate was an Amann ally, in exchange for Amann's support on the WFP's Connecticut agenda. "Even in districts where we couldn't cross-endorse, we could withdraw our candidate, and that gave us some leverage," explains party organizer Jon Green. Amann won, although that hasn't yet produced any legislative gains for the WFP. Next up is Massachusetts. Starting September 21, a Working Families-led coalition will be collecting signatures to get a referendum on the ballot legalizing fusion voting. It is likely to be a difficult fight. In Massachusetts, state legislators have ways to thwart the results of a referendum. Fusion is unlikely to hold much appeal for them, since the Statehouse is solidly Democratic. And some of the state's progressive political organizers are balking at joining the emerging fusion coalition. They say they've already won some of the same gains WFP has--including a minimum-wage hike. "We win so much in the legislature just by going to the legislature," says Harris Gruman, director of Neighbor to Neighbor Massachusetts, a grassroots organizing group. "We don't need to change the rules. The rules are working for us, now that we are working them." "It's only natural that there would be a healthy dose of skepticism and nervousness," says Patrick Gaspard, vice president of politics and legislation for 1199SEIU and a veteran strategist with Working Families. "But look at what's been made possible in New York State as a result of people coming in and saying, 'I want to do a chunk of my work through this political institution.'... Having that flexibility has been a benefit to [1199's] membership." The Maine legislature held a hearing earlier this year on a bill that would bring New York-style fusion to the state. There's interest in fusion, explains State Representative Hannah Pingree of North Haven, who introduced the bill, because the Green Party has repeatedly spoiled races for Democrats, siphoning off enough votes to let Republicans win. Democrats control the Statehouse, but by a slim margin. As she works to acquaint her colleagues with fusion, Pingree also has to acknowledge that the benefits may not flow just to Democrats. "People look at this as a way to promote the left, but it also could be a way for conservatives to advance as well," she notes. That concern is particularly acute among progressive leaders considering adopting fusion in Oregon, a state with an active radical right. Cantor and partners are also sowing seeds in Delaware and exploring litigation in New Jersey, where they plan to argue that fusion voting is protected by the state Constitution. And Cantor is particularly excited about Ohio, under consideration for a 2006 ballot measure legalizing fusion. Cantor sees the presidential election results--where voters in a state with huge job losses went for the Republican--as an opportunity. Working Families' target constituency, he says, is "people who do not want to vote on the Democratic line but want to vote for the more progressive candidate. That's how you get somewhere in Ohio." <!--pagebreak--> Wherever it goes next, Working Families will be highly dependent on its friends in labor for funds, person-power and political muscle. Lately, of course, those friends have been preoccupied with the decision by SEIU, the Teamsters and other unions in the Change to Win Coalition to leave the AFL-CIO. It's too soon to say what the departure bodes for the WFP. Still, there may be a growth opportunity: As labor works to figure out how to maintain undivided political influence, Working Families, with fusion voting, has found a way to build just that, pulling together unions for common strategic purposes. Bob Master, co-chair of the party and one of its founders, is Northeast political director of the CWA, which remains part of the AFL-CIO, as does the UAW, another pivotal WFP player. But quite a few of the WFP's most active union affiliates are with Change to Win: large and influential locals of SEIU, UNITE HERE, the Teamsters and the Laborers. Master's co-chair, Bertha Lewis, executive director of ACORN's New York City chapter, has to insure that her members--poor people, mostly black and Latino--get their interests represented in a party dominated by organized labor. ACORN buys power through its organizing acumen, and through its communities' sheer numbers. Election turnout shows spikes in areas in Brooklyn and elsewhere where ACORN worked to get out the vote (though not always on the Working Families line). "In certain neighborhoods," says Lewis, "we are the machine." Fusion voting, she declares, "is the political tool of brown America." Recruitment into an unknown cause didn't go down easily for ACORN members. "There ain't no way people are going to give up being a Democrat in order to be something they never heard of," Julia Boyd, a Brooklyn ACORN veteran, remembers saying. "There's no track record. Who are you? People felt like it was just another scam to get publicity or get your name in the papers. It was a difficult job to convince me." Working Families showed its ability to turn out large numbers of minority voters with the election of David Soares as Albany District Attorney. The party sought out this race. It had interns call every county in the state to see which incumbents were up for re-election, then singled out Paul Clyne as especially vulnerable. Working Families handpicked Soares, who at the time was an obscure prosecutor in Clyne's office. "When I went out and sought the endorsement, people laughed at me!" says Karen Scharff, executive director of Citizen Action of New York and a leader in Soares's campaign. "There was a strong Democratic Party. The candidate was completely unknown to the public, not politically active. It's a majority-white district, with no history of electing people of color." As a prosecutor, Soares had founded a project that promoted alternative sentencing for young offenders, and the core of his support came from civil rights groups and progressive religious institutions. Working Families and Citizen Action turned out throngs of volunteers--culled from sources ranging from church choirs to defunct Howard Dean meetup groups. Some of them are now running for local public office for the first time. <!--pagebreak--> But building strong local chapters that bring citizens more deeply into power has been an uphill climb. "There are no resources put into New York City chapter and club organizing," says Dorothy Siegel, a longtime Brooklyn civic activist who three years ago decided to focus her energy on building citizen participation in the Working Families Party--"to make it less of an alliance of labor unions, ACORN and Citizen Action, and more of a partnership organization with real grassroots chapters and clubs." In Brooklyn, she says, she's been doing the work herself, as a volunteer. "There's just one organizer for all of New York City," Siegel points out. "This is a party that does not have a lot of resources," notes Democratic State Senator Eric Schneiderman, whose campaign committees have contributed to Working Families. "They have to raise money to put out the troops." Schneiderman is the former chair of the New York Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and he put aside his misgivings about the Spano endorsement to make an appearance with Working Families in Massachusetts, supporting the move to bring fusion voting there. He believes the party is important to progressives' national prospects. "There's a lot of concern among progressive activists that the Democratic Party is too much in the grip of consultants who are always suggesting that they slide to the right and take conservative positions to accommodate swing voters, rather than exciting our own beliefs and animating people," says Schneiderman. "The hope is that the Working Families Party can empower progressive Democrats within the Democratic Party." Working Families' distinction from the likes of the Independence Party, whose ballot line Bloomberg is counting on to draw New York City voters who just won't pull a lever for a Republican--or New York's Liberal Party, which started out as just that but deteriorated into a patronage factory--is its commitment to engaging citizen-activists at the local level and building power from there, much as conservatives did a generation ago. Political consultant Ethan Geto ran the Howard Dean campaign in New York State. When Dean dropped out weeks before the New York primary, Geto found himself with thousands of volunteers who had nothing to do. Though many Deaniacs didn't know or care about local politics, Geto and others convinced some to put their energies into the WFP's nominees for state office. "A new generation of activists responded to that in New York: We have to build here," says Geto. "It's a way of supporting a national resurgence of the Democratic Party." The experience of watching organized labor go all-out for John Kerry left John Murphy of Boston's Teamsters Local 122 wondering what else labor could do in states where it's strong (in Massachusetts, 28 percent of workers are in unions). "How many times do we have to pour millions of dollars into the Democratic Party, and thousands of volunteers? And then hoping even if they win, we still have to get them to pay attention to us?" asks Murphy, who is a member of the Teamsters' executive board. He has become a leading advocate for fusion voting in Massachusetts. "If we do nothing and hope to simply influence the Democratic Party, that's doomed to fail," says Murphy. "How many times do you have to lose before you make a change?"

I want to know what your opinion on Fusion voting is. For those of you who do not know fusion voting is legal in 8 states * Connecticut * Delaware * Idaho * Mississippi * New York * Oregon * South Carolina * Vermont though most people dont know it or what it is. Fusion voting means that parties can join together and put the same candidates on two tickets. The advantage is that if applied it would shrink the size of the two major political parties and would open up the field of ideas. or at least that is my assessment.

The vent was not focused on her. Regardless of if it was or not, is what I said true or not?

I would not usually say this here (or really anywhere) but this thread makes me feel like opening up more. I am horrified more horrified than you could imagine. I am a data guy, always have been, I am also the guy who you go to a movie with on opening night and ten minutes into it I tell you the entire plot and how it ends every movie every time. I see the future, not because I am a profit but because i see trends and right now there are so many possibilities and most of the are bad. I have had a lot of bad stuff happen in my life, I have been through quite a bit, I have had a gun pulled on me, I have had my life threatened more than once, I have lost everything and come back from nothing. And never in my life have I ever been so scared as I am now. For twelve years I have been shouting from the roof tops "The communists are here!" and everyone thought I was nuts. Well guess what, they are here. I have cried at least twice a week every week for the last several months. I just break down in despair. Reading "What America Really wants... Really." took me several hours to read the chapter on senior. Whenever I think about seniors I have such a mix of emotions, respect, gratitude, anger and fear. I was born and raised in the south. I was raised without cable TV (3 channels), I didn't have a cellphone until I was 20, There wasn't even a computer in my home until I was 16(I don't count the commodore 64). I was raised with 1950's values. I am just so angry, how did these people not know? I am concerned that I am living in the last days of the greatest country which ever existed, how could I not be angry? and if this union falls apart (contrary to the belief of some I am not a sperarationist) it will be the greatest travesty the world has experienced. The same people who slept while their children and grandchildrens freedom were stolen now have a chance to set things right. I just dont know if they will. I HATE collecting food stamps for any reasons. I swore I would never do it no matter how bad things got, and i have been through some pretty bad times. but as Rand said there can be no such thing as morality in a life boat situation.

My question is did Rand really say that about the serial killer and if so what was the context. I don't ever remember reading that and I have read most of Rand's works.

I work normal Jobs and sometimes teach. As of last month I also started collecting food stamps and then use the money I save not buying food to pay for silver. When I decided to somewhat go galt (I dropped out of the University) it was one of the hardest things I ever did. You have no idea how hard it is not to start my own business sometimes. going on food stamps was an even harder choice but I just couldn't not do it any more. Here is what drove me to it. I barely make just under the limit to get food stamps I have always been against such programs, however the economic situation of this country is so bad that there is no way the dollar is not going to collapse. I decided that because the government is destroying the value of my money I had no choice but to take advantage of the system and build up as much of an insulation as I possibly can. The year before the collapse I started buying dry/dehydrated food. This last year I have been buying up silver and as much of it as I can. I only have 6 years worth of food and a little over 115 ounces of sliver. What pushed me over the edge though was the "Quantitative easing" policy which the FED is going to pursue. I will be glad when I am kicked off foodstamps but as a bit of a side note I would like some input on this from others because I hate doing this but at the moment I feel like the I am on the Titanic and I need to grab anything that floats.

I think you have misunderstood that slide. The statement in quotation marks at the head of the slide (that rights are mere gifts of the state) is not my view, it is a common criticism of a conception of rights of the kind I am expressing. The bullet points beneath it are the reasoning I use to debunk it. Alright. Because there is not audio context I was not sure so the slide was confusing so you are using the quote as a counter point. I would have said that "Ethics tells us what we should or should not do, rights are the principles at the top of the ethical pyramid that embody those should-nots in order to inform political action, or non-action. Would you disagree with that? What do you think rights are for? I felt that 'may not' was too much a description of material fact. "You may not initiate force against me." But of course you CAN do so; it's physically possible, just not moral. How about "should not"? What we are discussing is an imperative. You may want to make clear yes you can use physical force but morally there is no excuse. Right's as the classic definition are equally distributed among men and one man cannot morally violate another mans rights. This is the imperative, not that one cannot initiate physical force but rather that one cannot morally initiate physical force. Yes, I'll need to run through it a few times once I'm happy with what I've got so far and see how much, if any, time I have to spare. I'd ideally like to critique some other conceptions of rights (or denials of them). I'd also like to relate my/the objectivist conception of rights to other areas of the class such as equality, poverty etc. keep us updated

Laughs hard. On a side note I am talking with a friend who wants to start a political party where I live (we have talked about it theoretically and she wants to take it further). I would like to see voter initiatives in every state legalizing Fusion Voting. Then the creating of several State (not national) parties. This would change politics as we know it.

Here is how I see it. For senate there is no question that Sharron Angle MUST be elected. While there are areas to disagree with her Reid must be kicked out of office, at this point in time a drunk mickey mouse would be better. This man is a progressive, he is fundamentally altering this country and attempting to turn America into a Democracy. We ARE NOT A DEMOCRACY we are a Republic. After that I don't know what district you live in. The question after the Reid/Angle race is what do you want your vote to do? Do you want to vote on principles or do you want to vote for someone that you agree with less but who stands a chance to win. Candidates who can win http://wegnerforcongress.com/kens-pledge.html http://deanheller.com/dean In the third district the guy is so bad I wont even post it. Candidates on principle District 1 Edward LP District 2 Russel Independent American District 3 Scott Independent American

My mother just got done reading this post and gave me an earful over it. She thinks my post was "insensitive" and "unfair". She thought that I was completely wrong in my assessment. So for the seniors who post here(dont know if there are any) for those who are close to retirement I want to know exactly where I got it wrong. Be honest be brutal (I was). For decades it has been talked about that social security and medicare are unsustainable. The Utopian pipe dream sold by FDR and those that came after was absurd, one look should have told everyone this was not possible to be sustained. The National debt has grown under your generation, the national debt has exploded under your generation. I turned 26 this year, I am a member of the 2020 generation. The way I see it is you (grandma and grandpa) just like the rest of the bribed (blacks, gays, latinos, the poor) bought into a bad bill of goods without reading the fine print. You kept re-electing these people over and over and over again. No I do not blame every single person over the age of 45, I do consider the "group" responsible however. I have heard since I was 10 years old that there was not going to be any money in the social security program for me to collect when I retired how did this group of people not know?

I recently read Frank Luntz books what Americans Really want... Really. and Words that Work: its not what you say its what they hear. I am now reading Glenn Becks new book and I have to tell you I am more horrified than ever before. I had a conversation with my mother some months ago which really angered her it went something like this. Me: What really pisses me off is that this is your fault. Mom: What? Me: You all (her generation) fucked us. It is morally reprehensible what you have done, in the words of Thomas Jefferson "We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to sattle posterity with our debts and morally bound to pay them ourselves and consequentially within what may be deemed a period of a generation or the life expectancy of the majority." How dare you guys run up the bill like this how dare you hand us such a fucked up situation. Mom: How can you blame me/us we didn't create this situation things were messed up before we ever had any power or authority to do anything about it. Me: Yes it was. That's not what I blame you guys for, I blame you guys because it was screwed up and you didn't do anything about it. You inherited a house with some shit in the carpets and on the walls and you handed to us(my generation) a house FULL of shit, its wall to wall, ceiling to ceiling top to bottom. How dare you guys. Mom: How can you blame us? Me: Because you had no business handing us a world worse than you found it. If you were rich and lost your fortune and I had to make my own I wouldn't blame you for that. But what your generation has done and the generation before yours is not just lost the fortune which you inherited but you have leveraged my future to pay for your present. And this lady's and gentlemen is what brings us to the point. Grandma and Grandpa those people who are now retiring and who are retired are murdering the rest of us slowly. They have placed the rest of us upon an alter to be sacrificed to the God's of Social Security, Medicare, and "elderly" welfare programs. These same people believe they have a Right to Social Security, that they paid into it and therefore they deserve it. Well Grandma and Grandpa wake up, you have been duped, it wasn't a retirement investment program, it was a tax, and while you were sleeping the Democrats and Republicans were robbing you blind. And now Grandma and Grandpa because YOU slept, because of YOUR incompetence YOU think you have a Right to enslave me so you can retire at 65? YOU broke the bank, YOU LET yourself be robbed, now its time for YOU to pay the piper. Seniors are the largest voting block in this country and they are about to become even larger with the baby boomers. I am terrified that rather than owing up they are going to sell not their soul but mine. And the reality is I think they are going to sell me into slavery, and I doubt I am the only one. Frank Luntz was right class warfare is coming to this country, and its not going to be rich against poor, its not going to be black against white, its going to be young against old. Grandma and Grandpa you are sacrificing your children and your grandchildren for temporary security. What gives you the right to murder me? To hell with that!

Now that I have given specific criticisms of the individual slides I will give specific criticism of the presentation itself. The presentation is well planed out and gives mostly an accurate presentation of Objectivist position. With a little tweaking it will be clear and consistent. depending on how long you have you may want to end your presentation with a critique of other theories of origins of rights. for example rights come from society "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner". If rights come from democratic vote rather than the nature of man than if I convince enough people that I have a right to kill you than I have that Right. Rights are granted by the state. "The state which can give everything to you can take everything from you." etc.

Page 10 *Rights concern freedom of action. They tell us what man should do and not be able to do. This is not actually the purpose of Rights. Rights do concern freedom, however what tells us what we should or should not do is ethics. Page 15 no man ought initiate the use of force should be changed to no man may. the difference is that you are stating no man may initiate the use of force is a moral imperative, where as ought is a moral suggestion. in point two of the same slide should not say and property crimes but are property crimes. in point three change capitalism to free market. Do you want to prejudices your audience or deliver a message? do not allow the word to get in the way of the truth.

"There is no such thing as a moral concept of a right, only those rights granted by ones government." I find page 11 to be seriously flawed and I am not sure if it is due to misapplication of principle or if it is simply a poor presentation. The Author Frank Luntz wrote a book titled "Words that Work" its subtitle was "Its not what you say its what others hear." A Right is not granted by the state, by a church or by any other institution or individual. even if you believe in God this does not change the Nature of Rights. If you believe in God or not the Right to Life Liberty and Property (Locke) does not change. If you believe in God: God made man and gave him a certain nature, man was made a rational creature. If you dont believe in God: Man evolved as a rational creature. Rights either exist or they do not. If Rights exist they exist independent of others and exist as an A Priori of mans nature. If they do not exist than what we have are only privileges. If Rights do not exist who decides what privileges we possess and by what Right.

Also add that it would be quite possible to punish these people without government intervention. The way in which they could be punished would be boycott's. People could refuse to do business with people who do things which the customers find objectionable.

Adam is right about definition. The most important thing you can do in any presentation or debate is define your terms. Victory is 70% definition of terms. I know the objections you are going to receive simply because I have heard them all before, what you need to do is to point out the contradictions of the opposition. For example Child pornography, Childrens minds are not fully developed, they are easily manipulated and do not posses enough information to make life impacting decision. Child pornography is an assault on the Right of the child to his own person, it is the equivalent of deceiving someone into signing over all their property, no court would uphold such a contract because it is a violation of contracts. If someone brings up hate speech you need to question the premise of hate speech, who defines it, what is it? Does it encompass all "offensive" words if so some people find the word shit, or damn offensive should these words be outlawed as hate speech? should calling someone fat be considered hate speech because it might hurt their feelings? or should speech which incites violence be outlawed? People have the right to hold whatever belief they want, however if we are consistent in our position we must follow that it is a crime for someone to violate another property or to encourage the violation of someone else property is a crime. If someone says "dirty jew, or dirty Muslim, or stupid Christian, this is not a crime. however if someone says "kill the jew, Muslims, or Christians." than that is a crime. If someone says "I don't like homosexuals, or being gay is wrong" this is not a crime, it is a crime to say "Kill the homosexuals" or "homosexuals should not be allowed to own property". The point is you need to make a connection between "non-initiation of force" and Rights. Encourage your audience to think seriously on the principle of non-initiation, if no man has the right to force another to do something than this explicitly means that no man may make another a slave, further it means that no man may violate the property of another person, and it also means that people are free to do anything except use force against someone else or their property. ask your audience to consider this very seriously and ask themselves what the world would look like if the world upheld this principle.

Ayn Rand having no theory of Rights is quite simply false. Any Rand simply takes the rational position of A is A, or in other words as related to this subject Ayn Rand takes the position that Individual Rights are an irreducible primary. Not only is it an irreducible primary but it is also A Priori. There are only two options when it comes to Rights, either A man is his own property or he is the property of the state. I would ask if he is property of the state how one came to that conclusion.

why should the definition of male be limited to those with a penis. this is unjust. we need to abolish it, its discrimination, and it is absurd.

One difference. Alex the Parrot will never be a person. Ba'al Chatzaf So? So what. It appears that you have missed Ted's argument he is arguing that because the fetus is not a person/ does not posses personhood it can be aborted. I am simply carring that argument to its logical end. A 1 month old is no more a person than a puppy is, no one would have a problem putting down a puppy so why cant we put down a one month old.

Alex may be smart as parrots go, but there is no evidence that he conceptualizes and deals in abstract thought. Alex may have learned a few tricks but that does not put him on a par with normal humans in the intellect department. Now if Alex could squawk out a proof of a theorem in geometry that he never learned from a human, I might be inclined to change my mind on this matter. Ba'al Chatzaf Alex was quite able to use first level concepts of entities and their attributes, and second level concepts such as color and material, and to answer novel questions using them. Your current nonsense about theorems has nothing to do with the context of rationality and the rights of children, which you have dropped. You seem to be the arbitrarily squawking parrot here, unable to keep in mind a conversation of two exchanges or more. Can you say that there is any difference between Alex and Jim (a one month old) intellectually? Also brain size v intelligence is in serious question I will attempt to find the National geographic article. Something else exceptions do not prove the rule.

I would suggest that you attend a gay pride parade. I am not saying gays are commies, what I am saying is that if you look at the leaders of the identity politics you will see a common thread. and unfortunately just like the union leaders, just like the black leaders, just like the hispanic leaders, just like the green leaders, the gay leaders have a red, red flag.

Michael my problem is (and what you have not acknowledged) is the deconstructionist ploy. "I don't care who makes the laws, who teaches your children, who preaches in your church, or what they preach, just let me control the language and I will shape society to anything I want"

That's a lot clearer. Could you clarify the rational part? Can we kill the insane, or people who fail certain tests? Your jumping too far ahead. The focus I am making is the distinction between Human and animal as the point of termination. If there is a problem with setting this as the definition of personhood why?

Bad definition. I was talking at 12 months of age. One of my grandchildren was talking at 11 months of age. The only talking animal (in the sense of making sense with speech) is the human. Ba'al Chatzaf Parrot