Francisco Ferrer

You hinted in Post #1 that the elimination of taxes would make everybody's income increase: As I have shown, that would not be the case. People who are net tax producers would be richer. But net tax recipients such as Solyndra (or any rent seeker of your choice) would be poorer. There is no reason to suppose that shifting control of tax money from the government back to the rightful owner would cause an increase in the money supply. I have no idea why you say that "that money [would] have been swallowed up by inflation if it stayed with the original source." Let's say Citizen A pays $10,000 a year in taxes. Let's say, for simplicity, that Citizen B is the sole recipient of A's loot. Taxes are then abolished. A is now $10,000 richer (although he may need to use part of that sum to pay for an insurance/security provider). But B will no longer have any part of the $10,000. Nor will the bureaucrats who once administered the redistribution. What then is the source of your promised inflation? I would suggest that you look at the real cause of inflation which is not cutting or abolishing taxes but the manipulation of the money supply by the government.

Well, there was also Teddy. Oops, he doesn't count because of the Forum Rule of the Day that racist presidents may not be used to support the statement that presidents (plural) have asserted the power to ignore the Constitution in order to pursue non-constitutional ends. Let's see. there was Lincoln. Oh rats, he said some racist things, too. How about Obama? He believes in stretching the Constitution to serve his ends. Uh oh, Glenn Back says the president is a racist. Apparently, if a president is 1) racist he cannot also 2) have said that the Constitution can be interpreted to serve the needs of the nation or the party in power. By someone's criterion of logic 1) and 2) cannot be true at the same time.

Democracy: "A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives"

Interesting that you selected a racist progressive to support your point, don't you think? To support the point that presidents have asserted the power to ignore the Constitution in order pursue non-constitutional ends, I shall in the future, in respect for your sensibilities, endeavor to point only to non-racist presidents who made such claims and omit the racists.

I understand the "presentism" school of thought. If there is no recommended reading page now, there must never have been one. Ergo, those who claim to have seen it must be hallucinating.

One ideological tangent modern presidents have faithfully avoided is stubborn adherence to constitutional limitations. Woodrow Wilson said, Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission - in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word - to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine. Freeing the President and Congress from the suffocating bonds of a centuries old document has allowed government to grow and thrive according to the needs of society and its constituent interest groups.

I said Rand was running nine months ago. The proof was that he got rid of the recommended reading list on hie website. When you aim for the big one, you've got to dump ideological baggage like Rand, Mises, Hayek and Goldwater. The last thing you want is guilt by association with "extremists" and "purists" on the "far right."

Why should we suppose everyone's income would go up? When government seizes wealth, it does not seize it from everyone equally. On this point we need only refer to the progressive income tax. Nor does government distribute the loot evenly per capita throughout the population. Thus, under our much vaunted democracy, the majority-chosen government exercises the power to rob the haves (the producers or the minority of the population that pays most of the taxes) and reward the have-nots (the moochers). Therefore, if the income tax were to disappear tomorrow morning (or at least by April 15), the only way that moochers could continue to receive their current unearned level of income would be if virtually 100% of current taxpayers were happy to remain as their benefactors and let the billions of subsidies flow unimpeded. With income tax funding, Solar panel manufacturer Solyndra received a $536 million U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee. Is there any good reason to suppose that in a future free of the income tax, companies like Solyndra would enjoy the same economic advantages as at present? Post-income tax, would private citizens spend $175,587 for a study on the link between cocaine and the mating habits of quail? If anything, in an income tax-free America, the federal government, the chief perpetrator of funny money and inflation, would be in a very poor position to debase the chief unit of currency.

He liberated government from the chains of the Constitution and thus paved the way for the lively, energetic, multifaceted regime we have today.

Thank you for engaging in a counter-inflationary measure.

As many people as it took to make this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_folk_musicians

Many people are unaware of a Jewish Marxist folksinger named Joan. Or else they have forgotten.

Many people are unaware of Joan Rivers's earlier career as a folk singer. Or else they have forgotten.

Some positive thoughts to keep in mind when a ton of looted money goes into a deep, dark hole: 1. Just because the money is missing does not mean it was misspent. 2. And even if it was misspent, that doesn't mean it went to terrorists. 3. And even if it went to terrorists, that doesn't mean it caused much harm. 4. And even if it caused much harm, that doesn't mean that the harm outweighed the good that was done by other tax dollars. Why so serious?

Here is another point that should be made. Those that have been unable to obtain the services of discriminating business owners have not had to go without those services at all. The baker and wedding photographer who will not cater to gay couples are not operating a monopoly. There are other bakers, other photographers, and the odds are that most people in the trade will cheerfully do business with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. The goal for progressive busybodies is not to ensure that everybody with an alternative lifestyle has access to products and services. No, the goal is to re-engineer society and root out the vestiges of racism, sexism, homophobia, and all other prejudice. If there is any citizen in 2015 who persists in an ancient bias against same sex couples, he must be exposed, derided, and made to reform. Forced tolerance for the new ways of loving. No tolerance for those who backwardly cling to tradition.

There isn't one. According to Objectivism, the right to use and dispose of one's property is not subordinate to a belief in God. As I said in Post #1, we need Rand now to point this out because nobody with a prominent voice is saying it, including a certain libertarian judge. I do think a Ninth Amendment case could be made for freedom from federal ant-discrimination legislation (for example, Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act).

This is one of the rare times that Andrew Napolitano is wrong. There is nothing unconstitutional about private property owners exercising race/religious/gender bias in deciding whom to trade with. The Constitution of the United States provides no guarantee of access to businesses. "Making sure government is not our master"? Really, Judge?

Why should the right to choose one's customers (in i.e. freedom of association) be restricted to "free lancers and small family/privately owned businesses." If property rights are legitimate on the small scale, they are just as legitimate on the large scale. Instead of government intervention, why couldn't boycotts and "repercussions of . . . public outcry and protests" be the means that opponents of discrimination use to change a business owner's policy?

I think Ayn Rand's best writing is to be found in her essays and columns, especially those that apply philosophical principles to current issues. Rand's clear thinking cut through the fog that surrounded and confused many of the liberal-conservative battles of her time. I only wish she were here to clarify what's at stake in the 2015 shouting match over religious freedom bills. 1. My guess is that she would first point out that the fundamental right being ignored is not to worship freely but to hold property, use it, and trade it without interference from others, particularly the government. Everyone, not just believers in a deity, has that right and should be free to discriminate, even when such discrimination is repugnant to others. 2. She would be quick to call out Republican governors Mike Pence and Asa Hutchinson for their cowardly rush to water down recently passed property rights protections, merely to appease special interest groups who ultimately care nothing about capitalism and true individualism. 3. I imagine she would also have strong words for corporate leaders hopping on the bandwagon to make "freedom from discrimination" more fundamental than the right to control one's own land and building and business. There might be some commentators in the land speaking out in this way, but of course no one illuminated a topic quite like Ayn Rand.

The statement "All of this will be forgotten once the Beck World theme park opens," does not require that the words that follow the conjunction "once" to be likely to occur in the near or distant future for the statement as a whole to be truthful. Example: "Anti-trust laws will be a dead letter once Henry Mark Holzer is named Attorney General." Or "Most of Manhattan will be under water once the ocean level rises 20 feet."

Oops, I think Allison's integrity may be showing.

Thank you for your thoughtful remarks. My standard for comments is truth not humor. No one here has argued against the likelihood of what I forecast in Post #3: when Beck's theme park opens--in two years or in ten years--nearly everyone will have forgotten his dust up with Norquist. If this be error, let us hear a more plausible outcome. If so, he knows his own words as well as anyone: "Nothing he says or does makes a damn bit of difference to them, nor will it ever."

Following your recommendation, I looked at the "real-world effect of this dude's mockery" and found that my words had no effect at all on Glenn Beck. Just as you said, it made not "a damn bit of difference" to him. Out of curiosity, I also examined other instances of mockery on this forum. Incredibly, I discovered that the mockery of Brian Williams and Hillary Clinton had made not "a damn bit of difference" to those targets either. Not even a "1" on the Smidgenometer®. What? Could it be that of the hundreds (thousands?) of mocking posts on objectivistliving.com, not one has had a "real-world effect" on those with great wealth, power or influence? Perhaps this is just a technical glitch and those posts about Williams and Clinton didn't get sent out to all parts of the world wide web. Please look into this, MSK. When truth is spoken to power on OO.com, I want to make sure the powerful are awake and paying close attention.

No, and furthermore I don't have a global financial data and media company that pulls in $8 billion per year in revenue. I suppose, then, that makes me unequal to Michael Bloomberg and thus disqualifies me from mocking him? Nor, for the record, have I made hit documentaries like Michael Moore's or written books that sold in the millions like L. Ron Hubbard's. They, too, according to the rules of barring criticism from the lower ranks, must be immune to my mockery.

Framed "now"? Didn't you frame it in Post #6? Those who mock Beck, though lovable, must be non-producers. Or could it be that only the non-productive Beck mockers are lovable, the others being unworthy of affection?