Ron Paul on Fear

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

Maybe we should nuke the USA for good measure?

My prediction is that some people are going to do some incredibly stupid and destructive things and the US is going to retaliate (and do a few of it's own). Nether the destructive things nor the retaliations are going to end the world, nor are they going to affect the general standard of living for most of humanity. They will only be bad for those who are in harm's way. These events will sell oodles of newspapers and commercials for news programs on TV.

Despite the prophets of doom (who have been around for centuries yawping nonstop to no avail), it ain't gonna get any worse than that.

Michael

My context growing up was general thermonuclear war with the almost complete destruction of the US and the USSR as a consequence. As bad as that was it was not inwardly corrosive to the citizenry in spite of the financial and psychological price. What we have now is damaging to the US from the inside out more than what any terrorists or rouge states will ever do to to America. The biggest caveat is Russia or even China and what they might someday do to us for whatever reasons. The US would do much worse to them in return, but the whole situation is a dance with insanity. Therefore, the US should stay armed to the teeth for any and all contingencies including the unimaginable.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

I agree with staying armed and keeping an eye on potential enemies. That is common sense and the contrary was not the point I was making. I am proud of the USA military and I trust them to protect our country.

My original point is that fear is the real enemy within. That is why I posted the article by Ron Paul. It makes people "dance with insanity." Fortunately, our leaders don't seem to drink the hemlock they feed to the public, so I don't think they will make the earth uninhabitable or practice genocide. The few despots who try that are simply removed in today's world. But our leaders are crafty. While they watch the public flirting with the insanity they foster, they milk the situation for all it's worth.

On a serious note about nukes, I am pretty sure nukes will never be used by anybody unless some really weird non-bellic fluke happens. I don't believe it would happen because of war. The simple reason is economics. There is no profit in making nukes or in using them. There are no spoils to plunder after kaboom and no way to milk taxpayers with rebuilding projects.

Our leaders talk big about patriotism and so forth, but they and their cronies always keep one eye on the bottom line when real war is on the table. For public image (so the leaders can stay in power), there is no way to even marginally justify concern with the innocent. The "sacrifice a few innocents for the good of the many" argument doesn't wash with voters.

Those who place small value on these considerations (the real crazies) never get near enough to real nukes to use them. They wouldn't know how to make them go off, anyway.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael,

"Spoils," "profits," you are naive. You might be right about today's Russia or China, but we aren't fixed in time. You are wrong about Muslim terrorists.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

Those who place small value on these considerations (the real crazies) never get near enough to real nukes to use them. They wouldn't know how to make them go off, anyway.

Michael

Radioactive wastes exploded with conventional nitroglycerin or T.N.T. could render parts of Manhattan uninhabitable for weeks or months. Stealing the radioactive waste products from hospitals would be child's play.

But why get fancy. How about a couple of 18 wheelers loaded with explosives blowing up in New York Cities tunnels and bridges simultaneously. That would be a slam dunk and not too difficult to arrange.

Or how about botulin toxin dumped in the city water supply from the shore or from an airplane flying over a reservoir. Botulin toxin can be purchased legally for "research" purposes.

It is just a matter of time.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

I might be naive, but until further notice, I learned as a very young boy that it costs money to manufacture bellic equipment and arms. I also learned that only governments buy the real heavy hardware. (I once argued with a person in Brazil that I could not conceive of his villain, the evil multinational Coca-Cola, purchasing an atomic bomb.)

I came to my own conclusion that if you don't use up stocked hardware somehow, there is no real reason to buy more. The best way, of course, is to make things designed to go boom go boom. The best place for that is war.

There are other possibilities, but those are the best and most effective for turnover. Over all the years of my life, I have never seen these truths contradicted.

Just call me naive.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Radioactive wastes exploded with conventional nitroglycerin or T.N.T. could render parts of Manhattan uninhabitable for weeks or months. Stealing the radioactive waste products from hospitals would be child's play.

But why get fancy. How about a couple of 18 wheelers loaded with explosives blowing up in New York Cities tunnels and bridges simultaneously. That would be a slam dunk and not too difficult to arrange.

Or how about botulin toxin dumped in the city water supply from the shore or from an airplane flying over a reservoir. Botulin toxin can be purchased legally for "research" purposes.

It is just a matter of time.

Bob,

I have a great idea. Why don't you do that to them? You obviously want to and you obviously know how. After all, as you say, it is "child's play." I don't even see a problem with funding or support group. All you have to do is knock on a few doors.

So why don't you?

As for me, I learned a wise lesson before I read Rand.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael: lack of money? Can you spell O I L?

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

Suddenly I don't understand you. (Internet limitations.) If you are saying that oil is one of the spoils of war, we agree.

If you are also saying that we have funded our enemies by providing them with a wealth (derived from oil sales) they would not have produced on their own, we agree.

Are you saying anything else?

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

Suddenly I don't understand you. (Internet limitations.) If you are saying that oil is one of the spoils of war, we agree.

If you are also saying that we have funded our enemies by providing them with a wealth (derived from oil sales) they would not have produced on their own, we agree.

Are you saying anything else?

Michael

I was referring to the second. Both are true.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

I question whether "enemies" is a stolen concept?

W.

[Brant Gaede]

Bob is only goofy on the solution, not the problem, Michael, which you don't recognize, understand or acknowledge. Unwritten history may prove you right--sort of: Just because your house didn't burn down doesn't mean you were wise not to buy homeowner's insurance.

--Brant

Edited August 3, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

I disagree. I not only "recognize, understand and acknowledge," the problem (which is not one problem, but several), I have broken it down into components many times and have studied and reported findings.

If you like, I can recap. One more time won't hurt.

Michael

EDIT:

Wolf - If we are talking about fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, it is not a stolen concept. If we are talking simply about a Middle East country, or any other for that matter, with a predominantly Islamic culture, I agree with you. Incidentally, while researching something else, I came across this gem by David Kelley from 2002:

Islamism and Modernity; Lou Dobbs is right.

Here is an excerpt:

At the deepest level, the war on terrorism is the latest phase of a continuing struggle to achieve the promise of modern civilization. The threat posed by the Islamists comes not from their Islamic background but from their anti-modernist creed. This is a profoundly anti-human outlook, and there can be no compromise with it. As we take aim at the terrorists who have attacked us, we must also take intellectual aim at the ideas that inspire them-wherever those ideas are put forward.

Those words are just as true now as they were 5 years ago. The only difference in the Objectivist world is that intellectual material coming from ARI (and sympathizers) is trying to turn the Objectivist subculture into one of bigots.

They are missing the real target and repeating the error of the enemy. I hate seeing that.

You would think they would understand that in the war between Catholocism and Protestantism, neither side won. It was the Enlightenment that won.

In the war between the Islamic world and the Jewish world—or the Islamic world and the Western world, it is reason that is going to win.

Bigotry is the enemy of reason.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael, I am glad that reason is going to win. But I think it's more that reason will survive--at great and unnecessary cost. Nothing I have read so far indicates anything other than force, unceasing diligence and will, telling Muslims the truth about their enslaving religion--historical and whatnot, putting Mecca and Medina at risk, etc. will do the job--plus the two things I have all ready posited--without the West paying that unnecessary cost. Please understand this: The West is at war with the Muslim religion. That religion is evil. It was spread by the sword and should have its balls cut off. It can't be destroyed by bombs but it can be beat up and terrorists can be civilized by a Craig. The Muslims need separation of church and state so they can stop living in the prison of their religion terrorized by thugs and Imams. They can get that from us and we are justified by the principle of self defense so the terrorists and thugs don't keep shitting on us too. The less reason now means the bigger the war later and the more the Bobs will get to do what they think we ought to do right now. And I also want to survive, along with reason. I am a practical, realistic man with guns in my home and a dog that barks and cats that love me. I don't live in fear, but anyone breaking in should be. My neighbors are mostly sheep, friendly when we meet on the street. They are safer because the bad guys can't tell my home from theirs so they never know when they try to break in that they won't run into the likes of me--so they get day jobs--some of them--instead.

Gee, this should be in "Rants!"

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

My stated view from the beginning is to let the military fight the military part and let the intellectuals fight the war of ideas.

I do not agree that we are at war with Islam. We are at war, to cite David Kelley, with the "anti-modernist creed" part in the Islamic culture (which is not as large as the fear-mongers portray—although it is strong in a small number of countries). Ideologically we can do something about Islam just like we did about Christianity (and that religion still garners its share of kooks because of some weird passages in the Bible). Freedom of religion is one of the basic freedoms our forefathers died to defend. I agree with them and I will not lend my voice to imposing religious censorship with guns.

People have the right to worship Allah just as much as they have the right to worship Jehovah or Jesus or Satan or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Ayn Rand's ghost.

When you start talking about separation of church of state, individual rights, and things of this nature, we are talking the same language. That—advocating that to Muslims—is the intellectual challenge that we, as intellectuals, must promote. It is awfully hard to shoot a terrorist on the Internet, I don't care how big the talk gets. The military is much more qualified to shoot terrorists competently than I am, anyway.

The formula is easy:

Internet = ideas = intellectuals

Guns and bombs = force = military

A is A anybody?

When a person starts talking about shooting or bombing a man who does not violate the rights of others just because he worships a god in a religion with strong missionary principles, I will oppose that coward just as strongly as I oppose terrorist cowards.

Saying we need to shoot and bomb Muslims is not intellectual warfare to promote good ideas. It is veiled bigotry used to combat Islamist bigotry. It will fail. In today's world, thankfully bigotry always does. We are Americans. The days of the American white man wiping out Indians has been over for well over a century. That is a black mark on our history. We don't need to start in on a new race or culture.

In the Objectivist world, we are losing the intellectual war because we are promoting bigotry instead of reason and rights. We have no business telling the military how to do its job. We have our own to do and what I have been reading in the Objectivist world is so incompetent it shames me to say I am an Objectivist.

We have excellent military weapons and intellectual weapons. All we need to do is use them well and reason and peace will triumph.

Michael

[Wolf DeVoon]

reason and peace will triumph

reason will survive--at great and unnecessary cost

Those are contraries, so at least one of the above propositions is incorrect. Personally, I think we're headed for another Dark Age. Bob speaks for a majority of Israelis, plus 30 percent of Americans. The sheep that Brant mentioned are too frightened to stop 'the war on terrorism' (floating abstraction), and want above all cheaper gasoline, cheaper food, and cheap victory on the battlefield, despite the fact that there isn't any physical battlefield with terrorists, except south Lebanon and Afghanistan. Iraq was an elephant hunt gone haywire, a war for oil, which the great powers understand, even if American voters believe otherwise. We will never be forgiven our occupation of Iraq.

People have the right to worship Allah

The Muslim religion is evil

Those are contradictory propositions, so one is true, the other false.

W.

Edited August 3, 2007 by Wolf DeVoon

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

My stated view from the beginning is to let the military fight the military part and let the intellectuals fight the war of ideas.

I do not agree that we are at war with Islam. We are at war, to cite David Kelley, with the "anti-modernist creed" part in the Islamic culture (which is not as large as the fear-mongers portray—although it is strong in a small number of countries). Ideologically we can do something about Islam just like we did about Christianity (and that religion still garners its share of kooks because of some weird passages in the Bible). Freedom of religion is one of the basic freedoms our forefathers died to defend. I agree with them and I will not lend my voice to imposing religious censorship with guns.

People have the right to worship Allah just as much as they have the right to worship Jehovah or Jesus or Satan or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Ayn Rand's ghost.

When you start talking about separation of church of state, individual rights, and things of this nature, we are talking the same language. That—advocating that to Muslims—is the intellectual challenge that we, as intellectuals, must promote. It is awfully hard to shoot a terrorist on the Internet, I don't care how big the talk gets. The military is much more qualified to shoot terrorists competently than I am, anyway.

The formula is easy:

Internet = ideas = intellectuals

Guns and bombs = force = military

A is A anybody?

When a person starts talking about shooting or bombing a man who does not violate the rights of others just because he worships a god in a religion with strong missionary principles, I will oppose that coward just as strongly as I oppose terrorist cowards.

Saying we need to shoot and bomb Muslims is not intellectual warfare to promote good ideas. It is veiled bigotry used to combat Islamist bigotry. It will fail. In today's world, thankfully bigotry always does. We are Americans. The days of the American white man wiping out Indians has been over for well over a century. That is a black mark on our history. We don't need to start in on a new race or culture.

In the Objectivist world, we are losing the intellectual war because we are promoting bigotry instead of reason and rights. We have no business telling the military how to do its job. We have our own to do and what I have been reading in the Objectivist world is so incompetent it shames me to say I am an Objectivist.

We have excellent military weapons and intellectual weapons. All we need to do is use them well and reason and peace will triumph.

Michael,

The United States in an actual, de facto war with Iran.

The West is at war with Islam and has been for more than a thousand years.

Building bridges to moderate Muslims is only okay for private parties. When it is reflective of a country's foreign policy it is taken as appeasement by the appeased who will not then hesitate to use the moderate Muslims as hostages, one way or the other, literally or metaphorically, militarily or intellectually.

I reject the military-intellectual dichotomy for it leaves the military civilian leaderless and directionless. It also leaves you with the advantage of an implicit argument from (intellectual) authority. In reality, I think you've got your head too up in the clouds--that is you don't seem to see that truly building bridges to Muslim moderates means providing them with an environment they can be moderate in. That takes the rule of law plus force. No force, no law. All societies ultimately rest on power and force and you cannot intellectualize that away. Law as we understand it is an historical rarity and luxury most Americans don't appreciate nearly enough.

--Brant

Edited August 3, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[Aggrad02]

The more I research this and think about it. I believe that it is not Islam or even Islamic Fascist that were are fighting against, but that we are fighting over control. The US is fighting for control over the oil fields and the middle-eastern market and the terrorist are fighting for control over the oil fields and control of the people of the middle-east. For the terrorist to accomplish this goal they know that they have to have the financial and politically backing of the people. The easiest way to get that backing is to invoke God, it happens all of the time and through out history. Israel uses it to fight against the Palestinians and the Palestinians use it to fight Israel. It was used in the Crusade, it was used against the Native Americans. It is being used by Osama bin Laden and it is being used by George W. Bush.

Fear and the promises of a free lunch have been used by politicians since the beginning of time. "Pick Me or else" and "pick me and I'll give you X" are the basis of politics and religion. Why do you think the first religious leaders arose. They wanted power so they invented God. There is no difference between picking a God and picking a tyrant. Both wish to take your freedoms and substitute the will of others.

Remember, Islamic fundamentalism did not flourish in Iran until the U.S. over threw Mossadeq, Khomeni was a little known cleric until he could focus the people on the tyrant Sha and the US foreign policy that installed and kept him in power. Only then was he able to gain prominence.

If the US had been sitting neutral for the last 70 years and then had been attacked like we were on 9/11 then I would agree that it is Islam that needs to be battled. But that is not the case. It has been 70 years of US foreign policy of interventionism in the middle east that has caused the current turmoil. This war directly descends from the Cold War. In our effort to keep the communist out of the Middle East, we have become the oppressors of the Middle East, and the religious extremest use this as their spring board to power.

It seems rather interesting to me that the very countries that we "failed" to protect during the communist aggression East Asia and Eastern Europe, are the countries that now embrace freedom the most and that we are on the most friendly terms with. Those countries pose no threat to the US (Russia, China, Veitnam, Korea, Germany, Poland, Romania, et al). Even countries that were Islamic (Albania, Kosovo, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Lybia) pose no threat. It is only the places where the US was "successful" in keeping out the Communist that we face the greatest danger from: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Palestine and that are more and more turning to socialism: Latin America. It is also interesting to note that most of these countries have vast oil reserves and other natural resources.

Considering the fact that other religious groups are not attacking one another, and that Muslims from free societies are not attacking others, and add to the mix that some members of Hezbollah are Lebanese Christian, then it is conceivable that it is not religion that is the problem. It may be the fire but it is not the fuel. The fuel for the fire in is US foreign policy and the American fascist (corporatism) that controls our policy. If the US gets out of foreign engagements, it will not end terrorism overnight but it will be start, Osama and the Clerics will still want to cause fear to further their agendas, but the Arab people will not have to choose between the tyranny of the US and the tyranny of the Clerics and the support for the Clerics will wain.

Taking a short sighted approach of "they attacked us, so we should attack them", and "they are evil and we are good" or "they are Muslim and we are Christian", is the way that the Fascist of both sides (the Osamas and the Neo-Cons) are attempting to divide us and conquer us. The fascist terrorist are spreading tyranny through Islam and the Neo-Cons are chipping away our freedoms, all in the name of protection, all in the name of God and all supported by fear. What does the common individual in the US and the common individual in Iran have to fear or to hate about the other: Nothing. But each has to be fearful of both the American government and the Iranian government.

The ideas of freedom and liberty rest on the respect for the individual. Therefore Government must be representative of the people, and operate to insure the freedom of it citizens. Once a government starts to oppress its own people, it is only a matter of time before it tries to oppress people of other nations, likewise a government that attempts to oppress people of another nation while upholding liberties at home, will soon fail to uphold those very liberties. That is what we are experiencing now, oppression abroad is being brought home. But the problem is, is that we are taking it lying down because we are fearful.

We need to shrug off this fear and use our reason to solve this problem.

-Dustan

[BaalChatzaf]

We need to shrug off this fear and use our reason to solve this problem.

-Dustan

If we kill our enemies we have solved the problem. Straightforward common sense. We have tools (nukes, chemicals, conventional weapons, etc., etc.). Now all we need is the will the use them.

If thine enemy smite thee on thy cheek, tear his head off and shit down his neck.

Do that enough times and your enemies will stop smiting thee on they cheek. Straightforward common sense.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Wolf DeVoon]

Considering the fact that other religious groups are not attacking one another, and that Muslims from free societies are not attacking others, and add to the mix that some members of Hezbollah are Lebanese Christian, then it is conceivable that it is not religion that is the problem. It may be the fire but it is not the fuel. The fuel for the fire in is US foreign policy and the American fascist (corporatism) that controls our policy. If the US gets out of foreign engagements, it will not end terrorism overnight but it will be start

Great post.

W.

[Brant Gaede]

Considering the fact that other religious groups are not attacking one another, and that Muslims from free societies are not attacking others, and add to the mix that some members of Hezbollah are Lebanese Christian, then it is conceivable that it is not religion that is the problem. It may be the fire but it is not the fuel. The fuel for the fire in is US foreign policy and the American fascist (corporatism) that controls our policy. If the US gets out of foreign engagements, it will not end terrorism overnight but it will be start

Great post.

W.

Bombings in London. Assassination of a film maker in Europe. A translator of the Satanic Verses killed in Japan. An attack at the Glascow airport.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

If we kill our enemies we have solved the problem.

I have finally figured out your problem. You're concrete bound, dedicated to the measurable here and now, disdainful of concepts, insisting on machine logic a la Russell, 100 percent meatspace empiricist. No wonder right and wrong are irrelevant to you. You're epistemologically handicapped.

[BaalChatzaf]

If we kill our enemies we have solved the problem.

I have finally figured out your problem. You're concrete bound, dedicated to the measurable here and now, disdainful of concepts, insisting on machine logic a la Russell, 100 percent meatspace empiricist. No wonder right and wrong are irrelevant to you. You're epistemologically handicapped.

Right on! I am not epistemologically handicapped. I am epistemologically enabled. I can tell the difference between the Word and the Thing. I can tell the difference between the Map and the Territory. I am totally immersed in Reality which is to say the physical universe, because all there is is matter, motion, energy and space-time. I am not haunted by reifications of abstractions, which are merely tools with which barbarians like myself fiddle around in reality for Fun and Profit.

Morality is Opinion. There are no Moral Facts. There never were. There are only atoms and quantum whizzing through the void.

Now here is the question: who is more likely to survive in our not-so-nice world, meat machines like me or floating abstractions like you? If you study the world carefully, Evil is leading Good and it is the bottom of the seventh.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Wolf DeVoon]

Bombings in London. Assassination of a film maker in Europe. A translator of the Satanic Verses killed in Japan. An attack at the Glascow airport.

Spelling Glasgow. You forgot Bali, which was a terrorist attack on Australians.

We're much better off thinking of Islamic terrorism as crime, something done by small numbers of madmen, a police problem. No matter what the White Christian Anglo-American-Canadian-Oz military forces elect to do, the police problem will persist and infuriate everybody. I agree with Dustan that this needs to be healed with creative thinking, rather than greater injustice.

I admire your perspectve, Brant, so fire away if you think I'm mistaken.

W.

[Aggrad02]

Considering the fact that other religious groups are not attacking one another, and that Muslims from free societies are not attacking others, and add to the mix that some members of Hezbollah are Lebanese Christian, then it is conceivable that it is not religion that is the problem. It may be the fire but it is not the fuel. The fuel for the fire in is US foreign policy and the American fascist (corporatism) that controls our policy. If the US gets out of foreign engagements, it will not end terrorism overnight but it will be start

Great post.

W.

Bombings in London. Assassination of a film maker in Europe. A translator of the Satanic Verses killed in Japan. An attack at the Glascow airport.

--Brant

All of those committing those crimes were originally from or had very strong connections to the Middle-East. Also the people at the top of the planning for such events (Al-Qeada) are in the Mid-East. Also, It is rather easy to convince/hire someone to be a gunman regardless of the cause.

--Dustan

Edited August 4, 2007 by Aggrad02

[BaalChatzaf]

Bombings in London. Assassination of a film maker in Europe. A translator of the Satanic Verses killed in Japan. An attack at the Glascow airport.

Spelling Glasgow. You forgot Bali, which was a terrorist attack on Australians.

We're much better off thinking of Islamic terrorism as crime, something done by small numbers of madmen, a police problem. No matter what the White Christian Anglo-American-Canadian-Oz military forces elect to do, the police problem will persist and infuriate everybody. I agree with Dustan that this needs to be healed with creative thinking, rather than greater injustice.

On August 6, 1945 police problems ceased to exist (at least for a while) in Hiroshima. Ditto for Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. There is something about a nuclear fireball that simplifies matters a great deal, don't you think?

I love the month of August. My birthday is in August. The anniversary of my marriage is in August and above all the Sixth and Ninth are in August. I consider 6 and 9 August Holy Days to be celebrated every year. Those were the days when we finally Got Even for Pearl Harbor.

If thine enemy smite thee on thy cheek, rip his head off an shit down his neck.

Ba'al Chatzaf