danielgree writes the following:

"Bloviators Are Part of the Problem

There is no doubt that the Washington Post opinion page has become almost unreadable. Too often their answers are simplistic and speak for what is good for the Washington establishment not American as a whole."

True enough. But then writes the following:

"The problem however is broader than that. Sirota and Greenwald are themselves, one trick ponies, anit-American and anti-Israel. The villans are always people who are risk takers."

The above is total bullshit. What is anti-American about either of them (or Anti-Israel for that matter)? They don't march lock-step with AIPAC? They dare to criticize the status quo? Dares to point out hypocrisy, dangerous precedents toward statism? Nothing Anti-American about that.

--Ron

So, does that mean you're all for factory farming, whose cheap produce is only possible because of government subsidies? Are you saying that people should re-experience the holocaust so that they can be sanguine about factory farms and the extreme amounts of pollution from them? Doesn't seem like you have anything to offer but specious criticism.

--Ron

"It's a pity Foer has never experienced the hunger his Grandmother (and I assume other family members) must have experienced as Holocaust survivors and victims—it might make his conclusions a little less obvious."

I was struck by this passage of Mr. Greenwald's in today's article:

I want to add one principal point to all of this. This is precisely how the character of a country becomes fundamentally degraded when it becomes a state in permanent war. So continuous are the inhumane and brutal acts of government leaders that the citizens completely lose the capacity for moral outrage and horror. The permanent claims of existential threats from an endless array of enemies means that secrecy is paramount, accountability is deemed a luxury, and National Security trumps every other consideration -- even including basic liberties and the rule of law. Worst of all, the President takes on the attributes of a protector-deity who can and must never be questioned lest we prevent him from keeping us safe.

Here's a pertinent quote from James Madison on the dangers of perpetual war:

"In war, the discretionary power of the Executive [President] is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war…and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

I think this decision of the circuit court explicitly demonstrates the jeopardy to personal freedom caused by the continuous "war" state we've been in for several years now.

--Ron

You keep trashing her, over and over with your misinformed screeds. On other subjects, you seem more reasonable, so it strikes me as bizarre behavior.

And for the record, Ayn Rand was no friend of Republicans or conservatives, despite what many people who claim to be her followers claim for themselves. She was also no fan of what passes for liberalism in this century either. Both ignore the individual's needs, and seek to make individuals sacrifice themselves to whatever whim society or the oligarchs can come up with.

Lots of people mistakenly think her championship of the individual means some individuals can prey on others, or cheat them, or steal from them, or legislate their earnings away from them, or for corporatism run amok, or any other act of coercion. Her views of the individual was the greatest freedom for ALL individuals, true freedom, the freedom from coercion, to the smallest minority--the individual, rather than the tribalism and group warfare so common today.

It's a falsehood to think she was against charity, or considered it only for the weak. She said charity should be given to those whose values you share. For instance, she considered it moral to help out a friend who's suffered from a situation not of his making (such as an earthquake or hurricane), or for any situation that does not clash with your own moral values.

What she considered immoral was the true definition of sacrifice: trading a greater good for a lesser good, and particularly for trading a positive value for a negative. For instance, she'd consider it immoral to give money to some stranger on the street, and let your own child starve even though you valued the child more than a stranger (this unlikely scenario is only to illustrate what a true sacrifice is). What she did not consider a sacrifice, but is often called one, is where a person didn't buy some new shoes they really wanted, but instead bought food for their children.

A lot of why she's denigrated is because people have sloppy understandings of the meanings of words. This is one of the tricks many people in power use to confuse issues (see your average republican pundit).

99% of what is said about her, and her philosophy is complete rubbish, including almost all of what's been written by the throng of people here. Far too much to rebut here, but it gets tiresome seeing all the mindlessness masquerading as analysis.

Reading comprehension is extremely poor, and it shows from the people who claim to have read her and can even think she's some conservative, or a people hater, and even one horribly misinformed person thinks her philosophy is like Plato's! I would not be surprised to find that most of her critics have never even read her works.

She was a champion of reason being the only tool of cognition, not faith. If she had her flaws, being an advocate of reason more thank makes up for any flaws in my view. We've certainly seen where faith and irrationality has gotten us.