Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 1824
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Objectivism and Judeo/Christianity....
[Read the article: The Republican Party is the party of Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... Atlas Shrugged...
Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, was published in 1957. Due to the success of The Fountainhead, the initial printing was 100,000 copies,[22] and the book went on to become an international bestseller. (The frequent claim[23] that Atlas Shrugged was later found to be the "second most influential book in America, after The Bible,"[24] may be an exaggeration of the findings of one 1991 survey; however, it has been cited in numerous interviews as the book that most influenced the subject.)
The Holey Babble and "Atlas Shrugged". Two religions, based on two works of fiction.
I agree that libertarianism/Libertarianism/"Libertarianism" ends up side-tracking waaaaayyyyy too many serious discussions. Like Godwin's Laws, many a time once a libertarian gets going in a thread about "political theory", the thread is dead. So I have assiduously avoided essentially all such "conversations" for the last fifteen years. While I may agree with libertarians on many specific issues (but certainly not all), I find the theoretical underpinnings (which the Randers cling to like religion) to be woefully shoddy and wholly unnecessary, and the libertarians in general waaayyyy too dogmatic. We can have libertarian/liberal views without needing more than a curt "because liberty is a good thing" to back it up. Anything more is window dressing ... or salad dressing ... or cross dressing ... or worse.
Cheers,
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"Shooter042" is pig-ignerrent even before his morning drink....
[Read the article: The Republican Party is the party of Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My apologies for jumping in on the first comment I see this morning, but I have to ask whether anyone knows whether the wars of the 20th Century have more casualties then the pogroms of the USSR, the massacres of Mao, and the killing fields of Cambodia.
Ummmm, Nixon let Cambodia happen, because he didn't like the pinko Commie tools of the Soviet Union, the Vietnamese, and didn't want them stepping in to Cambodia to quell the Khmer Rouge....
The flip side of forbidding pre-emptive war is that it becomes the Totalitarian Thug Protection Doctrine.
Nonsense. The U.S. has encouraged coups, or even just gone ahead and invaded dozens of times in the last century just to install "totalitarian thug[s]". See Stephen Kinzer's fine book "Overthrow" for the sanguinary details.
Cheers,
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@ IntrovertGirl
[Read the article: The Republican Party is the party of Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ideals are ideals. While the middle of the road might only have a yellow line and a dead armadillo, if you go too far to the edges you just end up falling into the ditch and going nowhere.
Agreed. Not to mention that comments boards are prolly the absolute worst place to -- ummm, "discuss" -- political "theories", in particular those of an absolutist bent.
Cheers,
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@ MacK..
[Read the article: New disappearance revelations]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]More seriously, one legal commentator (whose name slips my mind) has long suggested that the real question on whether end-justifies-means is whether the official is willing to face the criminal consequences of his or her actions.....
I've been saying pretty much that for years:
http://leastdangerousbranch.blogspot.com/2005/01/torture-can-be-just-ticket-just-keep.html
"Extreme hypotheticals, of course, make bad law. But even so, here's a good rejoinder to such absurd hypotheticals: If you're convinced that you're doing "the greater good" by torturing the individual and getting the information to save those thousands of lives, go for it. Just don't expect to get off scott-free. Hell, if it's for "the greater good" for the suspect person to be illegally tortured to achieve this great savings of life, then it's also for the greater good for you to lay down your freedom as well, in order to save the masses. Do what you have to, and then take your lumps. You'll have the solace, as you sit and rot in prison for torture, of knowing that you saved all those people ... and you did it without corrupting the rule of law. Kind of like throwing yourself on a grenade to save your buddies ... not really a wise idea in isolation, but under the circumstances, it could be admirable."
There's more on the subject (and others relating to "expediency" and forgiveness) there too.
Cheers,
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@ Desert Son
[Read the article: New disappearance revelations]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sorry, forgot to properly cite in my post.
Do I get extra credit if I knew the source even w/o the cite?
Cheers,
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@ IntrovertGirl
[Read the article: The Republican Party is the party of Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here][Arne]: Not to mention that comments boards are prolly the absolute worst place to -- ummm, "discuss" -- political "theories", in particular those of an absolutist bent.<<
Very true, although I suppose any "discussion" is better than none? How many people on this board would be able to empty out the drawers of others' ideas and assumptions without the Internet?
The main drawback of comments is that they tend to be short and quick, not long, well thought out, and detailed, with all the nuances and caveats appropriate for a difficult subject.
Glenn's blog is far better than most, not only in the quality of the commentators and the breadth of their knowledge (excepting, of course, thugs like "shooter" and such), but also in the length and detail of both posts and comments. The Pauls, LWM, sysprog, et al regularly do pages worth of stuff, and our libertarian leaners here (and there's a fair number) respond in kind. We've got conservative here, liberals here, radicals here, and just good plain folk of common sense. And when such are arrayed against one another, I think we do get a bit more light than heat.
But my general experience with the dogmatic libertarians is that, just as with religion, there's a hard wall you reach after which all has been said that will be said, and knocking things around further won't add anything....
Cheers,
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Open letter to Mike McConnell
[Read the article: New disappearance revelations]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm afraid that "nabalzbbfr" has been spilling tippy-top deep sooper-sooper secret interrogation techniques, and the spillng of these techniques has rendered these valuable tools ineffective:
"The age of the children doesn't matter. I am sure they are kept in very comfortable circumstances, so there is no reason for liberal bleeding hearts to commiserate about their conditions. The point is to have their terrorist fathers think otherwise. I am sure that Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has developed some very convincing virtual reality techniques which would make it appear that they are undergoing brutal torture. This provides us with the best of both worlds: on the one hand we preserve our moral purity, treating even the children of the most heinous terrorists with love and respect. On the other hand it provides us with a potent weapon to put the utmost pressure on these terrorists."
He's compromised the nash'nul security of the United Effin' States of Amer'kuh, and should be locked up as a traitor forthwith. Why does he love Osama and hate Amer'kuh so much?
Cheers,