[quote]PGJ wrote:
OK, Nominal. Here’s your chance. Instead of simply complaining, tell me your plan for dealing with Islamic terrorism. Explain to us how you, if you were President, would fix our problems. Don’t complain unless you have a better idea. Let’s have it. [/quote]
I have dealt with this in the past. You attack the root causes of terrorism, the legitimate grievances which are used by extremists in order to win converts.
Stop meddling in other peoples’ affairs. Get out of the Middle East. Cease all foreign aid. Step down from your imperial role and become a republic once more. Fat chance it will happen, but that’s how you deal with terrorism.
[quote]PGJ wrote:
Nominal is the biggest coward I’ve ever seen. The guy has NOTHING worth fighting for.[/quote]
Bullshit. I have everything to fight for - my own life and prosperity. That’s all a real man needs.
[quote]PGJ wrote:
He wouldn’t even fight to defend his own country. That is beyond sad. It’s pathetic.[/quote]
Tell me, what is “my country” and how are you arriving at that determination?
[quote]PGJ wrote:
He believes his freedom is a sacred right that all nations enjoy. Simply by existing, he feels he deserves the rights and priviledges obtained through the sacrifice of those who fought tyrany. He’s a classic leach. A parasite on society.[/quote]
This is a boneheaded mentality and I shall point out why that is the case.
Every person, simply by being born, takes advantage of the social, political, technological, and economic circumstances of his time. If you’re born into the third world, you become poor - through no fault of you own. Likewise, if you’re born into a wealthy, middle class family in New York, you automatically become rich. And it goes much further. For example, simply by having been born in the 20th century, you have access to technological innovations such as automobiles, planes, computers, etc…
Now tell me, PGJ, what are YOU doing to repay YOUR standing debt to the individuals who invented the printing press, the washing machine, the assembly line, the oil derrick, the pizza parlor, and so many other fixtures of modern, western society which you take for granted?
I hope by now I have demonstrated the sheer absurdity of your position.
“Moral debt” is a road which has no end, and thus leads to the enslavement of all who walk it. This is precisely why it is used by major religions to instill guilt and fear into the populace.
I tell you, PGJ, to stop living like a slave and start living like a human.
Every organism on earth acts selfishly, including humans. At all times, with every action, people strive to minimize their discomfort and maximize their pleasure.
Sacrifice, morality, generosity, altruism, etc, are myths created by collectivist ideologies.
Self-interest is the motivation behind every human action, be it robbing an old woman of her purse or donating millions to charity. In each case, the participant is acting in the way that HE believes will maximize HIS pleasure and minimize HIS discomfort.
The difference is that some individuals are more in touch with their true will than others. This is because they do not let their conscience become clouded by vague, intangible concepts of “morality”, “duty”, “honor”, “country”, and other such collectivist nonsense. All of these notions are instilled by fear. That is why patriotism is the last refuge of a coward.
[quote]PGJ wrote:
Come on dude, at some point in your life you are going to have to stand up for something. Do you honestly think there is another place on this planet that will offer you the same freedoms you have here? [/quote]
I stand up each and every day for the most important cause that I could ever know, for it is the only cause for which I, and noone else, am truly responsible – my own cause.
And yes, I can get exactly the same freedoms that I get here (or better) in Norway, Switzerland, France, Spain, and Belgium – don’t kid yourself. Nobody is going to attack those countries because they haven’t been running around and trying to dictate the affairs of the entire world. They don’t have imperial armies located in 136 other nations.
[quote]Max Stirner
The Ego and Its Own
All Things Are Nothing To Me
What is not supposed to be my concern [Sache] ! First and foremost, the good cause [Sache], then God’s cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. ''Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!"
Let us look and see, then, how they manage their concerns - they for whose cause we are to labour, devote ourselves, and grow enthusiastic.
You have much profound information to give about God, and have for thousands of years “searched the depths of the Godhead,” and looked into its heart, so that you can doubtless tell us how God himself attends to “God’s cause,” which we are called to serve. And you do not conceal the Lord’s doings, either. Now, what is his cause? Has he, as is demanded of us, made an alien cause, the cause of truth or love, his own?
You are shocked by this misunderstanding, and you instruct us that God’s cause is indeed the cause of truth and love, but that this cause cannot be called alien to him, because God is himself truth and love; you are shocked by the assumption that God could be like us poor worms in furthering an alien cause as his own. “Should God take up the cause of truth if he were not himself truth?” He cares only for his cause, but, because he is all in all, therefore all is his cause!
But we, we are not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible; therefore we must “serve a higher cause.” - Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well pleasing to him. He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is - a purely egoistic cause.
How is it with mankind, whose cause we are to make our own? Is its cause that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No, mankind looks only at itself, mankind will promote the interests of mankind only, mankind is its own cause. That it may develop, it causes nations and individuals to wear themselves out in its service, and, when they have accomplished what mankind needs, it throws them on the dung-heap of history in gratitude. Is not mankind’s cause - a purely egoistic cause?
I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them?
They all have an admirable time of it when they receive zealous homage. Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that? By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to “its bloom”! The individuals have died “for the great cause of the nation,” and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and - has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism.
But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his people? Oh, yes, for “his people.” Just try it; show yourself not as his, but as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail. The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to be one of “his people.”
And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself.
God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for myself, who am equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one [Der Einzige].
If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that I shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my “emptiness.” I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing [das sch?pferiche Nichts], the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.
Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the “good cause” must be my concern? What’s good, what’s bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me. The divine is God’s concern; the human, man’s. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine [das Meinige] , and it is not a general one, but is - unique [einzig], as I am unique.
Nothing is more to me than myself![/quote]