[quote]orion wrote:
JeffR wrote:
I understand him perfectly well.
That is why he is either an idiot, which I doubt, or willfully ignorant, which is also unlikely, or he draws a perverse joy out of erecting intellectually dishonest strawmen.
[/quote]
Everyone, read this. bota is giving you an honest self-analysis. With these characteristics, no wonder you “understand him perfectly well” and most of the rest of us are struggling.
JeffR
[quote]JeffR wrote:
orion wrote:
JeffR wrote:
I understand him perfectly well.
That is why he is either an idiot, which I doubt, or willfully ignorant, which is also unlikely, or he draws a perverse joy out of erecting intellectually dishonest strawmen.
Everyone, read this. bota is giving you an honest self-analysis. With these characteristics, no wonder you “understand him perfectly well” and most of the rest of us are struggling.
JeffR
[/quote]
Now that was almost semi-clever.
I am glad that you are not beyond hope and that the necessity to actually argue a point instead of relying on borrowed authority makes you slowly but surely acquire certain communication skills.
Who knows, maybe, someday, you will be able to earn an honest living.
[quote]orion wrote:
JeffR wrote:
orion wrote:
JeffR wrote:
I understand him perfectly well.
That is why he is either an idiot, which I doubt, or willfully ignorant, which is also unlikely, or he draws a perverse joy out of erecting intellectually dishonest strawmen.
Everyone, read this. bota is giving you an honest self-analysis. With these characteristics, no wonder you “understand him perfectly well” and most of the rest of us are struggling.
JeffR
Now that was almost semi-clever.
I am glad that you are not beyond hope and that the necessity to actually argue a point instead of relying on borrowed authority makes you slowly but surely acquire certain communication skills.
Who knows, maybe, someday, you will be able to earn an honest living.[/quote]
bota,
Thanks for the “semi-compliment.”
However, your castigation of public service, is another insight into the mind of someone who lacks any semblance of selflessness.
As an inferiority-laden austrian, I realize you eschew any sense of altruism.
I shouldn’t be surprised that you sneer at public service. After all, you are the same guy who stated that the Americans never occupied your country after WWII.
If you admitted the sacrifice and the altruism of that act and the Marshall Plan, you’d be forced to feel gratitude.
That just wouldn’t do in your “throw rocks from the sidelines at the big boys” worldview.
JeffR
[quote]JeffR wrote:
bota,
Thanks for the “semi-compliment.”
However, your castigation of public service, is another insight into the mind of someone who lacks any semblance of selflessness.
As an inferiority-laden austrian, I realize you eschew any sense of altruism.
I shouldn’t be surprised that you sneer at public service. After all, you are the same guy who stated that the Americans never occupied your country after WWII.
If you admitted the sacrifice and the altruism of that act and the Marshall Plan, you’d be forced to feel gratitude.
That just wouldn’t do in your “throw rocks from the sidelines at the big boys” worldview.
JeffR
[/quote]
You are being being altruistic while feeding of the taxpayers money that was extracted at gunpoint and enforcing laws that are a disgrace in 2/3 of all cases?
Well, I do understand that kind of “altruism” very well, thank you.
I also do not “admire” the “altruistic” nature of men that were pressed into service, you are right about that.
If what you did would “serve the public” the market would provide it. Since it doesn`t, “shovin down the people´s throat” is more like it.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
BostonBarrister wrote:
Waiting until now, in the middle of a presidential campaign, to make disclaimers means that those disclaimers aren’t very convincing.
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
He answered for this 10 years ago when he was re-running for congress. The article (yes, the only one) in question was published in D.C. when Dr. Paul was back practicing medicine in TX. I doubt he had a clue until someone brought it to his attention – when he DID relieve the individual of his ghost-writing privileges. He took moral responsibility for the oversight. This is a done issue.
People who call Dr. Paul a racist clearly don’t understand libertarianism.
Here’s the article that touched off the firestorm:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca
Here’s a link to selections from more than one of his newsletters - significantly more than one - I don’t know if the source had access to a full archive:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=74978161-f730-43a2-91c3-de262573a129 [/quote]
Ok, I went thru these newsletters and there is nothing inherently racist in any of them.
I find it interesting that in one of the newsletters TNR (along with NYT and WSJ) was implicated in outing the plagiarism of MLK’s doctoral thesis.
At worst he wasn’t paying attention to what was being written. His past actions in congress are more telling than the accusations. This is the same man who was willing to donate $100 of his own money to a Congressional Medal of Honor for Rosa Parks because he didn’t want to take money from tax payers…the same man who performed free services to poor minorities and immigrants…
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
BostonBarrister wrote:
BostonBarrister wrote:
Waiting until now, in the middle of a presidential campaign, to make disclaimers means that those disclaimers aren’t very convincing.
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
He answered for this 10 years ago when he was re-running for congress. The article (yes, the only one) in question was published in D.C. when Dr. Paul was back practicing medicine in TX. I doubt he had a clue until someone brought it to his attention – when he DID relieve the individual of his ghost-writing privileges. He took moral responsibility for the oversight. This is a done issue.
People who call Dr. Paul a racist clearly don’t understand libertarianism.
Here’s the article that touched off the firestorm:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca
Here’s a link to selections from more than one of his newsletters - significantly more than one - I don’t know if the source had access to a full archive:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=74978161-f730-43a2-91c3-de262573a129
Ok, I went thru these newsletters and there is nothing inherently racist in any of them.
I find it interesting that in one of the newsletters TNR (along with NYT and WSJ) was implicated in outing the plagiarism of MLK’s doctoral thesis.
At worst he wasn’t paying attention to what was being written. His past actions in congress are more telling than the accusations. This is the same man who was willing to donate $100 of his own money to a Congressional Medal of Honor for Rosa Parks because he didn’t want to take money from tax payers…the same man who performed free services to poor minorities and immigrants…
[/quote]
Oh no, that cold heartless capitalist racist delivered black or brown babies for free if they could not afford his services?
How could he possibly do such thing?
And more importantly how can we use it to slander him instead of addressing his points?
[quote]orion wrote:
DrSkeptix wrote:
orion wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
orion wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
orion wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Pakistan did not exist when the British occupied India and Kosovo that has never been occupied by the SU but was part of communist but independent Yugoslavia.
So what is your point?
Other then that India and Pakistan splitted remarkably peaceful without GB
Huh? About two million people died. Partition was a fucking disaster. What on earth are you talking about?
2 million out of how many?
They could have been a giant balcans but they weren`t.
G$–
Orion here is following his tradition of moral relativism; 2 million is relative to some other number (perhaps 400 million at the time of the Partition) and therefore cannot weigh heavily on the imagination!
But that is 2 million, say, out of the 100 million in Sindh, Rajahstan, and Bengal who were hacked to death with machetes, or 20 million who were sent homeless through the desert…
So, to a relativist, like Orion, that is relatively light, relatively speaking!
It wasn’t. It was a disaster. Orion does know what he is talking about, but he would rather dissimilate than admit he was wrong.
And Orion now stands with Stalin, who said, “A single murder is a tragedy; but a million murders is a statistic.”
5 percent of 400 million are bloody riots.
10 percent maybe a civil war.
20 and up attempted genocide.
0,5 percent, i.e 2 million out of 400 are birth pains.
And yes there are no moral absolutes.
So sorry, grow up.
[/quote]
Orion, I am so happy to see you acknowledge your mistakes, at last. Now that we have all the appropriate relative scales in Orion Order, I can review:
Now let’s see, by your calculations–0.5 % are “birth pains”–you must agree that Iraq (151,000 out of 28 million is about 0.5%) is experiencing birth pains over the last 4 years. Good grief, that puts Orion in agreement with Condoleeza Rice and George Bush: “the birth pains of democracy.”
Gentlemen: through diligent education, even the truculent troglodyte can be brought to light.
[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:
orion wrote:
DrSkeptix wrote:
orion wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
orion wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
orion wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Pakistan did not exist when the British occupied India and Kosovo that has never been occupied by the SU but was part of communist but independent Yugoslavia.
So what is your point?
Other then that India and Pakistan splitted remarkably peaceful without GB
Huh? About two million people died. Partition was a fucking disaster. What on earth are you talking about?
2 million out of how many?
They could have been a giant balcans but they weren`t.
G$–
Orion here is following his tradition of moral relativism; 2 million is relative to some other number (perhaps 400 million at the time of the Partition) and therefore cannot weigh heavily on the imagination!
But that is 2 million, say, out of the 100 million in Sindh, Rajahstan, and Bengal who were hacked to death with machetes, or 20 million who were sent homeless through the desert…
So, to a relativist, like Orion, that is relatively light, relatively speaking!
It wasn’t. It was a disaster. Orion does know what he is talking about, but he would rather dissimilate than admit he was wrong.
And Orion now stands with Stalin, who said, “A single murder is a tragedy; but a million murders is a statistic.”
5 percent of 400 million are bloody riots.
10 percent maybe a civil war.
20 and up attempted genocide.
0,5 percent, i.e 2 million out of 400 are birth pains.
And yes there are no moral absolutes.
So sorry, grow up.
Orion, I am so happy to see you acknowledge your mistakes, at last. Now that we have all the appropriate relative scales in Orion Order, I can review:
Now let’s see, by your calculations–0.5 % are “birth pains”–you must agree that Iraq (151,000 out of 28 million is about 0.5%) is experiencing birth pains over the last 4 years. Good grief, that puts Orion in agreement with Condoleeza Rice and George Bush: “the birth pains of democracy.”
Gentlemen: through diligent education, even the truculent troglodyte can be brought to light.[/quote]
Would I agree with your numbers and had you not forgotten the 500000 children alone that died in the sanctions and had the separation not been an inner Indian affair instead a war of aggression you´d have a point.
See how hard I try to say something positive about your post?
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
BostonBarrister wrote:
Here’s the article that touched off the firestorm:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca
Here’s a link to selections from more than one of his newsletters - significantly more than one - I don’t know if the source had access to a full archive:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=74978161-f730-43a2-91c3-de262573a129
Ok, I went thru these newsletters and there is nothing inherently racist in any of them.
[/quote]
No? Care to look again?
[i]“A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” analyzes the Los Angeles riots of 1992: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. … What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.”
The November 1990 issue of the Political Report had kind words for David Duke.
This newsletter describes Martin Luther King Jr. as “a world-class adulterer” who “seduced underage girls and boys” and “replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration.”
The January 1991 edition of the Political Report refers to King as a “world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours” and a “flagrant plagiarist with a phony doctorate.”
A February 1991 newsletter attacks “The X-Rated Martin Luther King.”
An October 1990 edition of the Political Report ridicules black activists, led by Al Sharpton, for demonstrating at the Statue of Liberty in favor of renaming New York City after Martin Luther King. The newsletter suggests that “Welfaria,” “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” “Dirtburg,” and “Lazyopolis” would be better alternatives–and says, “Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.”
[/i]
I thought you said there was only one citation; I did not bother to copy other newsletters that some would consider objectionable.
I repeat: I do not know if Ron Paul is a racist, but these newsletter entries smell of it.
[quote]orion wrote:
DrSkeptix wrote:
orion wrote:
DrSkeptix wrote:
orion wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
orion wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
orion wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Pakistan did not exist when the British occupied India and Kosovo that has never been occupied by the SU but was part of communist but independent Yugoslavia.
So what is your point?
Other then that India and Pakistan splitted remarkably peaceful without GB
Huh? About two million people died. Partition was a fucking disaster. What on earth are you talking about?
2 million out of how many?
They could have been a giant balcans but they weren`t.
G$–
Orion here is following his tradition of moral relativism; 2 million is relative to some other number (perhaps 400 million at the time of the Partition) and therefore cannot weigh heavily on the imagination!
But that is 2 million, say, out of the 100 million in Sindh, Rajahstan, and Bengal who were hacked to death with machetes, or 20 million who were sent homeless through the desert…
So, to a relativist, like Orion, that is relatively light, relatively speaking!
It wasn’t. It was a disaster. Orion does know what he is talking about, but he would rather dissimilate than admit he was wrong.
And Orion now stands with Stalin, who said, “A single murder is a tragedy; but a million murders is a statistic.”
5 percent of 400 million are bloody riots.
10 percent maybe a civil war.
20 and up attempted genocide.
0,5 percent, i.e 2 million out of 400 are birth pains.
And yes there are no moral absolutes.
So sorry, grow up.
Orion, I am so happy to see you acknowledge your mistakes, at last. Now that we have all the appropriate relative scales in Orion Order, I can review:
Now let’s see, by your calculations–0.5 % are “birth pains”–you must agree that Iraq (151,000 out of 28 million is about 0.5%) is experiencing birth pains over the last 4 years. Good grief, that puts Orion in agreement with Condoleeza Rice and George Bush: “the birth pains of democracy.”
Gentlemen: through diligent education, even the truculent troglodyte can be brought to light.
Would I agree with your numbers and had you not forgotten the 500000 children alone that died in the sanctions and had the separation not been an inner Indian affair instead a war of aggression you´d have a point.
See how hard I try to say something positive about your post?
[/quote]
Ah yes, you see I add those (putative 500,000, propagandized and never documented) children to Saddam’s list, his damnation in hell, because it was by his orders, and his failures to agree to signed treaty, that they suffered and died.
See how easy you can find it to agree with reasonable people?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
JeffR wrote:
Dr.Skeptix,
There is another possibility. I’ve been thinking that no educated man could claim that the Civil War was a power grab by Lincoln.
Is it possible that ron paul expects that his followers to be ignorant and lazy?
Seriously, with a point so easily verified, I’m thinking this is ron paul’s mo.
Manipulate the facts to suit his own version of Constitutionality and non-interventionalism.
What’s frightening is that you have at least two posters here: lifty/nommy who have swallowed this nonsense hook, line, and sinker.
They remind me of a mass of hypnotized zombies. Imagine blank faces, stiff limbs, and a monotone chant of, “ron paul is God. ron paul is God.”
JeffR
Very true, and I have been thinking - isn’t a libertarian someone who advocates the spread and extension of liberty to all humans?
It would seem that in furtherance of that goal, libertarians wouldn’t really care what level of government extended liberty once denied, so long as that level of government did so under its designated powers - i.e., via its legislature, voting in accordance with its prescribed constitutional mechanics.
Whether federal or state, as long as liberty was being advanced, a libertarian would be happy. A perfect example in the modern era is the number of libertarians who side with left-liberals on “activist judges” protecting liberties discovered in the Constitution.
Then I realized, after reviewing the arguments of the Rothbardians w/r/t the Civil War - they aren’t libertarians, they are nihilists.
Libertarians believe in natural law - moral absolutes regarding the inalienable right to liberty making up their cause. Rothbardians don’t believe in moral absolutes, per their own admission - so freedom is no better than slavery, individualism no better than collectivism. As such, the slavery of the Confederate South - while obnoxious to true libertarians, who believe in the natural law of personal liberty - was perfectly defendable by the Rothbardians as nihilists. Nihilists aren’t interested in broad principles as they apply/should apply to humanity, as libertarianism certainly is - they are self-interested, and “if one man should enslave another, it’s not a third man’s business”.
It’s an important distinction, I think - and I think Rothbardians make libertarians look bad. We already see libertarians distancing themselves.
And, of course, we see what folks think of Rothabrdianism - even in quirky NH, which prides itself on its independence and libertarian streak, threw a Rothbardian under the bus.
[/quote]
Yore weakness is your use of generalization without a proper understanding of what you are talking about.
I doubt you have read any of Rothbard’s work by what you have written. Here you go, free of charge:
Man, Economy, and State:
Rothbard may have helped fan the flames of the Libertarian movement but he was an anarchist. Nihilism is not anarchism nor are Rothbardians nihilists… pure nihilism does not exist. Taking such a view is, in itself, a belief and thus refutes itself.
And you still show your ignorance of relativism. There are no absolutes – this applies to relativism too. All observers perceive their own reality but two different observers can agree on what they believe. I can believe that liberty is a right and still believe that one may contest that right by exerting their power over me. Who is right? How do you know?
[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:
orion wrote:
DrSkeptix wrote:
orion wrote:
DrSkeptix wrote:
orion wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
orion wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
orion wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Pakistan did not exist when the British occupied India and Kosovo that has never been occupied by the SU but was part of communist but independent Yugoslavia.
So what is your point?
Other then that India and Pakistan splitted remarkably peaceful without GB
Huh? About two million people died. Partition was a fucking disaster. What on earth are you talking about?
2 million out of how many?
They could have been a giant balcans but they weren`t.
G$–
Orion here is following his tradition of moral relativism; 2 million is relative to some other number (perhaps 400 million at the time of the Partition) and therefore cannot weigh heavily on the imagination!
But that is 2 million, say, out of the 100 million in Sindh, Rajahstan, and Bengal who were hacked to death with machetes, or 20 million who were sent homeless through the desert…
So, to a relativist, like Orion, that is relatively light, relatively speaking!
It wasn’t. It was a disaster. Orion does know what he is talking about, but he would rather dissimilate than admit he was wrong.
And Orion now stands with Stalin, who said, “A single murder is a tragedy; but a million murders is a statistic.”
5 percent of 400 million are bloody riots.
10 percent maybe a civil war.
20 and up attempted genocide.
0,5 percent, i.e 2 million out of 400 are birth pains.
And yes there are no moral absolutes.
So sorry, grow up.
Orion, I am so happy to see you acknowledge your mistakes, at last. Now that we have all the appropriate relative scales in Orion Order, I can review:
Now let’s see, by your calculations–0.5 % are “birth pains”–you must agree that Iraq (151,000 out of 28 million is about 0.5%) is experiencing birth pains over the last 4 years. Good grief, that puts Orion in agreement with Condoleeza Rice and George Bush: “the birth pains of democracy.”
Gentlemen: through diligent education, even the truculent troglodyte can be brought to light.
Would I agree with your numbers and had you not forgotten the 500000 children alone that died in the sanctions and had the separation not been an inner Indian affair instead a war of aggression you´d have a point.
See how hard I try to say something positive about your post?
Ah yes, you see I add those (putative 500,000, propagandized and never documented) children to Saddam’s list, his damnation in hell, because it was by his orders, and his failures to agree to signed treaty, that they suffered and died.
See how easy you can find it to agree with reasonable people?
[/quote]
With reasonable people that is no problem.
I expect reasonable people to understand that a nation that deals with her own problems in a largely non-violent manner though some of her own citizens die, is different from a nation that kills Columbians for her drug and Iraquis for her oil problems.
If you beat your wife because you can´t stand your life you may be a prick, but if you go into other peoples houses to beat up their wifes you kind of cross a line.
[quote]JeffR wrote:
Interesting take. I happen to give ron paul the benefit of the doubt regarding his intelligence.
Acknowledging his intelligence makes his stances more frightening. I sense a demagogue. [/quote]
If anything, Paul is the anti-demagogue.
[quote]Mick28 wrote:
Nominal Prospect wrote:
Ron Paul HAD a chance and that chance is now gone.
That’s the truth of the matter.
Wrong Nommy, his chances were exactly what I said they were last summer on this very forum; ZERO. And for the very reasons that I tried to beat into your inexperienced skull:
No national political organization
Underfunded
No charisma
He comes off like an old crank-not presidential.
The only “chance” he ever had was with the young and impressionable who have not lived long enough to see these types go through the system.
You were WRONG. [/quote]
No, you’re right. The only message that sells these days is “Debt? What debt? Anways, here’s how I’m going to spend taxpayer money once you elect me!”
[quote]JeffR wrote:
Mick28 wrote:
Nominal Prospect wrote:
Ron Paul HAD a chance and that chance is now gone.
That’s the truth of the matter.
Wrong Nommy, his chances were exactly what I said they were last summer on this very forum; ZERO. And for the very reasons that I tried to beat into your inexperienced skull:
No national political organization
Underfunded
No charisma
He comes off like an old crank-not presidential.
The only “chance” he ever had was with the young and impressionable who have not lived long enough to see these types go through the system.
You were WRONG.
Mick,
Serious question: Who do you think a ron paul “independent” run would hurt in the general?
My knee-jerk reaction is that it would hurt a Republican.
However, I’m not so sure. If you look at the posters on this very board, you’ll find people who normally don’t vote Republican anyway.
For instance Mr. Independent (gdollars) will default to pulling the all democratic lever. He’ll rant and rave about “punishing the Republicans.” Then he’ll reward his democratic friends. However, if ron paul was on the ballot, he could satisfy his desperate need to be unique.
That’s one less democratic vote.
Then there is lifty/nommy. If they are old enough to vote, they’d never vote Republican.
However, I’m not sure these two would vote for a democrat either. The most likely scenario is they’d vote for a communist, Zsa Zsa Gabor, or stay home.
The only guy on here that the Good Guys could lose would be Mike.
However, I get the impression that he’s beginning to see through ron paul. I’ll bet he senses the naked ambition and the propensity to manipulate the facts to suit his own ends.
JeffR
[/quote]
Personally, I won’t vote Democrat or Republican. It’s not as if either party has a clue these days.
[quote]JeffR wrote:
Sloth wrote:
JeffR wrote:
Sloth,
Please change the avatar.
No.
Sloth,
Thanks for the change.
JeffR
[/quote]
Hours later. Keep an eye out for the next. Varg had some good suggestions, but I’ll have to think on it.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Yore weakness is your use of generalization without a proper understanding of what you are talking about.
I doubt you have read any of Rothbard’s work by what you have written. Here you go, free of charge:
Man, Economy, and State:
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/mespm.pdf[/quote]
Thanks for the link - but why would I waste so much time?
Well, “Rothbardian” was my term to distinguish the looneytarians from the Natural Law libertarians - we can use whatever taxonomy you prefer if I am misusing his name (so many useless radicals, so little time). I could call them “Rockwellians”, but giving that quack a movement-name is too much of a compliment.
Setting aside that I feel comfortable interchanging nihilism and anarchism because anarchism wants to get rid of government root and vine and nihilism wants to get rid of morality root and vine - both are radical rejections of any authority outside of oneself and closely related - this is interesting because it leads me to my next point.
Let’s isolate your last sentence:
Taking such a view is, in itself, a belief and thus refutes itself.
Hold on to that thought.
I’ll quote you:
Taking such a view is, in itself, a belief and thus refutes itself.
Asserting the maxim “there are no moral absolutes” is asserting a universal truth, because people who think otherwise are incorrect as a matter of truth, and it thus refutes itself. Your belief that it is categorically wrong to say “there is a such thing as an absolute moral truth” expressly refutes your claim that there are no universal truths.
Far from being an exercise in semantics, it matters - because if you have demonstrated that universal truths do, in fact, exist - at least one, by your own admission - then there must be a debate as to whether other ones do too, because the concept of relativism just got folded into itself and refuted.
Example:
Thunderbolt23 says: “there are universal truths”.
Lifticus says: “there are no universal truths.”
We can’t both be right. One of us is right, the other is wrong - but either way, whichever is right is a universal truth that transcends a person’s personal preference on the matter - as such, relativism as you describe it doesn’t exist.
This fails to understand the issue. Just because we, as humans, don’t have a comprehensive, detailed Rolodex of all the universal truths at our disposal is not proof there are no universal truths.
This smells of “denying the antecedent”:
If Man has proof of Universal Truths, it is clear those Truths exist. Man does not have proof of Universal Truths, therefore they don’t exist.
False.
And, just for kicks, if we take your thesis to be true - individualism is no better than collectivism, and slavery is no better than freedom.
You have no individual “rights” - because “rights” definitionally are moral absolutes in that they are claims on men independent of what those other men think. If no moral absolutes, then no rights, then freedom is aspirational entirely dependent on the person who would like the freedom, but if he doesn’t get to enjoy freedom he wants, he has no right to complain - he is entitled to nothing.
[quote]orion wrote:
I understand him perfectly well.[/quote]
I suspect this is actually right.
Interesting - yet you don’t point out the “strawmen”. Let me guess - you are using Lixy’s Personal Notebook of Made-Up Fallacies?
This forum has turned into a sandlot of anklebiters, with the Orion, Nominal Prospect, Lifticus, and Lixy leading the fruitless charge.
Hmm. I was under the impression that Rothbard was a Natural law Libertarian. Granted I haven’t read much at all about him, or produced by him. However, what I have read gave me the impression this was the case.