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Checking my premises

Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 9 months ago to The Gulch: General
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I was unsure as to whether I would title this, "Unlearning what I have learned" or "Checking my premises", because in it, I have done both. A couple of recent posts by AmericanGreatness and Eudaimonia, along with a couple of posts from 1-2 weeks ago are relevant.

I have long thought that the US military was an agent for liberation from totalitarian regimes. Now should I think they are mere pawns of their political masters, most often performing altruism to societies that do not appreciate their presence?

I had long thought that having a strong military meant having a strong national defense. After seeing 67 out of 70 purposeful attempts by TSA employees to evade TSA screening in a "test" of TSA security, I know differently. Moreover, the strong military and even the border agents were unable to protect us from an invasion of illegal immigrants because the one holding the leash kept the military and border agents on so tight a leash that they were unable to do what used to be their job.

I had long thought (because I had thought that the US military was an agent for liberation from totalitarian regimes) that the US had the "moral high ground". I still think that abortion is not the best moral decision and have been criticized (perhaps rightly) within the Gulch for that opinion. Moreover, I see a commentator (sorry, but I forget whom) on FoxNews suggest that America has lost the "moral high ground" in light of the Planned Parenthood situation (The commentator said that Muslims must consider us barbarous for having so many abortions. The term barbarous ironically is derived from the Barbary Pirates in Libya.).

I'm just checking my premises.

All Comments

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  • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    As I said before - you are welcome to draw your own conclusions on the matter. I presented the fundamental problems with the position and its total reliance on a slippery-slope argument. One can produce any manner of marketing slogans and packaging, but I'm not going to ignore the facts of its founding and the present day results. Nearly half of all abortions performed are on blacks, despite them representing a mere 13% of the population (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2...) Also cited is the fact that 79% of PP facilities are located in black communities and that there were more black babies aborted than born. You call it what you want, but with these facts in hand I don't believe anything has changed from Margaret Sanger's initial vision except the people carrying it out.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 9 months ago
    Honestly, I am thinking about just leaving. It would be nice to have a community of likeminded individuals to join me, but I don't need anyone. What I have said recently is that America is no longer worth saving. I asked the question earlier about where one draws the line between defending a society from decay vs. the non-interventionist principle. ewv is correct in saying that there is no logical way to defend intervening in any one individual action that one is not directly involved in. Yet that decision either condemns one to either accept whatever society decays into or to move somewhere else and start over. As the former is unacceptable to me, when I have the financial wherewithal to shrug, I will shrug. I may or may not have others come join me. Truly sad.

    And with that my extended "month in Atlantis" is up. I need to get back to my shrug job.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The bankers created the statist system. JP Morgan, Rockefeller, and their descendants essentially established statism in the US.
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  • Posted by khalling 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    first, he states that civilization is worth saving. That implies that those who consider shrugging are running away from civilization, which he says is fine for j to do. I don't think I missed anything there. J has made it clear that he is NOT interested in "running as far away from people as he can." He has made it clear that he wishes to build a community, that he looks for solutions for the future.
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    • jbrenner replied 8 years, 9 months ago
    • conscious1978 replied 8 years, 9 months ago
    • ewv replied 8 years, 9 months ago
  • Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    With regard to Planned Parenthood, Blarman won this round quite convincingly. Just because PP does not acknowledge its founder publicly as much as it used to does not mean that they have denounced her.

    Opposition to religious social controls on abortion is pro individual freedom. On that we can agree.

    However, the packaging with eugenics and racism came right out of the mouth of Margaret Sanger herself.
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Those kind of crony bankers are statists. They are not "the bankers". Statist ideology causes wars, not finance. Some 'bankers' cash in on it. They help pull the strings in an already statist system. They are not the cause. This is not "condescending".
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The point is what I wrote. I don't disagree with what you are doing.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Regarding the bankers and wars, if you have not done so already, read The Creature from Jekyll Island. It is hard to tell the difference between the bankers and the statists because most of those in political power and virtually all of those high up in the bureaucracy are there at the whim of the bankers.

    The video basically said that all wars are bankers' wars. The joke was in using the Ferengi rule of acquisition in the first place. War is only good for those in the defense industry and the politicians they control through cronyism. Condemnation was probably too strong a word, but condescension isn't.
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The popular opposition to bans on abortion and contraception, except for those related to Ayn Rand's ideas, are strikingly non-philosophical and non-ideological. It is not based on Sanger and most people no longer pay attention to the feminazis on the fringe for anything. Ayn Rand praised Betty Friedan at the beginning, but denounced the "Women's Lib" movement as part of the rest of the New Leftists. Opposition to religious 'social controls' on abortion, etc.is pro individual freedom and cannot be packaged with Nazis eugenics and racism. It's worse, and more offensive, than John Birch conspiracy theories.
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  • Posted by khalling 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    wait a minute. If you have read any of j's posts, you would know that he is a builder and an idea person. This comment does not accurately reflect j or his thoughts on shrugging. But I agree that civilization is worth saving. and I have shrugged. so what is your point here?
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You said "Certainly most, if not all, wars are bankers' wars." Ferengies were intended to mock business. What were the joke and the condemnation? I didn't watch the video.
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Civilization is always worth saving. How much personal effort any individual chooses to devote to it is up to him. No one can blame you if you decide to live out your life restricted to personal interests as far away from the rest as you can get.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You certainly have the right to believe whatever you wish. I take the woman and the movement she started at her word and intent - especially when those currently leading the organization (not to mention many others like Hillary Clinton) still venerate her.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    fall of 1998, after 28 years and a month ... didn't make o-6, and
    it was time to check out. . 10 years later, I turned 60 and
    started to get retirement bucks. -- j
    .
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Then it truly is time to shrug permanently. I made lots of money in the 1990s, but given the culture in the US since 2000, I have gained virtually nothing on retirement. I have long been quite close to being able to fully shrug. This country is most definitely not worth trying to save at this point.
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Obviously it would have been hopeless to culturally reform the Soviet Union, the Nazis, etc. We are talking about this country. When it goes completely there will be no place worth emigrating to. Nothing is far enough away. We are still constrained to one planet. None of this is an excuse to violate the right of abortion as if this is no more than a chess game under unprincipled Pragmatism.
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Wars are caused by statism, not bankers. Wars are destructive, they are not good for the economy. A few cash in like any kind of government cronyism; that is not the source of the power to start wars and is not its appeal to most who go along with them, whether for aggression or self defense. See Ayn Rand's "The Roots of War".
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The biological dependency is parasitic regardless of what the woman wants.
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Their own characterization of their own videos is distorted despite the fact that anyone can download the hours of videos. Most people are seeing only the edited version, or briefer portions of those, as they are "interpreted" to attribute meaning which was not held by PP and is not even ambiguous in the full videos. This is in addition to the sensationalism of the whole affair in their rhetoric of "selling baby parts" and anti-conceptual appeals to pictures of fetuses with "fingers" and which "twitch when poked".
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  • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The Valley was a literary device, but most emphatically not "other worldly". It was intended to illustrate, in fiction, what it would be like in reality for people living in accordance with Ayn Rand's philosophy unencumbered by its opposite. But it was not intended as a strategy to reform the country or as a means to live in spite of it, and was not an exhortation for people to "strike" or escape to a 'utopia', which are impractical at best.

    An entirely different matter is that of individuals choosing where and how to live to try to minimize the worst of today's culture knowing that it is still always around you as a constant threat, especially if it dramatically continues to decline. That is a matter of individual survival, not seeking utopia societies in fictional isolation.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That presumes that the moral foundation of a culture is close enough to consistent with one's values to be worth defending. The alternative is to establish one's own Gulch in some faraway place, which looks like a better option all the time.
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