Pets: The Forgetten Victims

Discussion in 'Drugs, Alcohol & Tobacco' started by Starjet, Apr 17, 2018.

  1. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The Rights of the Individual vs the Collective's Lust for Power
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2018
  2. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What all three videos declare is: The individual is sovereign and supreme, not society, not the group, not the gang, not the club, not the state, not collective anything.

    Prove the premise wrong, not by feelings, but by reason.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2018
  3. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Objectivism will win. Why? Because its the truth, and in the end, the truth always wins. It's the nature of justice.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2018
  4. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So toke 'em up boys and girls, or not. It's your choice to make, not your neighbor's to decide for you. Me? Nope. Not today. Today it's JD and my guitar.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2018
  5. Le Chef

    Le Chef Banned at members request Donor

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    I KNOW, right? Every one of them encouraged drunk driving through school zones!

    "Party on, George!"
    "Party on, Tom!"
     
  6. Le Chef

    Le Chef Banned at members request Donor

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    I don't mind reading your own remarks and hearing your own thoughts, but having to read Ayn Rand's is about as pleasurable to me as reading Lenin's would be to you.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2018
  7. Le Chef

    Le Chef Banned at members request Donor

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    Think whatever you like. Just slow down in school zones.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2018
  8. Le Chef

    Le Chef Banned at members request Donor

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    Ar you sure George Washington was on your side? Here's a story about his kicking a soldier out of the army for attempted sodomy. A mere attempt ... hmmm. Wonder what he'd have done with meth users driving through school zones. Heck I wonder what Ayn Rand would have done?

    https://www.cnsnews.com/news/articl...d-out-soldier-infamous-crime-attempted-sodomy
     
  9. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Says something about both us, doesn’t it?
     
  10. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It’s been answered truthfully, and clearly: There is nothing in individual rights, liberty, or selfishness that allows one’s irrational and irresponsible behavior to violate the rights of other individuals. It’s really quite simple: just as the right of self defense doesn’t permit murder, the right to pursue your happiness doesn’t include the right to force others to sacrifice theirs.

    As for General Washington and sodomy—so what. He also had wooden teeth, a standard of the era. Men learn, souls become better, and higher standards are reached as men gain more knowledge.

    Time for you to reach that state of being.

    “I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous—if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.” —Robert G. Ingersoll

    In other words; I won’t point a gun at your head to make you live as I wish, as long as you don’t point a gun at my head to make me live as you wish—because it’s nothing more than tyranny.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2018
  11. Le Chef

    Le Chef Banned at members request Donor

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    No! I don't quote other people (appeal to authority). I speak for myself. You seem enthralled -- I don't say bewitched, not yet -- with Ayn Rand, as do many Libertarians, and thus you quote her often at length. My political position is rooted in practical considerations, reality, and my own observations, not the philosophy of some fiction writer.

    I'll tell you something about Ayn Rand you may not know. She was driven, at bottom, by a fear of anti-Semitism. I don't say it was necessarily irrational, but she kind of went overboard with it and drove her to objectivism. Read Florence King's (R.I.P.) analysis if you can find it.
     
  12. Le Chef

    Le Chef Banned at members request Donor

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    LOL. I'd bet I was a card carrying Libertarian before you were born. I learned that Libertarianism is based on fantasy, and it takes no account of men's duties or responsibilities -- only their rights -- and therefore does not appeal to normal, mature people in any significant numbers. It's for kids, really.
     
  13. Le Chef

    Le Chef Banned at members request Donor

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    NO! The point is that the soldier's offense was a mere attempt. Your defense of the guy would presumably be that he didn't actually commit sodomy, just as your drunk driver shouldn't be arrested until he actually runs over a child. Go to a city council meeting in your town and try to sell them on that idea.
     
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  14. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Big deal. I'm not a libertarian, I'm a supporter of Objectivism. Life is not a duty; Life is living for one's own while sake pursuing one's own happiness. As for being only for kids, I would remind you..."only the good die young".
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2018
  15. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    These are nothing more than "red herrings''...irrelevant and useless side issues made to camouflage the real issue, what type of society is moral, one that respects individual rights, or one that demands you subordinate your life to the dictates, whims, and wishes of others?
     
  16. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And so this is what you reject because you find it too annoying to read, and too irrational and immature to function as reality in the real world of adults: I would suggest then we don't live in a real world of adults, but instead live in hell of delusional soulless rotten, bullying monsters who have never learned to value their own minds, their own souls, their own lives and are now consumed by the madness to rule and bully others.

    Ayn Rand: "Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness—to value the failure of your values—is an insolent negation of morality. A doctrine that gives you, as an ideal, the role of a sacrificial animal seeking slaughter on the altars of others, is giving you death as your standard. By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man—every man—is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.

    But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/happiness.html

    The happiness of being a child looking towards a grand and glorious future. If this is what one must sell out for the sake of others, if this is what one must announce to be mature, if this what one must surrender to duty in the service of others, then its not surprising how many turn to drugs. Indeed, its terribly sad.

    There's Opportunity Here by Byran Larsen
    [​IMG]
    http://cordair.com/artists/larsen/works/theres-opportunity-here/index.html
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2018
  17. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You don’t have very good reading comprehension.

    Ayn Rand is not the final authority on anything. Reality is. I quote not because she’s Ayn Rand, but because the ideas, thoughts, and concepts she expresses are true, i.e. conform to reality. Just as in physics, practioners use E=MC2 not because Einstein said but because it’s true.

    Pragmatism is not a philosophy, or a code of ethics, it’s the negation of both.

    There is no practical or ethical justification to initiate the use of force on another just because you, in the name of “for the good of society” don’t like their choices. Just as no one has the right to tell a woman she can’t have an abortion because their Catholic and God told them no.

    You think abortions are immoral, don’t get one. You don’t like meth, don’t use.
     
  18. xwsmithx

    xwsmithx Well-Known Member

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    I notice you haven't responded to my post yet. As a fellow Randian, I'd think you'd be more interested. But perhaps you don't have a good response.

    One more thing about George Washington, the same man who rebelled against the tyranny of the British crown ruthlessly repressed a second tax rebellion in the US after independence. GW wasn't quite the libertarian you seem to think he was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law, some of the most repressive laws ever passed in the U.S. Thomas Jefferson repealed them, but supported and signed embargoes on foreign trade. And here's an interesting column on the license of colonial America and the reaction by the founding fathers to it: https://www.alternet.org/culture/11...irates-pioneered-and-founding-fathers-opposed Seems none of the founding fathers were exactly libertarians.
     
  19. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Again I must ask, why do you equate reckless and irrational behavior with indidividua rights, selfishness, and liberty. What I’ve stated is: no the state can not interfere with what an individual chooses unless it violates the individual rights of another. Just as property rights don’t give you the right to stick a rifle out of your window to shut your neighbor because his dog crapped on your lawn, driving drunk at a high rate speed endangering children’s lives is not an individual right but a violation of it. However, if it’s on your property, and you can do it without violating the individual rights of another, you have the legal right, though most likely not the moral right, to drive as drunk and as fast as you want. Geez. Is it really that hard to understand?
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2018
  20. Le Chef

    Le Chef Banned at members request Donor

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    Ayn Rand was 77 when she died. I told you she was bad.

    You can live this way if you want (but you're going to jail if you use drugs and endanger others), but it is wrong to do so if you have children or even a significant other. I'd o further and say "even if you only have neighbors".
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2018
  21. Le Chef

    Le Chef Banned at members request Donor

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    Okay, we are FINALLY making progress. This is the first time you have acknowledged that merely potential harm to others can be proscribed. You had been resisting it to this point. Once you concede this, you have yo concede society's right to proscribed drug dealing.
     
  22. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I’d suggest you discover the true meaning of “Only the good die young.” Here’s a clue: How old are you, and how old do you feel.
     
  23. Le Chef

    Le Chef Banned at members request Donor

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    I never said the contrary. Buy a ranch in West Texas, get drunk, buy a jeep, and party on, Garth. Sure. AT THE RANCH.

    Mere possession of meth on your own ranch presents me with a dilemma, unless there are kids present or you share it with your guests, in which case we are back to my position that you can't ethically distribute meth to my co-citizens. Anyway I would stop you from buying meth off of the property, so it's a moot point.

    Your points are not hard to understand. They are just wrong.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2018
  24. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I’d suggest you discover the true meaning of “Only the good die young.” Here’s a clue: how old are you and how old do you feel.
     
  25. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Wow. You own the lives of others? What does it feel like to be the master of others? Powerful?

    BTW: What would happen if atheists become a majority and decide the Bible creates psychological damage to the human soul by turning humans into sacrificial animals for the sake of others? Ought they have the right to arrest priests and ban the Bible? Under your premise of social goodness, community standards, majority rule, and pragmatic justification they do. Oh. Your counting on your majority never becoming a minority. Good luck with that.
     

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