"Atlas Panted"

[Chips Rafferty]

I can't understand the FF vote, got me absolutely bamboozled, probably a haven for the ultra-conservatives and the would-be DLP vote. I think the counter is the Greens, they look like they have won an extra Senate seat which is good news.

I'm just very glad Labor is going to form government. I thought I'd be triumphant, strangely I'm not, I'm just relieved.

Me too.

All the way through I have had nagging doubts about Rudd. He is not from the same stable of Labor voters that I come from.

Although I think the heavy proportion of unionists in the inner sanctum, that SHOULD get cabinet positions, might just stop him from turning the party into Liberal Light.

 

[Diuretic]

Me too.

All the way through I have had nagging doubts about Rudd. He is not from the same stable of Labor voters that I come from.

Although I think the heavy proportion of unionists in the inner sanctum, that SHOULD get cabinet positions, might just stop him from turning the party into Liberal Light.

If he does go Lib Light the Greens will do him in.

Howard has conceded.

I just want us to progress. We need a new paradigm for politics and government.

I will now move my vote from Labor (it's been there since I first voted) to the Greens.

I am relieved. I wish Rudd and Labor well in their first term. They can save our country.

 

[Chips Rafferty]

If he does go Lib Light the Greens will do him in.

Howard has conceded.

I just want us to progress. We need a new paradigm for politics and government.

I will now move my vote from Labor (it's been there since I first voted) to the Greens.

I am relieved. I wish Rudd and Labor well in their first term. They can save our country.

We need a new paradigm for politics and government.

Too right. A class less one!

 

[Diuretic]

Me very happy

Me now Green

 

[Bern80]

The environment's looking decidedly tatty - that's the big one.

Oh come on Diuretic. You seemed to be a pretty smart guy. Pollution is not in of itself a bi-product of capitalism. It's a bi-product of production. You think if we were to switch over to socialism there would be no pollution? Communist Russia was one of the biggest polluters in the world. Where do you form such opinions? Does the world look 'decidedly tatty' outside your window? You live in Australia for god sake. How much of your continent has been polluted by human hands and you're arguing that the environment looks 'decidedly tatty'?

Doing away with capitalism in favor of some other economic model isn't going to improve the environment. The U.S. at least is already over the hump as far as teh damage we cause to the environment. Industry is far better to the environment hear than it was in the past. We have the EPA that monitors and regulates the pollution of our industries. There is almost no truth behind this notion that rampant capitalsim is causing this dire impact on the environment. Try again.

 

[Chips Rafferty]

Me very happy

Me now Green

Me still Waldorf OR Statler

 

[Threedee]

You mean proitecting their "Natural Rights" to slave *******?

Angry, are we, that the single biggest political movement against slavery in America was 1850's free market capitalism? And I will reiterate, any American who stands opposed to a nation based upon natural rights and the protection thereof is living in the wrong country.

 

[Chips Rafferty]

Angry, are we, that the single biggest political movement against slavery in America was 1850's free market capitalism? And I will reiterate, any American who stands opposed to a nation based upon natural rights and the protection thereof is living in the wrong country.

Who was talking about about the belatedly democratic, long overdue events that the free world world shamed you into?

Tell me why your "freedom loving" fascist Foundling Fathers didn't free their slaves, TweeDee!

BTW, it was racist 1850's free-market capitalism that sent the "Black Fleet" to Japan to terrorize them into the American version "free trade."

 

[Threedee]

Who was talking about about the belatedly democratic, long overdue events that the free world world shamed you into?

Tell me why your "freedom loving" fascist Foundling Fathers didn't free their slaves, TweeDee!

BTW, it was racist 1850's free-market capitalism that sent the "Black Fleet" to Japan to terrorize them into the American version "free trade."

All the good one's either didn't own slaves (Adams, Hamilton, even Franklin though I'm not fond of him), or else freed them (Washington). Its just hypocrites and slanderers like Jefferson who owned them all while agitating for freedom.

You must have confused the US with the other world powers. In the 1850s the US sent Townshend Harris to negotiate with Japan, and in 1858 the Harris Treaty was negotiated wherein Japan opened up Hiroshima and Osaka as ports for foreign trade. A Naval fleet did sail out and anchor off the coast, which led to conflict when one ran aground, and it can said to have been a show of force (there were 8), but no attempt was made beyond that such as the British in China with the Opium and Arrow Wars...

 

[Diuretic]

I saw the unmarked grounds at Mt Vernon where the slaves are buried. Washington granted his surviving slaves freedom but only after his death, I believe.

 

[Chips Rafferty]

All the good one's either didn't own slaves (Adams, Hamilton, even Franklin though I'm not fond of him), or else freed them (Washington). Its just hypocrites and slanderers like Jefferson who owned them all while agitating for freedom.

You must have confused the US with the other world powers. In the 1850s the US sent Townshend Harris to negotiate with Japan, and in 1858 the Harris Treaty was negotiated wherein Japan opened up Hiroshima and Osaka as ports for foreign trade. A Naval fleet did sail out and anchor off the coast, which led to conflict when one ran aground, and it can said to have been a show of force (there were 8), but no attempt was made beyond that such as the British in China with the Opium and Arrow Wars...

So, it was only an evil minority of, presumably, Christ-hatin’ atheists, was it?

Well why didn’t the moral Christian majority of the first Congress, and of all the congresses up ‘til the 1850’s, do something about slavery?

As for Japan, I was talking about Admiral Peary, the man who didn’t discover the North Pole, and his fleet of “Black Ships,*” that was sent in 1853 to bully or bombard the Japanese into opening up their borders to “free” trade.

Townsend’s legation was the direct consequence of Peary’s intimidation.

After one unsuccessful and rather cautious attempt at negotiating an opening of Japan, the US government sent a squadron of four warships under Commodore Perry to try again.

Perry’s instructions permitted him to use force if necessary to gain concessions from the Japanese government. At about the same time, Tsarist Russia sent a fleet under an admiral, with much the same intentions. The British decided to wait on the results of the American effort.

In 1853, Perry’s “black ships” arrived. Perry made it clear to the Japanese what he wanted, and that he would not take “no” for an answer. He announced that he would return the following year, with a bigger fleet, for Japan’s reply.

Perry’s ultimatum sparked off a major crisis in Japan – a crisis whose outcome was the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, and an entirely new line of development for Japanese society

go here

*Not to be mistaken for the Imperialist "White Fleet" that your STILL racist goverment sent in 1907 to scare all the heathen savages.

 

[Chips Rafferty]

All the good one's either didn't own slaves (Adams, Hamilton, even Franklin though I'm not fond of him), or else freed them (Washington). Its just hypocrites and slanderers like Jefferson who owned them all while agitating for freedom.

You must have confused the US with the other world powers. In the 1850s the US sent Townshend Harris to negotiate with Japan, and in 1858 the Harris Treaty was negotiated wherein Japan opened up Hiroshima and Osaka as ports for foreign trade. A Naval fleet did sail out and anchor off the coast, which led to conflict when one ran aground, and it can said to have been a show of force (there were 8), but no attempt was made beyond that such as the British in China with the Opium and Arrow Wars...

You must have confused the US with the other world powers.

As I've been saying since I got here, the US is no better than the "evil" powers that they are always self-righteously condemning from their self-made perch of moral superiority.

See. The real reasons behind the 12/7/1941 “Day of Infamy” become obvious when one impartially reads actual history, instead of watching Hollywood's "historical" fantasies, like John Wayne in the “The Barbarian and The Geisha,” doesn’t it?

Ditto goes for the 9/11 “Day of Infamy.”

What a calamity it is that most Americans can’t/won’t read, and thus trust brain-dead drug addicts, with a college degree in “My Pet Goat,” to interpret world events for them!

 

[Threedee]

Right, Infamy Day, 1941 was a direct result of the US freezing all Japanese assets in the country. So, what? They were messing around in Manchuria.

I still don't see why the US is getting all of this credit for imperialism and etc. We have only officially been a world power since 1898. Britain, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and France were out screwing up the world for quite a long time before that.

The reason why Christianity failed to present as mounting a force against slavery as capitalism did in the 1850's is the same reason why it is unsuccessful today in stopping abortion. In the end its just someone's stupid morality, and there is no cash value in simply doing what is right. Abolitionists were seen as religious fanatics just like they are today. Because it was marginalized politically (and because there were so-called "Christians" on the other side as now), society had to wait for more groups to get on board the wagon.

 

[watermark]

I still think this is retarded. You are making the individualist's point for them by claiming that the collective needs to cheat (or use force/intimidation/etc.) in order to keep up with the individual.

Seeing as how this is the first response, I can only assume that there are not many libertarians on this board like at FP or JPP, or else they have begun to ignore you...

For once we agree.

 

[midcan5]

I love when I can go back to an old post and add to it.

Whittaker Chambers 1957 Review of Ayn Rand

"... Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind, which finds this one natural to it, shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: " To the gas chambers — go!" The same inflexibly self-righteous stance results, too (in the total absence of any saving humor), in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture — that Dollar Sign, for example. At first, we try to tell ourselves that these are just lapses, that this mind has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the differences between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house. A tornado might feel this way, or Carrie Nation.

We struggle to be just. For we cannot help feel at least a sympathetic pain before the sheer labor, discipline and patient craftsmanship that went to making this mountain of words. But the words keep shouting us down. In the end that tone dominates. But it should be its own antidote, warning us that anything it shouts is best taken with the usual reservations with which we might sip a patent medicine. Some may like the flavor. In any case, the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. But it is not a cure for anything. Nor would we, ordinarily, place much confidence in the diagnosis of a doctor who supposes that the Hippocratic Oath is a kind of curse." Whittaker Chambers 1957 Review of Ayn Rand


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KmPLkiqnO8]William Buckley on Ayn Rand & Atlas Shrugged - YouTube[/ame]