Mark

I see what you mean. I'd have to check the collected works and I left Pittsburgh long ago. (That’s where I got the story, first hand you might say.) The guillotine was invented in 1792 and according to Wikipedia Paine was imprisoned December 1793 and released sometime in 1794, so beheading might have been the execution method when the incident occurred. ADDED: I see GHS has already corrected me. Thanks.

Why do alleged Objectivists continue writing such drivel about WWII? They evade what really happened and even Ayn Rand's own extensive writing on U.S. entry into that war. I've linked to "Ayn Rand on WWII" many times, but for new members there it is again. See also what U.S. entry allowed Stalin to do -- which is one reason Rand refused to vote for Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. Mark

The multi-volume collected works of Paine -- The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, 10 Volumes, I found it in Pittsburgh's main public library -- features an admiring introduction by Thomas Edison. (I can't remember why but I remember thinking when I read it that it looked like the transcription of a short speech.) He says he had read Paine in his father's library as a boy. After the American Revolution Paine went to France for a time. At one point he was jailed and sentenced to be executed. A guard went down the corridor chalking an X on the door of each prisoner scheduled for execution that day. At the time another guard happened to be bringing Paine food (or something, I've forgotten) and Paine's door was open, flat against the outer wall. Paine was scheduled for execution and the first mentioned guard dutifully chalked an X on the door. When the time came to bring out those to be shot Paine's door was closed, hiding the X. Before the next round of executions he was released -- I've forgotten the details.

No reason to add the qualification Evangelical to Protestants since other Protestants also tend to vote Republican. On the other hand Catholics tend to vote Democrat. Ed's proposal means walking away from Protestants, about half the population. This applies to the regular members. The leadership of each religion is something else again.

There are official Christian leaders (typically on the wrong side of an issue, including being for open immigration), and then there are rank and file Protestant Christians. Generally the latter are more pro-freedom than the rest of the population. (I don’t know of any statistical study done on [rank and file] Protestant Christian opinion of open immigration, but if they’re consistent with wanting freedom they’re against it.)

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I haven’t got time to check this, but from OTIPOJ it looks like Catherine left Ridpath late 1988 or early 1989. The alleged rape occurred after she approached him for help in an emergency, which was (per her email to me) 6 or 8 months after she’d last seen him. It looks like Marc interrogated Catherine soon after the event.

Well said Kyrel. You'll go down flying, LOL. I posted something too, taking the understatement approach. "Awaiting moderation" at this point: Edward Snowden’s act made the NSA’s violations of the Fourth Amendment known to everyone, even people who don’t normally follow news about government corruption. His motivation for acting as he did is irrelevant to that good effect. [Regarding Greenwald] Ayn Rand once quoted Chomsky in order to agree with what he said about B. F. Skinner. And she quoted Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr. a couple of times about World War I, again to agree with him. Sometimes leftists get it right. The citizens of England, Germany, France, etc should be just as concerned about the NSA as U.S. citizens. I don’t think Snowden had a choice of choosing NSA documents that pertained only to spying on the U.S. That’s not the way the Internet works. [it's not called the World Wide Web for nothing.]

An unbelievably bad article by Peter Schwartz. Snowden knew that others before him -- Thomas Drake, William Binney, Russell Tice for examples – had tried to expose the NSA through legal channels and got prosecuted and their careers destroyed for their efforts. He also knew that the publicity they generated, though it reached people who are interested in government corruption, never reached the proverbial man on the street. Snowden made a splash that no one could ignore. We owe him thanks. As for Hong Kong and Russia, Snowden investigated freer countries and they would not simultaneously take him and guarantee his safety. The degree of freedom in Russia and China is totaly irrelevant to whether Snowden was right to expose the NSA spy apparatus. It’s true that Greenwald is a socialist. Ironically, in some respects -- the Iraq War, torture, and now the NSA -- some socialists are doing a better job of exposing government corruption than a lot of conservatives. Even a socialist can utter the truth sometimes. (Ayn Rand once quoted Chomsky for goodness’ sakes.) Schwartz can quote Greenwald saying any number of disagreeable things, he might still be right about the NSA. Schwartz writes: "Snowden stole over a million classified documents, the majority of which pertained to NSA spying, not on U.S. citizens but on legitimate targets abroad, from the Taliban to the Iranians." I don't know if that's true but "from the Taliban to the Iranians" includes England, Germany and France, for instance. Why did Schwartz leave them out? Snowden, a very young man, has said a lot in speeches and interviews. Schwartz fished to find questionable items and managed to find a couple but all in all Snowden is not only articulate, he’s right. Here’s a video of Tim Berners-Lee shaking his hand, virtually speaking: http://www.ted.com/talks/edward_snowden_here_s_how_we_take_back_the_internet 　 　 　 　 　

I continued to write: Anyway, to quote the refrain of an old song: "But he went to Church on Sunday, so they called him an honest man." Regarding this thread, Ridpath's housekeeping habits are irrelevant and immaterial. I shouldn't have discussed the church-going myself.

[withdrawn]

Wolf, A fait accompli is no reason to give up and not try to un-fait it. Illegals should be deported, including anchor baby mothers and their progeny. Also, the idea of an anchor baby should be ended. Yes, by all means abolish H-1 and H-4 visas. If Israel can seal its borders so can the U.S. That's the telegram version answering the particulars you mentioned. What I most object to is this generality applied to foreigners vis-a-vis immigration (paraphrasing): "One person has no more rights than another by virtue of his place of birth," meaning in this case, "A foreigner has a right to enter the U.S. just as I have a right to re-enter it." Why have borders, why have a country, why organize a militia to defend it when a foreign army can come in man by man and the militia is supposed to sit there and do nothing. It's ridiculous. In your lifetime you’ve seen what the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965 (which took effect in 1968), combined with a simultaneous and intentional breakdown in immigration enforcement, has done to what used to be America. Third World immigration has brought ruin to our country, permanently. Leftists love open immigration. Libertarians should take a hint. This isn’t just guilt by association. Mark ARIwatch.com

Wolf DeVoon, The quote from your book The Constitution of Government in Galt's Gulch (post #16) expresses, or at least might be consistent with, what I was trying to say in another thread here: that laws do not make a people good. I was arguing against the idea that open immigration, though it doesn’t work for the U.S. right now, would work if the U.S. were governed by a fully libertarian constitution. Open immigration wouldn’t work in that case either because culture trumps law. Bring in lots of people with a socialist mentality and the law won’t prevent the ultimate end of liberty. The U.S. needs an immigration moratorium, like we more or less had for about forty years after 1924. The U.S. needs a lot of other things too, such as rescinding the so-called Civil Rights Act that took away freedom of assembly, but immigration is the most pressing. Requiring a would-be immigrant to sign a contract swearing fidelity to libertarian principles is so impractical I wonder why people even suggest it. It’s as useful as the proprietor of a jewelry store whose wares aren’t behind glass asking someone to swear they’re honest before letting them in. Does your book say anything about immigration directly? Mark ARIwatch.com

Here’s a list of Binswanger's immigration articles so far, titles bolded. The leading quote is a line or two from the article that captures it’s flavor. (The first article is the same one quoted in post #1 under a different title.) "The principle of individual rights demands open immigration. Implementing that would mean phasing out all limitations on immigration. Entry into the United States should ultimately be free for any foreigner, absent objective evidence of criminal intent or infectious disease." — Anti-Immigration Rhetoric Frighteningly Reveals Education’s Failure Forbes magazine February 3, 2013 "The problem of ‘illegal’ immigration can be solved at the stroke of a pen: legalize immigration. ... I admire those who broke our rotten, rights-defying anti-immigration laws to come here." — The Solution to "Illegal Immigration" Capitalism Magazine May 20, 2006. "The border between the U.S. and Mexico (and between the U.S. and Canada) should be exactly like the border between Connecticut and Massachusetts: you see ‘Welcome to Massachusetts’ and otherwise you are unaware of the difference." — Collectivist Arizona Immigration Law Is Anti-Capitalist Capitalism Magazine April 28, 2012. "An ‘illegal’ immigrant is, in principle, like a Jew in Nazi Germany who refused to wear the yellow star." — Amnesty For Illegal Immigrants Is Not Enough, They Deserve An Apology Forbes magazine March 4, 2013. Nowhere does Binswanger assume that the U.S. has become libertarian. He advocates open immigration for the U.S. today, not in some libertarian future. He also approves of illegal immigration, that is, immigration anarchy. Of course if immigration isn’t stopped soon the libertarian future that Objectivists like to envision will never come. Apparently the non-coming is what Binswanger really wants. Either that or he’s dumb as an ox. When Francisco Ferrer wrote: "The closer we get to a society where there are no automatic free lunches ..." he should have noted that we’re traveling in the opposite direction. Nowadays America is substantially socialist and becoming more so. There isn’t much point discussing open immigration for a libertarian America. Still, there’s some point. If open immigration would be bad for a libertarian America, all the more is it bad for America today. It should be obvious that open immigration would be bad even for a libertarian America. Immigrants from the Third World tend to vote socialist even when they work for a living, and even if they came to the U.S. to escape the effects of socialism in their own country. A libertarian country that allowed open immigration would not remain libertarian for long. You can’t depend on a libertarian constitution to prevent the country’s dissolution. Laws do not make a people good. If the culture becomes corrupt, eventually the laws will too. Would-be immigrants should work to end socialism in their own country, then they might value what they worked for. Another factor is what no one wants to talk about: race. It’s perfectly natural to prefer your own race, as natural as sex. It’s Anthropology 101. You live in the whitest neighborhood you can afford. In 1960 America was about 90% white, and the rest were practically all blacks whose families had lived here for generations. Today, because of the Hart-Cellar Immigration Reform Act of 1965, combined with an intentional breakdown of immigration enforcement, whites are down to about 72% and each day more non-whites than whites are born. One result of the immigration disaster is described in a Vdare.com article "Not Your Mom`s Mall Any More." Neil, that’s a great collection of questions with which to challenge an immigrationist. Where can we read Andrew Bernstein’s partial response? Mark ARIwatch.com

Another movie in the same line is The North Star (1943), also produced by Samuel Goldwyn. It’s on YouTube too: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhgYYEqnR-A "Ayn Rand and the Noble Lie" on ARI Watch analyzes part of Rand’s HUAC testimony. It's worth repeating:

When the SNAP system ( welfare-food stamp cards) broke down, unable to determine if a card’s limit had been reached, Walmart wanted EBT people’s "business" so badly they gave them carte blanche. Read about it here. What’s losing a few thousand dollars, or whatever it was, compared to billions? In the state of Oklahoma alone Walmart sells about a quarter billion dollars per year through SNAP. Today’s Walmart is not the same business founded by Sam Walton.

An alleged rape and cover-up is not best characterized as "a relationship problem." About the apartment cleaning: Why did Ridpath vacate leaving a mess when apparently he knew he had done so? Had the owner returned his deposit before he belatedly showed up to clean? Anyway, to quote the refrain of an old song: "But he went to Church on Sunday, so they called him an honest man." Regarding this thread, Ridpath's housekeeping habits are irrelevant and immaterial.

See post #4.

Right. We’re not talking about romance novel rape here, we’re talking about criminal rape. A victim started this thread. Jerry Biggers used this thread to repeat an old joke, which posted here is easily understood as blaming the victim. He should have known how she would react, but apparently what intelligence he has doesn’t encourage thoughtfulness. The man must be pushing 70, age without wisdom. He should smirk at himself in the mirror. The limited account on the OTIPOJ webpage focuses on Ridpath’s public actions rather than what there was to cover up. Apparently the latter is what fotocat would have written about. Several days ago I received a brief email from her. In an earlier email she’d given me permission to repeat whatever she said, so I’ll quote part of it: "... I did not know how emotionally exhausting this would be. Perhaps a cancellation is appropriate." I gathered this was a tactful way of saying she’s not going through with posting here. I replied that I understood and asked her a question. I’ve been waiting for her to reply but she never did. I don’t know if she returned here to see what people had posted. I can understand her not wanting to subject herself to people like Biggers.

She approached the trial from the other direction. She saw a crowd of reporters hating one man, saw one man going through the motions of self-confidence. And because she was on hair-trigger to see hatred in any group that opposed an individual, she mistakenly thought the reporters hated the man not primarily because the man was an axe murderer, but primarily because he was acting self-confidently. She focused on that to the exclusion of all else, including the real character of the man. Using the trial as the springboard for a story makes sense, if you accept the initial blunder about the reporters’ motivation. The blunder is hard to understand. Which is more probable, hating the man for being a psychopathic murderer and, to top it off, acting self-confidently, or hating the man for just acting self-confidently? But she was lately from Soviet Russia, was as the result of her experience jaundiced, on hair trigger to see evil in a crowd. (By the way, among that crowd of reporters was Edgar Rice Burroughs, yet to write his novels about Tarzan of the apes and John Carter of mars. And she accuses them of lack of imagination!) At the end of her journal entry is a brief note, apparently written somewhat later, telling herself to cool down. I forget the exact words and don’t have the book handy, but it sounded like she realized she had gone off half-cocked. Yes, Harriman and Peikoff were both stupid to have made this public. I suspect, because there was not an adequate apologia before the entry, that they were too lazy to look up Hickman. If they had they would have found the details because the trial was one of those "trials of the century" that get written up in histories of crime, like the Lindbergh kidnapping.

I mentioned the OTIPOJ monograph in "Who's Who" -- just the title, no link -- and gave a one sentence summary of its contents. Cat recently discovered this and emailed me, asking if I'd like to know more. I replied that someone had put OTIPOJ online and gave her the same link Michael has in his post. She replied that there is more to the story that she would like known. I suggested that she say it on OL. (I'm the one mentioned in her first post.)

Well said. Note that she still promotes open immigration -- the darling of every leftist. This policy plays right into the hands of totalitarians. When minorities become a majority, what socialism we have will become permanent, then increase dramatically until either chaos or total fascism begins to reign. Neither is viable. America will begin to break up, and future history books will show maps of the quaint sea-to-sea country that used to be America. Mark www.ARIwatch.com

About time 25:17. The only difference phonetically between 50 and 15 is an N in the middle. It’s hard to tell if the N is there but if I had to bet on it I’d say yes. He asks rhetorically: "Do I care that Bill Gates is about – I tried to calculate this – fifteen thousand times richer than I am?" Bill Gates is worth about $76 billion, so that would make Brook worth about $5.07 million. This still seems way off even if he only invested conservatively. Anyway, it’s amusing that in a talk he gave the end of March called "Anti-Capitalism and Anti-Semitism" he self-righteously says somewhere, I can’t remember why, "I’m not rich." And now – as Derek points out – in "Inequality: Should We Care?" speaking of the choices people make, he says (time 1:37:00): "They might choose to be a professor or teacher, like myself or Dr. Galbraith, and condemn themselves to a life of lower middleclass-hood. Or they might choose with a finance degree to go work in Wall Street and make a lot of money." A very self-deceptive man. His little speeches about rights are more of the same, he doesn’t really mean it. Mark www.ARIwatch.com

Bill Gates is worth about 76 billion dollars. One fifty-thousandth of that is 1.52 million dollars. According to ARI's Form 990 filings, Mr. Brook’s total compensation for fiscal year ending September 30 was 2005 - $244,981 - 5.7% of ARI's expenses 2006 - $352,538 - 7% of ARI's expenses 2007 - $348,398 - 6% of ARI’s expenses 2008 - $413,750 - 6% of ARI's expenses 2009 - $420,162 - 7.2% of ARI's expenses 2010 - $248,001 - 2.8% of ARI's expenses 2011 - $472,610 - 5.5% of ARI’s expenses 2012 - $386,623 - 3.9% of ARI’s expenses These figures don’t include amounts categorized as benefits, deferred compensation (e.g. retirement), expense account, or other, which for example totaled $21,639 in 2010. He's been executive director of ARI since 2000, 14 years. He also owns half of an investment company he co-founded called BH Equity. Not that it matters to the point of his talk but it's a wonder that in money, stocks, real estate and other investments he's managed to save only 1.52 million dollars.

Yes, there were two attempted assassinations of Truman. The proto-Israeli one was the first. (Link provided in my post above.) Speaking of Iraq, during the Bush administration, Israel's fifth column inside the Pentagon's "Office of Special Plans" helped fool Bush and Congress into invading Iraq. Reasonable men are concerned about this even though -- or rather because -- they'd like to be left alone to tend their vegetables. I chase Christians round the table because I'm sick of their damn lies that ultimately injure me and mine. I meant to write Jews, excuse me, and it should go without saying that I mean the bad Jews. But even to say bad Jews won't help. If you refer to red balls obviously you don't mean all balls are red, but when the color is bad and the balls are Jews you're an anti-semite.