Mark

On February 28 Yaron Brook was interviewed by Mallory Factor (that’s his name) on the website The Street. The title of the interview is: "What if Ron Paul is Anti-Government?" Here’s a complete transcript of what's on the website. I fixed several pointlessly repeated phrases, e.g. "I think, I think" is transcribed as "I think." Mallory Factor: Now you’re an Objectivist, or some people say a Randian. Most people consider that part of the libertarian movement. Ron Paul is considered a libertarian.— Yaron Brook: [interrupting] Yeah. MF: You love him don’t you? YB: [emphatic] I don’t love Ron Paul. MF: Why not? YB: I get harassed to no end over this. MF: [incredulous] Why not, how could you not? YB: I don’t for a number of reasons. One, I just find him inarticulate. And I don’t find him a very good champion for the cause. MF: Fine, let’s put that aside.— YB: [over-talking] Two. I disagree with his foreign policy. [At this point the published recording apparently skips ahead in the interview. There is no pause in the audio between the last sentence and the next, and the camera cuts from one angle to another.] There’s something about Ron Paul that strikes me, that underneath he’s anti-business and particularly anti-banking, and not just in the crony sense but in the more fundamental sense. And I can’t completely prove this, it’s more a sense that I get from him. But for example many of his answers on domestic issues, the trail end of his answer will be: [raises voice] "And those bad big businesses and Wall Street types" right. And he doesn’t say crony business and he doesn’t say crony Wall Street, he just says business. And I think he comes from a libertarian tradition that is on the anarchist side of the spectrum. I think his intellectual roots are Rothbard and Lew Rockwell.— MF: [over-talking to explain who they are] YB: Murray Rothbard the economist and Lew Rockwell who runs the von Mises Institute. And I think they hold fundamentally anarchist anti-government and a hatred of government but also a hatred of big business. And I think that Ron Paul is infected by that and I think it’s unfortunate because what we really need is somebody with real free-market ideas – now he doesn’t have to be an Objectivist – somebody with real free-market ideas who’s articulate and passionate, who can actually make the case for capitalism up there among the candidates, that would be terrific. OK, I think I’ve got it. Ron Paul is an inarticulate closet communist/anarchist who follows Ludwig von Mises in his hatred of businessmen, therefore in the race for president we must support either Romney or Obama. The Street: What if Ron Paul is Anti-Government? Mark ARI Watch

Internment and Resettlement Operations DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTION: Distribution authorized to the DOD and DOD contractors only ... Field Manual No. 3-39.40 Headquarters Department of the Army Washington, D.C., 12 February 2010 A plan is just a plan, bureaucrats churn them out by the ream, and this one is too much too soon. But in these days of the TSA should we laugh at it? Plenty more at The growing police state

I don’t think so, but at http://ARIwatch.com/...Elections-3.htm (search for DIM) you will find an explanation of Mr. Peikoff's DIM terminology and then scads of quotes from his 15th and last lecture given June 3, 2004.

"Dark Matter" is promoted by "Expansionists" -- people who think the universe is expanding. I don’t think Einstein’s theory of gravitation entails Expansionism. So instead of saying that this latest discovery is a problem for Einstein’s TOG, say it’s yet another problem for the Expansionists. Those reading this thread probably know about Halton Arp but in case not look him up. He demolishes Expansionism on observational grounds.

To go off on a tangent, 3 February 1996 Frank Forman reminisced on alt.philosophy.objectivism about his graduate student days in the 1960s at the University of Virginia, where he studied economics. Fellow economics students were Northup Buechner and John Ridpath. He makes out Buechner to be some kind of nut. There’s a copy here: http://www.nizkor.or.../my-early-years He rambles but the main part is where Ridpath ran for the presidency of the university’s John Randolph Society against Forman’s friend Tom Ireland: "During the election, Buechner got up and said, roughly, ‘Ireland knows Whitaker [another graduate student], who is a Nazi. Whitaker says he would shoot [u.S.] President Johnson if doing so would further his Nazi aims. Now Ireland said he would stop Whitaker from shooting Johnson, if able to do so. But I don’t believe Ireland would in fact stop Whitaker. Therefore, vote for Ridpath.’ ... As you might imagine, Ireland won the election. ... Meanwhile one of [the] Objectivists told the [u.S.] Secret Service of an assassination plot against Johnson. They duly came to investigate at the economics department ..." And that almost derailed Forman’s career. He ends: "[That’s] some history you’re unlikely to get from any other source. I doubt either Ridpath or Buechner even remember me today, and it is highly unlikely that they tried to get [Dean] Yeager to keep me from entering graduate school. ... "I open up this thread to a discussion of the morality, and fundamental decency, of any ‘Objectivist’ who would call up the Secret Service in a case like this. "Or is it that, when it comes to Objectivism, the end justifies the means?" Who were these Objectivists? Forman mentions only Ridpath and Buechner. Does he think one of them sicced the U.S. Secret Service on Whitaker and Ireland, which adversely affected himself though that wasn’t their intention? I emailed him at his current address, not hard to find by searching (he’s now retired after 26 or so years of parasitism at the U.S. Department of Education: linkedin.com/in/frankforman), but he didn’t respond.

Joan Blumenthal -- or was it Allan Blumenthal? -- handled the situation poorly. She needn't have confirmed or denied the tree, she should simply have held her tongue. The problem contains its solution in that the same reason someone makes such a mistake (not fully conscious) is why they'll likely ignore you when you ignore them. This story about a mundane, common, occurance in hospitals is used to cast aspersions on AR's personality. If JB pressed the issue and argued with AR over the tree then JB was the rude and thoughtless one. As for remaing furious for months, who would give this credence for one microsecond?

Fox News links to The New American on this subject.

> You are quite cavalier with the lives of others. Certainly if a vaccine was safe and prevented whooping cough then I would be cavalier to suggest it not be used. But the old live virus vaccine, at least, was not safe, far from it. It put the baby at risk of neurological damage of degrees varying from tiny to severe and death. There are complications from whooping cough too, including death, but the probabilities were far less. When neither of two options is perfect you go with the best choice. To repeat, when a child gets whooping cough he almost certainly recovers just fine. One would like it to be 100% certain. The question is, is the vaccine 100% safe (not to mention effective) and how do the two rates compare? You repeat anecdotes about whooping cough tragedies, yet ignore anecdotes about DTP vaccine tragedies. The tragedy would begin with inconsolable screaming soon after the shot. We agree that the non-government medical business lies a lot, but I don't know if it’s more than the government medical business does. The book A Shot in the Dark seems to be well documented. There are two authors, I seem to recall one of them is flaky. Dr. Russell Blaylock seems to be a substantial guy. I wouldn't dismiss him out of hand. 　

> Whooping cough and other deadly diseases ... Whooping cough (pertussis) is very rarely fatal, even without medical treatment. Depending on your age, it’s likely your mother or grandmother had whooping cough as a child. You needn't buy the entire anti-vaccine position, you can consider one vaccine at a time. The one for pertussis was, and for all I know still is, very dangerous. The one for hepatitis is absurd -- you’re more likely to suffer from the vaccine than to even contract hepatitis. I haven’t looked into the others. There are about 20 all told (when I was a child it was -- I’m not sure -- about four). Maybe some of them are useful, I don’t know. Trouble is you can’t believe "them" -- the government-connected medical business. They lie a lot. I find the voice of Alex Jones -- I refer to the sounds he makes -- unbearable after a few minutes, and his manner turns me off. That said, I think he’s doing some good work. Sometimes he has other great guests, like Gerald Celente of TrendsResearch.com. Maybe you have to be a bit of a nut to be a talk radio host.

Can anyone flesh that out? What was Siberia, how many times, what were the statements? -- and how do you know?

No, I don’t believe she does. I don’t think she wrote about the subject, except words to the effect (I’ve forgotten where) that a (non-physical) mind is a natural part of a human being, with the implication not to get exercised over it. On that subject see Raymond Tallis’ Aping Mankind, which I’m almost done reading. He’s also on YouTube.

I suggest not bombing Iran right now. Peter mischaracterizes this. Perhaps Peter is running from government whistleblowers (like Rodney Stich) with his intellectual tail between his legs. Israel is not our ally and friend. Sure, Israelis are sometimes nice to people who give them money and fight their wars. On the other hand see how they harrassed Marines in the early 1980s. 　 Tea Party candidates regarding foreign policy! Gimme a break! We couldn’t afford not to destroy the monster in Iraq. At least try something new instead of recycling the same propaganda lines. You can quote Ayn Rand until you’re black in the face, it won’t justify entering World War I, II, or the latest insanity with Israel.

"Iran will make sure we are the bad guys ..." Just who is "we"? It’s not me or my friends, that’s for sure. The "we" is not us but the people controlling the U.S. government. And they are the ones who gave Israel it’s warplanes and bombs. They are the bad guys. We, we, we, I’m so sick of hearing it. Whatever you do, don’t identify Americans with their out of control government. It, not we, have already aided any attack, already participated in any attack. And of course it is indeed we who will suffer the consequences.

I don’t usually read Chatzaf/Kolker’s posts but was reading gulch8’s and read this reply by C/K claiming among other things the non-reality of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars: where in the ellipses he mischaracterizes Andrew Jackson as some sort of butcher and (assuming his characterization) prefers such a president for the war he obviously wants, with Iran. Ellen: on HPO he once wrote: http://groups.google...f68536441d77a16 and there are many others worse. (Somewhere online he relished twisting off the arms of Palestinian children, but I couldn’t find it in five minutes.) An armchair psychopath. Where your taxes go (or at any rate once went). It’s not just the reveling in cruetly, it’s the complete unconcern with reality. A psychopath isn’t a man plus he’s a man minus. There’s something missing in a psychopath. Read an interesting interview with Andrzej M. Lobaczewski. Unfortunately the interviewers seem to be leftists intent on squeezing his ideas into their own mold. Speaking of Andrew Jackson, out of all the candidates Ron Paul is the closest to (the real) Jackson, who favored a limited, small, federal government. Keep up the good work, gulch8. 　 　

I read the first post of this thread, that’s all. (That’s enough!) Comment: Take not the words of an oportunistic politician at face value -- and Reagan was a particularly opportunistic politician (e.g. making Bush Sr. his vice presidential running mate) -- especially when the words are addressed to a potential campaign doner. When in Hollywood Reagan covertly supported communists there even as he denounced them in public -- one day I’ll flesh that out. 　

As intimated in my reply, WhyNOT’s writing above is rather less than clear. It’s still obscure no matter how good your faith. If he doesn’t want to be misunderstood he should write what he means. Perhaps his "whole hog" remark illustrates his own good faith.

Apparently WhyNOT is accusing some group of apologizing for their (or someone other group’s) strength. I’ll take a wild guess, as a cryptologist. "By not having their government bomb Iran right now Americans are ashamed of their strength." But maybe I got the meaning wrong. Americans are a sleeping giant all right, but their real enemy, the enemy they need to wake up to before it’s too late, is not Iran, it is their corrupt government. The giant suppine in the face of this tyranny is the real humility.

WhyNOT writes: ... "... Israel only has to lose one war, to vanish, while the USA will always exist ..." The USA qua the Founders and the Enlightenment is vanishing before our eyes. I don’t care about Israel except that the USA would be better off if it either "cleaned up its act" or "good riddance." I’ve posted the Uzbekistan link before but it’s worth posting again because in an easy to read format it shows what U.S. foreign aid to dictators really means. Craig Murray is a decent man even if he’s something of a (British) liberal. 9/11 didn’t have to happen, that is a point Ron Paul makes repeatedly. Rodney Stich, former FAA agent, makes the point that airline cabins were left unarmed and improperly secured despite dozens of previous hijackings over the years. As for deeper government corruption, it looks like elements within both U.S. and Israeli intelligence strongly suspected something would happen that day: see the ARI Watch links page under 9/11. ... "If I could, I’d ferret out truck-loads of stuff to prove ... that the two nations have mutually benefited hugely from each other ..." "Ferret" is an appropriate word, but it can’t be done, even by ferreting. The benefit street is one way to Israel. Yes, I gather Ron Paul’s foreign policy is "principled isolationist" as WhyNOT puts it, but since the word "isolationist" has always been a smear it might be better to just elaborate and leave off trying to put it in one or two words.

WhYNOT writes: "... Israel is only one recipient of aid -- and for some reason always the one singled out, which is incomprehensible and irrational." The reason is obvious. Setting aside that some of the aid is bribes to leave Israel alone, the other countries get far less per capita and they don’t harp on their being America’s greatest ally, the beacon of the West etc., nor have they done a fraction of the harm Israel has done to America -- see "This Is Our Ally?" on ARI Watch for just some of it. Israel and its supporters have earned neither respect nor goodwill but rather contempt. Ron Paul said he would end all foreign aid. He mentions Israel explicitly in this regard because his detractors do. And per above there are other regards, other reasons for singling out Israel. When will Israel start paying the foreign aid back? It doesn’t seem to be on any Israel supporter’s agenda. Regarding private donations to Israel, because for now Israel is at war with America such donations would be treasonous and should be forbidden. War describes it pretty well. Massive propaganda, fraud and theft, all that’s missing are the bombs. And the bombs come from Israel’s enemies which the U.S. attacks, either directly itself or indirectly through Israel. U.S. support of Israel is not the whole reason for Mideast enmity -- the U.S. mucks around there due in part simply to powerlust and "war is the health of the state" -- but at the least it's a substantial reason. And for what? Israel, to repeat, doesn't deserve support. Ron Paul gets smeared as an isolationist because he points out that our government’s foreign policy is insane. In the news just the other day: yet more foreign aid going to Uzbekistan because it’s a supply route to Afghanistan. Read the transcript of Craig Murray’s talk The Banality of Evil to see how your money gets spent.

Ron Paul’s conclusion – end all foreign aid – is great, but some of his arguments for it leak. ... U.S. "foreign aid makes Israel dependent on us ... They should have their sovereignty back." A stupid, altruistic argument. Apparently it’s aimed at Israel’s supporters, rots-a-ruck. ... "We can’t afford it." "Afford" is hardly in the same category as the feds taking your -- not "our" – money and giving it away. But if we descend to that vernacular, even if the U.S. could afford giving "its" money to Israel, it would still be wrong. "Afford" is irrelevant. Ron Paul can be annoying. Still, he’s the best by far.

That Reidy thinks Theil's .9 M donation to Ron Paul showed bad political judgement corroborates my impression that Reidy does not like Ron Paul, LOL. Ron Paul may not be an Objectivist paragon but he's the best statesman to come down the pike in my lifetime. I'd like to see him win but whatever, the more delegates he garners the better. RT interview with Mary Willison

PayPal founder Peter Thiel gives $900,000 to Ron Paul PAC

Phil, The title of this thread is an unjustified insult. I do want to take issue with the following: If the thinker has a lot of bad baggage then those who promote him ought to be explicit in delimiting their promotion. Naturally I have in mind the thinkers at the "Ayn Rand Institute" – the object of what some people wrongly call smearing on ARI Watch. ARI donating free copies of Atlas Shrugged to high schools doesn’t make up for saying the Mideast military invasions don’t harm the U.S. economy (Yaron Brook), defending government institutionalized torture (Binswanger, Peikoff, Brook, Epstein), silence in the face of the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, TSA, National Defense Authorization Act, and other gross violations of individual rights -- the silence of the so-called "Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights"! If someone says something positive about ARI without an explicit caveat they don’t deserve charity.

Regarding part 1 of "Nietzsche and the Nazis" by Stephen Hicks which Rich linked to: it's a slick production but just repeats the same old story, as if historians had learned nothing since 1950. He might start with *Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler* by Anthony C. Sutton. Ayn Rand’s *The Objectivist*, by the way, favorably reviewed Sutton's *Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development* -- the first volume of it that had just been published. Mark http://ARIwatch.com/Links.htm#ArmingOurEnemies

From a distance the Tea Party looks like the better sort of conservative so it attracts many of that kind. But they soon discover the Tea Party is a mixed bag, and a lot of the mixture is neoconservative. (See the articles in my previous post.) Nobody, but nobody, says that Gingrich is a "saint." That’s a straw man. He’s not merely less than saintly he’s extremely dishonest, one of the worst politicians in that regard in recent memory, on the level of Obama. The Founders would be proud of him? When and how did Gingrich redeem himself? Though it’s a long shot for Ron Paul to win the nomination we should support his candidacy simply to "make a statement" in the number of delegates he gathers, the more the better. Even if he doesn’t win we don’t want the winner -- Romney or Gingrich (little difference in what they advocate) -- saying with truth that practically everyone supports their policies. Romney or Gingrich will say it anyway without truth, but that’s their problem. I gather from what Michael wrote that Beck should take the following advice to heart: the truth about Gingrich is bad enough without exaggerating it. All he needs to do is harp on the Gingrich clips I linked to in another thread ... "FDR is the greatest practitioner of self-government, certainly in the 20th century, and maybe in American history": FDR’s "four freedom’s" and World War II isn’t enough, he’s a Wilsonian too: The Constituion doesn’t apply when the president declares war, a la Lincoln and FDR: When a judge in Texas -- Fred Biery -- granted a family’s request for a temporary order barring organized public prayer at their daughter’s public high school graduation, Gingrich had this to say (about 1:10 into video): Health insurance, Climate change, Libya War -- says one thing then just the opposite: In the same flip-flopping line see: A glib liar on Freddie Mac (clips about halfway through):