caroljane

If you were wandering around New York reading Baldwin and Malcolm X you must have made a lot of interesting acquaintances.

Stephen, you are the only person I ever met who has read Another Country! I read it, also the Fire Next Time, when I was probably to young to understand them, but I remember how powerful they were. Fine choice. I am pretty sure I also read Giovanni's Room but I don't remember anything about it.

jts, your have reached the limitations of reason before, as we have witnessed, and I am sure you can reach them again.

lolol/ Hsiehkistan, Speicherland et al are great places to visit, as they so profoundly increase your appreciation of where you live. PS do the TASians live in TASrationalmania? Are they ever called TASers?

Ben and Jerry: I'll have a double scoop of Praline Paranoia, please. Tin foil cone.

Awesome, I think Calvin Coolidge cancelled a coal contract, though. And you might have a few little other errors in there.

You know what the "neatly slotting" lettered-numbered thing of DIM reminds me of? Casaubon's masterpiece in Middlemarch, the "Key to all the Mythologies".

They still are a commanding voice, at least to jts.

If Prince Andrew could make it down, Prof. Campbell can make it back up.

Carol, You don't think that, say, running up humongous debts or shoving dollar-denominated interest rates to the floor for years on end have effects outside the United States? I figure that a President Mitt Romney would have tried to ensure that security was better at embassies and consulates in certain countries. If a successful attack had nonetheless been carried out—as it still might have—I figure that his aim would be to go after those responsible as soon as they were identified, and to do so with or without the cooperation of the local government (the latter being better—when it can be reliably obtained). I hope—for I am actually less sure about his response here—that in the process he would make no advance concessions to Islamic Imperialism, whether along the lines of Dubya's "hijacking a great religion" or Obama's most recent references to "blasphemy" and "slandering the Prophet." I presume that Romney understands world political realities well enough to know that sucking up to Islamic Supremacists will not get them to like us any better; it will only get them to hit us harder and more often. Is your concern that a President Willard Milton would respond to an attack in Benghazi with a carpet-nuking of Libya, or an all-out war on Iran, or something along those lines? Robert Campbell No,-- it is just that I don't have any idea how he would have responded, and we do have an idea of how his advisors advised Bush to respond to things. I know our economy is a lot tied to yours, but I try to worry about only one hypothetical apocalypse at a time.

And I am afraid you are misapprehending the axioms of Objectivism. It is an axiom of Objectivism that consciousness exists. " Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification." All I am asking is: what is consciousness? I am not asking what it does. I am not asking whether it has been labeled correctly, although I do believe the discussion is advanced if we remember that it is a noun, rather than a verb. If consciousness exits, it has an identity. What is that identity? Seems like a pretty important question to me. It seems to be a linguistics question also.

So the fact that Mitt Romney was right about the attacks in Benghazi, and Obama was wrong about them, redounds to Obama's benefit? This might be in need of further explanation. That Dubya was the fount of all evil remains an idée fixe for many on the Left, both inside and outside of the United States. It's outlived the election of Barack Obama and the subsequent continuation of many of Bush's policies by the very man who was expected to redeem us from them. I never liked Dubya and the Republican Party is still recovering from his influence, but the demonization has always struck me as disproportionate. Especially when Dubya is blamed only for his foreign policy. While some are sure that Mitt Romney will be awful, because there are Bushies among his advisers, the weeping and wailing about his supposedly fatally flawed campaign has largely come from all the other Bushies whom Romney has left out in the cold. Robert Campbell It is only foreign policy I am concerned with here, as I am foreign. If Benghazi had happened under a Romney presidency, what would his advisors advise him to do?

Peikoff said he actually enjoyed writing this, although writing is usually a torture for him. It does sound sort of, "Hey Dave, let's put on a show! Meet you up in the tree house."

I never disputed his mentor. My mentor was an Objectivist however, so I dispute your assertion.

Carol, Any lies told by Barack Obama have the purpose of gaining or keeping political power for Barack Obama. Nothing more. If it doesn't, under President Obama's policies, he will be the beneficiary of sheer dumb luck. Robert Campbell Robert, I agree with all of this. Politicians all want to get and keep power. It is what they wish to use that power for, that concerns all of us. Romney's No Apology, jump-to-foregone conclusions mode, and the fact that most of his foreign policy advisors are Bushites, are scarier to me than Obama's blunderings. This especially concerns me because Harper is very tight with Netanyahu and the Republican machine. If there is a war I am afraid we will be drawn into it.

Personal image in politics is so damn hard to eliminate from the voters' minds, isn't it? You can make a case that the real Obama is a cynical steel hearted Communist and/or fanatical sharia jihadist, a secret homosexual and so on...lots of net nutters believe all of these ... and you can demonstrate Romney to be a fine caring ethical person who has used his wealth to try and make the world better... And you look at the two of them, and you admire Romney But Obama, for some reason, you just like. Adam excepted of course.

Carol, Any lies told by Barack Obama have the purpose of gaining or keeping political power for Barack Obama. Nothing more. If it doesn't, under President Obama's policies, he will be the beneficiary of sheer dumb luck. Robert Campbell Robert, I agree with all of this. Politicians all want to get and keep power. It is what they wish to use that power for, that concerns all of us. Romney's No Apology, jump-to-foregone conclusions mode, and the fact that most of his foreign policy advisors are Bushites, are scarier to me than Obama's blunderings.

Yes.

Maybe the way you felt when Bush was lying in order to start the Iraq war. Politicians lie and cover up. I don't think Obama is a good president. But I hope his lies are in the hope of preventing more war and violence, not encouraging it. May the count of American dead not rise .

Tony: The only way I ever heard it was: You can't see the forest for the trees. Adam Especially if you're wandering around the forest swigging Soave--watch out...TimBERRR!

It's called interest, Robert.Following a story.And I never, once, called for the guy to be punished. I know he is a scapegoat and fall guy. I have said he had a moral responsibility - NOT a legal one-for the reactions to a project of which he was a part. I don't care what happens to him, and as I just said, I wish they had left him at large. I wasn't being ironic, This thread is about the Gawdawful video, and I always assumed, and said that the Benghazi attacks were planned terrorist operations. If Qumu did it he deserves the fate of bin Laden only sooner.

Reductio ad absurdam. A noun is definition of the type of words which describe things, a thing cannot "be"be" its own descriptor. you are just saying that existence exists.

um...Carol: So, your argument is that he will be safer in a jail surrounded by fanatic Muslims, in an environment where life has absolutely no value? Really? Adam Well, I can argue than he will be safer than if he were kidnapped to Egypt. I didn't know the jail was full of fanatic Muslims. Surely there must be a few skinheads or wife beaters in there too.

Now they have locked Nakoula back up for probation violations, including lying to probation officers and using aliases. He tried out a new (old?) one at his hearing, identifying himself as Mark Basseley Youssif. Reportedly he was relaxed and smiling in court, and why not? Now he will be a Free Speech martyr, and safer in jail than on the outside, Damn, I wish they hadn't done that.

If we could find that One, we would probably not listen to him.