The DEA Steals From California's Teasury

California NORML has a new angle on the DEA's medical marijuana raids, noting that they are costing the state "tens of millions in tax revenues":

Although the DEA has tried to portray dispensaries as illegal drug dealers, records show they have operated as legal businesses, paying income, payroll, business, and sales taxes, and offering workmen's compensation, unemployment, and health insurance benefits to their employees. Several dispensaries closed by the DEA had licenses to operate from local governments, including facilities in Alameda County, Morro Bay, and Kern County.

California NORML cites several cases in which sales tax payments by dispensaries were disrupted by DEA raids. (It also notes that the federal government has grossly exaggerated the income earned by the dispensaries, failing to take into account not only taxes but the cost of rent, payroll, and inventory.) "At this time of budget deficits," says California NORML Director Dale Gieringer, "we can ill afford the DEA's war on medical marijuana. Californians are better off having medical marijuana distributed by tax-paying businesses, than being taxed in order to arrest, prosecute, and imprison medical marijuana providers."

Comments

[David]

I wonder what would happen if a sizable majority of states had dispensary laws similar to California?

[x,y]

An interesting tack by NORML. I’m more dogmatic and believe in first principles, but as far as these types of arguments go, well played.

[Billy Beck]

Shorter NORML: “Get your goons to lay off, and we’ll cut you a piece of the action.”

With friends like that, I might as well splash down a syphilis cocktail on the rocks.

Fucking disgusting.

[J sub D]

Fucking disgusting.

Billy Beck –
What is so disgusting about a business “paying income, payroll, business, and sales taxes, and offering workmen’s compensation, unemployment, and health insurance benefits to their employees.”

Or pointing out that they did until shutdown by the feds?

[sage]

This isn’t really surprising. NORML is pretty libertarian when it comes to the drug war – but probably that’s where it ends. I don’t think they’re all for the smaller government we all want.

[Anonymous]

NORML is pretty libertarian when it comes to the drug war – but probably that’s where it ends.

Having made the mistake of indirectly supporting them financially until I had the misfortune of meeting with them – yes.

They’re typical vulgar leftists, so the nearest they get to libertarianism is that they don’t want the government to destroy people who live exactly like them and do exactly and only the same things they do.

Many libertarians who happen to live that same way and do those same things mistake this for libertarianism, because they’re dumb, myopic (or perhaps glaucomic) potheads.

[Billy Beck]

J: If you actually have to ask, then you have no serious business attending this forum.

[J sub F]

J: If you actually have to ask, then you have no serious business attending this forum.

Great response, genius. Do you think legal businesses shouldn’t pay their taxes? Shouldn’t provide employee benefits? Shouldn’t point it out? What, oh libertarian guru, is “so fucking disgusting”.

[Dangerman]

Yeah, J sub D, you fucking n00b, why don’t you let REAL libertarians like Billy Beck here tell it like it is?

C’mon Billy, make me proud.

[Billy Beck]

“Do you think legal businesses…”

Stop. Just stop it.

[Episiarch]

Billy is an anarcho-libertarian. I understand him perfectly.

[Ruthless]

Let’s start calling this more of the panhandlers’ approach to legalizing drugs.

When will we just stand up and say the Founders had a huge oversight? They tried to protect our right to put whatever ideas we wish into our heads. They SHOULD HAVE also protected our right to put whatever substances we wish into our bodies.
The only reason they didn’t was because they could not know how stupid their descendents would be.

[J sub D]

Billy is an anarcho-libertarian. I understand him perfectly.

Ther’s other words for anarcho-libertarian. Shorter ones. A rare attack of the polites prevents me from listing them.

[Billy Beck]

Bullshit.

[Kwix]

Billy Beck | December 14, 2007, 3:45pm | #
Bullshit.

Do you think you could be a bit less vague here? I mean “bullshit” is a fine dandy word but does not, on its own, make a sentence.

Shorter NORML: “Get your goons to lay off, and we’ll cut you a piece of the action.”

I suspect that NORML is trying to play the state against the fed by pointing out how much money the dispensaries put into California’s coffers. That’s the kind of friend I can deal with. It surely ain’t libertopia but it is a step (back)towards federalism and that is, IMHO, a good thing.

I find NORML’s perspective and tack to be interesting if doomed to failure. California has shown little interest preventing DEA raids, sometimes to the extent of actually providing police assistance. I am just not seeing a local yokel police chief telling his men to “form a barricade” against the invading DEA hordes regardless if the Governator himself declares that is what is to be done.

[zig zag man]

IMHO NORML has done nothing to enhance my liberty. They take money from people who believe in ending the war on cannabis, but do close to zero when it comes to actually making progress. It seems to me that they only hire lawyers to work the courts rather than support real political change. Unless someone can point out dramatic changes brought about by NORML in the war on cannabis, I think it is a work program for lawyers.

NORML likes to proclaim that it is doing a good job by inviting people to Amsterdam for a conference. Yeah, everyone can afford to put their lives on hold and go over to Amsterdam. (It will be interesting encountering ICE on their return flight as most of them will be pulled aside for secondary searches.) While the rest of us do the real work toward change. What a waste of $. NORML is doing less than most people on the internet for free.

[zig zag man]

Sorry;

NORML is doing less than most people do on the internet for free.

[R C Dean]

It also notes that the federal government has grossly exaggerated the income earned by the dispensaries, failing to take into account not only taxes but the cost of rent, payroll, and inventory.

Is anyone shocked that government employees would be insensitive to the costs of an enterprise, not to mention less than clear on the difference between net and gross income?

[Billy Beck]

“Do you think you could be a bit less vague here?”

Sure. It was my remark on “J sub D’s” bullshit.

[Bingo]

I had this idea that all members of congress should have to undergo mandatory bi-monthly drug testing. For the children.

[Kwix]

Billy Beck | December 14, 2007, 4:18pm | #
“Do you think you could be a bit less vague here?”

Sure. It was my remark on “J sub D’s” bullshit.

And which “bullshit” would that be? That “legal businesses” pay taxes (accurate) or that anarcho-libertarians have been called other names (also accurate).

If you are going to confront someone on a topic you consider “bullshit” it helps if a)you lay out your argument in clear detail and b)proceed to argue your points.

“Bullshit” is not a discussion/debate/argument or a sentence.

[VFW x3]

Amendment 10
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Please read our Constitution while you still can.

While a State may ban a substance, the Federal Government has no legal authority to do so.

Make no mistake, they have guns and tasers and will kick down your door, rob, kidnap and torture you until you fall into line but their behavior no more legal than that of the Taliban when they do the same.

[Billy Beck]

“And which “bullshit” would that be?”

Read the goddamned thread, Kwix. Christ on a banana-peel, already; it’s right in front of your face.

[J sub D]

Billy Beck –

I’m over the attack of the polites. You are a boor. You have nothing but invective to add to the conversation. I’ll await your insightful, nuanced response.

[WTF]

Billy Beck, if you’re willing to invest this much energy in being a dick, why won’t you invest less energy in answering a simple question?

[Billy Beck]

Well, Mr. Judy-boy with no name, you can call me a boor if you want to, but you’ll never see me creeping around dropping insinuations that I’m not man enough to state right out loud when I have something in mind.

Get it?

WTF — let me explain something to you, sonny: the creep I just addressed already knows the answer to the question that a couple of you have been too fucking stupid to figure out.

Now: are there any other questions? Let me know, and I’ll determine whether they’re actually worth serious effort.

[WTF]

So I guess you just really like being a dick then. Fair enough. Have a nice weekend, internet tough guy.

[Billy Beck]

{shrug} That’s what you ‘guess’.

[J sub D]

Let’s start calling this more of the panhandlers’ approach to legalizing drugs.

Revenue was a talking point in the debate over the 21st Amendment. Money talks.

[Billy Beck]

Shorter Judy-boy: “Habit roolz.”

[Kwix]

Billy Beck | December 14, 2007, 5:20pm | #
“And which “bullshit” would that be?”

Read the goddamned thread, Kwix. Christ on a banana-peel, already; it’s right in front of your face.

That you are an asshat who can’t be bothered to lay out a simple argument. Yeah, I got that. Thanks.

It is you sir that have no serious business attending this forum as it is a place for discussion and airing of ideas not blanket statements of “bullshit”.

I know you think you are God’s gift to liberty, but until you present a reason for me to believe it in this forum, say a reasoned argument, you are just another shrill voice on the HnR screaming for attention.

[Billy Beck]

“That you are an asshat who can’t be bothered to lay out a simple argument.”

Look, kid: the word I chose, very deliberately, is the argument. Pay close attention while I get out the Big Crayon and scratch out the Big Picture on your flat forehead. Watch; The punk I’m talking about said this:

“Ther’s other words for anarcho-libertarian. Shorter ones. A rare attack of the polites prevents me from listing them.”

And I called it what it is.

And then, some of you decided to get up on your hind-legs and start hollering and moaning about “vagueness”.

Fuck you, until you can put the vaunted incision of your beady little eye on the ball.

[J sub D]

Billy Beck,
I told you the polites attack was over, you barely literate, foul mouthed, poor excuse for protoplasm of doubtful intelligence.

Other terms for anarcho-capitalists like yourself include, but are not limited to, fools, dumbshits, morons, idiots, simpletons, the feeble minded, off their meds, dipshits, fucktards, asslicking cunts, pimples on the boil on the diseased ass of a crack whore, et al.

Is that language that your childish, unbalanced mind can understand, Billy Beck? Damn, you’re a fuckin’ loser.

[Billy Beck]

Oh, I might have expected a lot better than that from you, sir, being a man of your education and all, and most especially in a place full of such indignant clamoring for “arguments”.

I might have, but I sorted you on the first lap here.

[Reilly]

…and just think how much better this thread would be if certain people (well, person) weren’t pricks.

[Billy Beck]

Okay, let’s review the bidding: I advised a person here to “stop”. He comes on with a strictly flubber-spined cough behind his hand because — he says — he’s too “polite” to spit out his own hairball. I call him on it. Others promptly stomp their gas-pedals all the way to the floor and drive right off the edge of that curve, completely blind to the road-signs. Flubber-Spine heaves himself into action and cranks up seventy-six words of the most dirt-common flailing available on the internet today — all while the questions of “argument” are hanging in the air, mind you.

And I’m the “prick”.

Tell me something: what does all that make you?

[WTF]

Actually, lil’ Billy, the heat you’re getting comes more from the comments you conveniently left out of your ever so self-serving summary of the thread – your refusal to answer J sub D’s repeated questions about your first (12:57) post, as well as this:

“J: If you actually have to ask, then you have no serious business attending this forum.”

But I suspect you already knew that; you’re just having too much fun being an internet tough guy.

[Billy Beck]

That very issue that I stated in what you quoted is why I told him to “stop”.

I knew what I was dealing with. I always see ’em coming a mile away, and I have a long history online to prove it.

[WTF]

I think we can all agree that you’ve proven _something_ here, but I’m afraid it’s not what you think, and it’s not terribly flattering to you.

[Billy Beck]

Ps., kiddo: I asked you if you had questions, but I was not going to take another step with you until you grasped the issue that I’d identified in one word. It was right there in front of you, and you never did because — “internet tough guy” — you had your dick wired to your gas-pedal.

You can have it your way. I’ll always see to it.

[Stephen Gordon]

An entire thread filled with acrimony and Donderoooooooooo hasn’t even arrived yet?

[Awik Donderooooooo]

Billy,
I see you are a true libertarian! Come with me and vote for Rudy and together we shall rule the world!!

Stephen,
Sorry I’m late. I’ll swing by and “light your cigar” later.

[J sub D]

I knew what I was dealing with. I always see ’em coming a mile away, and I have a long history online to prove it.

Hilarious. There is NO WAY I could make up anything that telling.

[Billy Beck]

Awik: I have never voted in my life and I never will. I do not submit my rights to the whims of majorities. Only fools do that.

Ron Paul should get out of government and seek honest employment.

“The saddest life is that of an aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success disgraceful.”

(H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, December 9, 1929)

[Kyle Bennett]

Billy,

Looks like you’ve picked up some habits from Priss. Can’t you stop toying with the poor helpless little things?

[Billy Beck]

At my third comment, Kyle, I was ready to just let it go. When one of ’em started his bloody insipid crap, that was it. “Fight’s on.” I was ready for anything, if he’d been man enough to step up to it, and we might have gotten serious about things. When the chimp chorus started up, it was as obvious as daylight what was going on, and I made up my mind that I was going to run them right over the cliff.

You’re looking at people with a rank pretense to ability with what they take up here. These assholes will vote, and they can’t even manage to hold together what’s staring them right in the face with all the time in the world to read it slowly with their fucking fingers up on the monitor.

I’m telling you, man: it’s the Endarkenment.

We’re not going to make it.

[Kyle Bennett]

I’m telling you, man: it’s the Endarkenment.

We’re not going to make it.

“When the lights go out in New York…” No, we likely won’t make it, but we might make it through.

[*]

Billy seems hell-bent on proving the Gresham’s Law applies as aptly to forum commentary as it does to currency. Why does this site seem to draw so many schizos?

[*]

To comment on the actual substance of the article: I think NORML’s approach here is spot-on and will be persuasive to many Californians.

[Kyle Bennett]

Why does this site seem to draw so many schizos?

Because “Reason” is supposed to mean something, but instead we get: “I think NORML’s approach here is spot-on and will be persuasive to many Californians.”

[Patrick Chkoreff]

J sub F wrote:

“Do you think legal businesses shouldn’t pay their taxes?”

An individual should only pay taxes voluntarily. If he is not willing to pay taxes, nobody should force him to do it.

“Shouldn’t provide employee benefits?”

An individual should only pay employee benefits voluntarily. If he is not willing to pay employee benefits, nobody should force him to do it.

“Shouldn’t do X?”

An individual should only do X voluntarily. If he is not willing to do X, nobody should force him to do it.

If you have any more questions, please see “X” above. Thank you.

[Kyle Bennett]

An individual should only pay taxes voluntarily. If he is not willing to pay taxes, nobody should force him to do it.

Oh, c’mon, you can’t do that. Why then, how would they fund the drug war?

Your argument is not going to be persuasive to many Californians.

[Patrick Chkoreff]

Kyle wrote:

“Your argument is not going to be persuasive to many Californians.”

LOL. Classic. Spot on. Funny ’cause it’s true.

[Billy Beck]

“I think NORML’s approach here is spot-on and will be persuasive to many Californians.”

I think about “many Californians”, and I’m not surprised.

[Patrick Chkoreff]

Thanks all, I now have a handy phrase to soften the blow of declarative sentences, e.g. “Although this will not be persuasive to many Californians, a 2% rate of return compounded for 10 years yields approximately 21.9%.” And to think that I was born in California.

[Ayn_Randian]

OK, I’m not sure who let the anarcho-tards in, or if they had some vision in their heads that they were going to come over and start acting like rank assholes and ruin the Reason community, but they have another thing coming.

I note that Mr. Bennett here gets his Internet and e-mail through Comcast. Mr. Bennett, did you know that Comcast, since 1997, has given almost 6 million dollars to lobbyists and well-connected politicos? And almost $500,000 went to GWB

So if you want to play all holier-than-thou True Libertarian?, maybe you should consider going with a company who won’t place your internet bill directly in the pocket of the RNC/DNC.

Oh, what’s that you say? You have to have internet, and all companies lobby, so what’s the dif? You mean that you sacrifice your Libertarian Street Cred so you can post belittling little circle-jerk comments? Oh, well, I guess then you’d be a hypocrite.

[J sub D]

Support Anarchism. Because it works so well in Mogadishu.

[Billy Beck]

“…ruin the Reason community…”

{laugh, laugh, laugh} Yeah; it’s such a serenely contented herd of cats, you see, and it just won’t do to be upsetting their concert-purring.

You idiot. Who the hell do you wish you could be?

[Billy Beck]

“Support Anarchism. Because it works so well in Mogadishu.”

Yeah, and that bunch of dirt-scratching savages are so well trained in Western traditions of reason, too, that it makes the point. To an imbecile.

[J sub D]

Yeah, and that bunch of dirt-scratching savages are so well trained in Western traditions of reason, too, that it makes the point. To an imbecile.

Do you believe it would work in New York City? Des Moines, Iowa? Anywhere? Anarchists deny the basic nature of man. That is delusional at best.

[Kyle Bennett]

JD,

At least you have the integrity to properly credit the progress that has been made in Somalia. Look it up some time.

Shorter Ayn_Randian: “I didn’t mean that big a tent!”

[Billy Beck]

“Do you believe it would work in New York City? Des Moines, Iowa? Anywhere?”

It does, right now, even as we type.

The basic necessary conditions for what we’re talking about, though, are being bred right out of the culture at a furious pace. It’s not going to be long — on a proper historical long-view — before the only differences between the savages of Mogadishu and the ones here will very stylishly superficial.

“Anarchists deny the basic nature of man. That is delusional at best.”

You know, I’ve been at this a long time. And it has never stopped amazing me: what a confession that is, from every person I ever saw write it.

[Patrick Chkoreff]

There is no anarchy in my business. I am an archon, a leader, and we have archy here. However, if you stop serving me adequately, I will not lock you in a cage or take your property — I will simply stop serving you.

… Force is *so* 20th century …

[Kyle Bennett]

… Force is *so* 20th century …

Now we’re even, exchange-of-catch-phrase wise, that is.

[J sub D]

You know, I’ve been at this a long time. And it has never stopped amazing me: what a confession that is, from every person I ever saw write it.

Confession or facing reality? Speaking of confessions, here is an interesting one.

[Billy Beck]

“Confession or facing reality?”

There is nothing mutually exclusive about them, in this context. It could be both, but beware: if it is, then it’s time to take a long hard look in the mirror.

“Speaking of confessions, here is an interesting one.”

Why don’t you tell everyone what you think it means?

[Kyle Bennett]

Why don’t you tell everyone what you think it means?

Why should he, when the implication lets everyone make up their own meaning, to suit their individual tastes. So much more Libertarian, dontchya know.

[J sub D]

Why don’t you tell everyone what you think it means?

Why? It spraks for itself.

[J sub D]

Make that speaks.

[Billy Beck]

It’s nothing but the truth. Whether you like it or not.

[Kyle Bennett]

Oh, I like “sprak” so much better. For some time now, we’ve needed a phrase for this kind of pseudo-conversation. I think “sprak” fits quite nicely.

Sprak to me, JD.

[Billy Beck]

That was not uncalled for, Kyle.

It’s exactly what’s going on.

[J sub D]

It’s nothing but the truth. Whether you like it or not.

Oh, I believe ya.

[Billy Beck]

Bullshit”.

[Linda Morgan]

Anarchists deny the basic nature of man.

Is this to say that a need for coercive governance is fundamental in human nature?

[Kyle Bennett]

Is this to say that a need for coercive governance is fundamental in human nature?

It apparently is to some humans’ natures. The ones that confess it so, anyway.

[Billy Beck]

“Confession”: anyone facing Linda’s question must handle all the implications.

[Kyle Bennett]

anyone facing Linda’s question must handle all the implications.

The ones that think it so couldn’t possibly handle all the implications. Isn’t that the point of this exercise?

[Billy Beck]

I hope not, Kyle.

That hope is the whole reason why I’m still doing this, even in the face of more bullshit.

[Awik Donderoooo]

Billy Beck | December 15, 2007, 11:13am | #
You idiot. Who the hell do you wish you could be?

Oooh, ooh!!! I want to be Billy Beck!!

There’s nothing more that I want in life than to be a mid-life hack who thinks that not fomenting change, by either voting or action, then bitching about the existing situation is the noble and principled way to live.

Billy Beck wrote:
I fucking hate this place.
But it’s not as if I hate America.

Billy Beck is too “principled” to play within the bounds of government by voting and paying taxes but too chickenshit to play outside of it in the revolutionary way and overthrow it.

Shit or get off the pot Billy-boy but the time for your porcelain contemplation is over. The more time you spend doing nothing in the name of freedom the more liberty that slips through your fingers.

[Billy Beck]

“…too chickenshit to play outside of it in the revolutionary way and overthrow it.”

That’s what you think.

[Ayn_Randian]

Oh little Billy is lying to you. From his link:

However, I will not resist with arms against prosecution.

How’s that again, you chickenshit? You know what, Billy, perhaps its time you stopped hiding behind angry arrogance and futilely posting on medium-trafficked blogs and go out there and shot you some coppers. Come on, man, somebody’s gotta be the hundredth monkey.

Seriously, why won’t you resist? Aren’t they the ones initiating force on you? Isn’t it your right to defend yourself? So man the fuck up and do it already!

Go ahead, hero…we’re right behind ya.

[J sub D]

“…too chickenshit to play outside of it in the revolutionary way and overthrow it.”

That’s what you think.

Poseur.

[Ayn_Randian]

Oh, Beckster, you’re such a man!

From Little Beckster’s Blog:

I just took another call from the New York State Troopers’ Police Benevolent Association. That’s about the fourth one this year.

The guy on the phone was all cheery like we were bar-buddies or something. “Mr. Beck, unfortunately, we’ve had five troopers killed in the line of duty this year, and…”

And that’s where I bit his ass off. “I don’t care. Go to Albany. Don’t call me anymore.”

I bet you have the BIGGEST DICK around, you know, being an asshole to the troopers’ association makes you a real man.

Really it does…you’re a stud.

[Kyle Bennett]

That hope is the whole reason why I’m still doing this

Remember where you are, Billy. These are the three percenters that in theory don’t need convincing, but are going to convince the rest. You find hope in that?

My hopes lie in a different direction, and my purpose here is not to see what I can put in, but what I can take out.

Remember who it was that had to be stopped to put the lights out.

BTW, Patrick, I emailed you. Just in case it got filtered.

[J sub D]

Really it does…you’re a stud.

Ayn_Randian –

Just musing here.
Angry white male. Failure in school, on the job, in life generally. Unable to form adult relationships with women. Play the Billy Badass game on the tubes, fantasizing about how tough and revolutionary he really is. Goes to work at Dairy Queen on Monday.

[Kyle Bennett]

Billy, it looks like they’re really taking a shine to you. I mean, they’ve got fully fleshed out fantasies now, fer Chrissake.

[Ayn_Randian]

I see Kyle’s still contributing to Leviathan by refusing to renounce Comcast. That’s OK, Kyle, your posts here are more important than pretty much directly giving money to the politicians you assuredly hate. Because we’re all SO fascinated by the recent influx of anarchoscum.

Beckster seems to have forgotten that Rand was explicitly NOT an anarchist and believed that the State had a role in providing a military, police and courts. But perhaps he doesn’t read Atlas Shrugged as often as he claims.

[Kyle Bennett]

ARian,

I wasn’t talking to you.

[Ayn_Randian]

No, J sub, it’s worse than that.

You know those folks who read Objectivist literature and think it’s OK to act like assholes? (you might not, they’re usually teenagers)…it’s that, writ large, with more old-age bitterness and with a splash of music hippy on the side.

Billy, I acted like you like, four years ago…I get the whole “angry individualist” thing, I really do, because I used to live it. I still consider myself an Objectivist. But this white-boy “Fuck da Police” thing you have going is NOT Objectivism. Objectivism is a tool for living life; it’s not supposed to be your all-consuming obsession.

[J sub D]

ARian,

I wasn’t talking to you.

He’s right there, Ayn_Randian, Kyle was talking to his anarchist butt buddy.

[Kyle Bennett]

I acted like you like, four years ago

Wow, four years, huh? You’re like, what, an elder statesman, now then?

Objectivism is a tool for living life

So why don’t you live the damned thing then? You think spending your life pleading for permission to take a piss is the way to do that?

[Billy Beck]

Do you people want to argue, or talk about me?

[Kyle Bennett]

Do you people want to argue, or talk about me?

They don’t know the difference.

[WTF]

Gawd, you guys (Billy-boy and Kyle) are far more unintentionally hilarious than you’ll probably ever realize, with your cryptic apocalyptic statements and your internet tough guy attitudes. Shouldn’t you both be off somewhere masturbating angrily to your charcoal sketches of Ayn Rand and Wonder Woman touching each other in their dirty places?

I heartily encourage you keep up the tough guy talk; I could definitely use some more laughs today. I’m sure the people reading along in silent amusement agree.

[Kyle Bennett]

I could definitely use some more laughs today.

Laugh all you want. You don’t matter.

[WTF]

“Laugh all you want. You don’t matter.”

That’s perfect! Keep it up, but next time, if you could include some reference to “sheeple,” that would be pure unintentional comedy gold!

[RWW]

Then why bother, Kyle? I agree with you and Billy; these people are scum — worse than scum, really, in their “free market” pretensions. So why all the effort here?

[Billy Beck]

I’ll tell you why.

It’s because I don’t think these people are all that’s left of America.

That’s why.

[Ayn_Randian]

I never said he was talking to me.

Wow, four years, huh? You’re like, what, an elder statesman, now then?

No, I’m a fast learner.

You think spending your life pleading for permission to take a piss is the way to do that?

We’re not at that point, you hyperbolic bastard.

And even though we might find more to agree on than disagree, you’re fucking with my friends. You can’t just crash in to a community, spouting off nasty rhetoric and shotgun blasting everyone you see because you think you’re some kind of Uebermenschen because you really “get” Rand and the proles don’t.

Cocksuckers like you all are what give Objectivists a terrible name in the libertarian/freedom-loving community. You’re nothing more than religionists, claiming that there’s the “One True Way” to Enlightenment and the ignorant masses are deserving of nothing more than derision.

I see you’re still not renouncing Comcast, even though they lobby with the “eeeevil” State.

Do any of you anarcho-folks even realize that Rand supported the military (see: Rand’s Address to USMA) the courts and the police?

There are intelligent, thoughtful Objectivists who have debated and furthered the philosophy (because it’s not complete). You guys are NOT among them

Then why bother, Kyle? I agree with you and Billy; these people are scum — worse than scum, really, in their “free market” pretensions. So why all the effort here?

Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out, douchebag.

[Kyle Bennett]

So why all the effort here?

Because it’s not for them.

Cocksuckers like you all are what give Objectivists a terrible name

Here’s a hint: I don’t care the slightest what kind of reputation objectivism or Ayn Rand has. It’s completely irrelevant.

the ignorant masses are deserving of nothing more than derision.

They’re beyond deserving even that, and any derision they got here from me was purely an afterthought.

the “eeeevil” State.

You really don’t get it. The state is not the root of the “eeevil”, it’s the symptom. You want to see the root? Here is is: “I think NORML’s approach here is spot-on and will be persuasive to many Californians.” It’s not your tax money they want, that’s a means to their ends. It’s your continual pleading they live on. And “they” isn’t the state, it’s those “many Californians” you’re pleading with. Stop it, already.

Do any of you anarcho-folks even realize that Rand supported the military

Do any of you supposed free thinkers realize how irrelevant it is what Rand supported or didn’t support?

[Ayn_Randian]

Do any of you supposed free thinkers realize how irrelevant it is what Rand supported or didn’t support?

As if free-thinking requires starting from scratch every time a human is born. You don’t believe in say, building on knowledge? Rand’s intellectual insights carry a little more weight with me, so yeah, I guess it is relevant to know what other people think. Do you think there’s a reason the phrase is Don’t reinvent the wheel?

“I think NORML’s approach here is spot-on and will be persuasive to many Californians.”

Do you realize you’re getting your panties in a bunch over what one commenter said on a blog? Seriously, Reason just reported on the story. You guys jumped all over one commenter. How pathetic are you?

Still waiting on that Comcast explanation…how about it, little purist? Don’t you think it’s time you dumped a company that has pump half-a-mil to GWB already?

They’re beyond deserving even that, and any derision they got here from me was purely an afterthought.

Well, go away then. Stop wasting your precious pearls of wisdom on swine like us and fuck off.

[Kyle Bennett]

As if free-thinking requires starting from scratch every time a human is born. … Do you realize you’re getting your panties in a bunch over what one commenter said on a blog?

I take it you’ve read enough Rand to know what “dropping context” means?

Stop wasting your precious pearls of wisdom on swine

I’ve told you, it’s not for you. Let me put it more bluntly: I, (and I presume Billy as well), have deliberately hijacked this thread for my own purposes that have nothing to do with you, your little coffee klatch here, or whatever it is the Reason editors think they’re trying to accomplish. I am not trying to convince you of anything.

Even this post is not meant for your benefit.

[VikingMoose]

Kyle = RWW = Billy = 7.5/10 trolling
(potential awesome troll link with “WTF”)

7.5/10 good job! But Randian kicked yer asses if this weren’t a troll job. But as a troll job, URKOBOLD might not wither your taint.

And Randian still wins the day.

[Ayn_Randian]

I, (and I presume Billy as well), have deliberately hijacked this thread for my own purposes.

Wow, you’re just a modern-day Ragnar now, aintcha? *swoons* I can’t imagine any purpose of hijacking a blog thread that wouldn’t reek of pathetic.

Yeah, and you’re buddy-boy Beckster seems to think his purpose here is to “run ’em to the wall.” I say again…pa…the…tic

And I hope Reason sees fit to ban you for admitting you’re here to troll and hijack discussions.

[Kyle Bennett]

Viking,

It was not a troll. It’s not for them.

I can’t imagine any purpose of hijacking a blog thread that wouldn’t reek of pathetic

Though it won’t be persuasive to many Californians, my purpose was to speak with and to the few people in the room who might matter. You are not among them.

And I hope Reason sees fit to ban you

They’d have every right to. Or, if they simply state that they wish me to no longer comment here, I will honor it.

It’s be their loss, but they’re lost already.

[Ayn_Randian]

VM, thanks for the props. I understand stopping the motor of the world, but trolling? WTF?

[Billy Beck]

I’m not going anywhere, and I don’t care what you think of Rand, of what you think I think of Rand, or what you think of me. I don’t care about the “community” that you think you ramrod. There was no “hijack[ed]” discussion until “your community” hit the gas at December 14, 2007, 3:38pm. You could look it up.

And you have nothing to say to any of the principles or their implications at hand.

Yell all you want. You don’t count.

[Ayn_Randian]

You know, I’m stunned that as little as you care, Beckster, you’re still here.

Oh, I see, you’re all lathered up about somebody slamming anarchos. God, cry about it a little, huh? I’m trying to understand here: if you care so little about others’ opinions, why are you all wrapped around the axle about…uhh, someone’s opinion?

And you have nothing to say to any of the principles or their implications at hand

From what I’ve seen, neither have you. Maybe, Your Highness, you’d care to come down from Olympus for a hot minute and dispense some godly wisdom on us peons?

[Who Its Meant For]

[i]And I hope Reason sees fit to ban you for admitting you’re here to troll and hijack discussions.[/i]

That is precisely why no one on this earth should listen to a thing you say, in matters trivial or otherwise. You obviously can’t grasp this concept enough to meet it head on, and therefore there will be no reasoned, intelligent debate on your part, so you’d rather they “be banned” by those with power to do so.

[VikingMoose]

I certainly, for one, does not, nor can, count. As for the observation of trolling, that stands. As does the guess that you three (at least) are probably the same – hanging out at your community college computer lab.

Randian has demonstrated an excellent knowledge of All Things Rand, and since you two are going for the abrasive argument, you’ll lose to the regular who knows his stuff better. On points and on personality (Randian, however, finished tied for third in the swimsuit part. I’m sure he understands)

And from how you’ve behaved, I’m happy to take the loss. In fact, I’ll head out to my bunk, complete with my Noam Chomsky Blow Up Doll, my leather-bound copy of “Heather Has Two Mommies” (the edition with the sweaty pillow fight scene on page 69), and I’ll be BATIN till my heart’s content.

And I won’t miss you three (*at least) when you go. But Randian and the rest of his Delta Buddies (?) are always welcome. Even though he’s from Columbus. And people from Columbus are a little off. Especially THE COLUMBUS ACADEMY people. But Upper Arlington swimming was really good.

[Kyle Bennett]

Who Its Meant For,

*nod*

[Billy Beck]

“I’m trying to understand here:”

No, you’re not, so cut the bullshit.

“…if you care so little about others’ opinions, why are you all wrapped around the axle about…uhh, someone’s opinion?”

I didn’t say “others”. I said “you”.

And that was a half-assed try at a good example of why you don’t count.

[Ayn_Randian]

You obviously can’t grasp this concept enough to meet it head on

NONE of you has seen fit to lay out a concept that can be met “head on”. Maybe, like I said, you can come down off of the Mount and simply state an argument.

Especially THE COLUMBUS ACADEMY people. But Upper Arlington swimming was really good.

We only claim the Academy people in the way that you would defend that weird uncle to outsiders (shhh…tell no one!). But yes, UA swimming is great (esp. the female seniors…uhh…Heads to Stevo’s Bunk

[J sub D]

There was no “hijack[ed]” discussion until “your community” hit the gas at December 14, 2007, 3:38pm. You could look it up.

I did. Hhere ’tis. In it’s entirety.

J sub D | December 14, 2007, 3:38pm | #

Billy is an anarcho-libertarian. I understand him perfectly.

Ther’s other words for anarcho-libertarian. Shorter ones. A rare attack of the polites prevents me from listing them.

Sensitive little ego you got there Billy boy. Do not go out into the real world. Someone might say worse than that to you after you act like a rude prick as a way of introducing youself.

[Ayn_Randian]

Do not go out into the real world.

J sub: fortunately, with the social skills that our little Beckster has demonstrated, I don’t think we have to worry about that.

Beckster, don’t you have some Policy Charity’s Representative to go swear up and down or something? I mean, that is what makes you such a right-on rational super-stud, right?…being rude-as-all-fuck to a charity person?

Don’t forget Rand’s watchword, little kiddies: benevolence.

[Kyle Bennett]

Maybe, like I said, you can come down off of the Mount and simply state an argument.

6:43

But you won’t meet it head on, I’ll bet on it. You haven’t yet, in the last hour and eight minutes.

[Mike S.]

There’s a reason I don’t indulge forums like these much anymore, and it is this: I just want to see damn near everyone die in writhing agony now. Why? Because you deserve it so very badly, you circle-jerking thieves who always manage to find a “need” for the continued authorization of state force.

True, objective Justice would have nothing less, and would not stand to have anything like comedy delaying her action.

[Billy Beck]

“Do not go out into the real world.”

I’ve been around “the real world” more than you could stand to know. You’re dead wrong.

Now, here’s your descent from the mount: go answer Linda Morgan’s question.

[Ayn_Randian]

you’d rather they “be banned” by those with power to do so.

Well, for one, when you come on and freely admit that you’re hijacking a thread for some kind of Sphinxian purposes, some great Catholic mystery that no one can know about, then, yeah, I see no problem with banning your ass from further discussion.

And don’t forget, assclown, it’s not power they have to ban you, it’s their free right as the property owners to ban you, and my privilege to ask, something you and all your little chirping buddies should respect more than anything.

[Kyle Bennett]

ARian,

You have two to choose from now, and I think Billy’s suggestion is more on point.

Should we give you till, say 8:30 to meet something, anything, head on, and after that assume you never will?

[Ayn_Randian]

I just want to see damn near everyone die in writhing agony now.

HOLY FUCK THERE’S ANOTHER ONE OF THEM! And he’s seen to fit to completely leave the reservation.

Hey Mike S., as someone who believes in benevolence and the goodness of most people, I hope that you free yourself from your mental prison and go live your life, instead of wishing death upon everyone.

Kyle – I see no argument in your 6:43 post. No cleanly stated premise or statement of contention. As a matter of fact, the one statement you made with a “?” mark, I answered.

I’ve been around “the real world” more than you could stand to know. You’re dead wrong.

Why should I accept some preposterous statement like that with no facts or evidence to back it up?

Is this to say that a need for coercive governance is fundamental in human nature?

I don’t believe in human nature; humans are born tabula rasa. So your question is false from the start. YOU FAIL.

[J sub D]

I’m outta here. I’ve been much amused by the soicial misfits, but that’s enough. To Billy, and his maladjusted cirle jerk buddies, FUCK OFF!

To others, talk to ya later. These ain’t troll. These are disturbed individuals.

[Ayn_Randian]

And no, Kyle, I am not doing this all night and morning (since it’s 0415 where I am right now). So hurry up, make a real argument, or go away.

[Kyle Bennett]

AR, should we take that as your concession speech?

It’s only 8:07, you still have 23 minutes. C’mon, you can do it, work that little brain of yours like it’s never been worked before.

[Kyle Bennett]

I don’t believe in human nature

See, Billy, that is pretty much what’s left of America, and the world. There’s no saving them anymore, there’s only saving ourselves from them.

[Ayn_Randian]

Kyle – clearly you have no interest in actually discussing anything. Your 6:43 post had NO defined contention or debatable questions. I’ll wait about, oh, 10 more minutes or so for you to come up with one. Tell you what: quote from the post what you want to discuss (because my tiny little brain just can’t seem to divine a question from your rantings) and we’ll go from there.

It’s a reasonable request.

[Kyle Bennett]

You still have another 17 minutes.

[Minion of URKOBOLD]

CLEARLY KYLE IS INFLUENCED BY THIS. HIER.

URKOBOLD HAS LAND IN TAINTSVILLE, FL FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO SAVE THEMSELVES FROM THEM. OR IS IT THOSE WHO ARE THEM TO SAVE THEMSELVES WISH?

IT IS CONFUSING. SUFFICE TO SAY, URKOBOLD IS THERE. TAINTSVILLE IS THERE. AND WEIBSKOBOLD IS BOUNCY BOUNCY.

[Ayn_Randian]

And Kyle loses, for failing to actually provide an argument he wants to discuss.

I am sure you’re fine with that though, Kyle, because you and Billy and all your little friends can withdraw from the thread and jerk off to how glorious your thought process was and how well you all did and glory in your self-satisfaction. Despite the fact none of you ever, ever put forth a clearly defined debatable point or rational argument.

Billy and Kyle and all his little minions have proven themselves very effective time-wasters, and I furious at myself for even bothering with a bunch of bullshit artists such as them.

[Kyle Bennett]

Oh Noes! I’ll have to take that as a definite concession. I’m devastated with disappointment, but that’s what I get for allowing myself to hope.

I furious at myself

No you not.

Go off to bed now, sleepy head.

[WTF]

“…and I furious at myself for even bothering with a bunch of bullshit artists such as them.”

You can’t look at it that way, AR; you have to think of it as some sort of performance art and enjoy the absurdity of the notion that there are people who are truly so self-deluded as to think this crap they’re saying means something. It also helps if you’re amused by the pretentiousness, rather than offended by it.

They’ve been a wonderful distraction for me while I’ve been at work all day. You deserve to get some enjoyment out of it too. It’s when you try to address them on honest, intelligent terms that you lose; they made it abundantly clear quite a while ago that they’re not so big on honesty and intelligence.

[Ernest Brown]

“honesty and intelligence?”

The honesty and intelligence of calling oneself an “Ayn Randian” while engaging in wholesale social metaphysics and turning a blind eye to the whole point of the moral illegitimacy of submitting to the coercion of the state as NORML is doing? Yeah, I thought so.

Herein lies the garbage:

“What is so disgusting about a business “paying income, payroll, business, and sales taxes, and offering workmen’s compensation, unemployment, and health insurance benefits to their employees.”

Or pointing out that they did until shutdown by the feds?”

Instead of addressing this abject surrended to the right of the state to tax, these oh so vaunted “enemies” of collectivism got their fithly little soots in the air and threw Breck Girl hissy fits because they can only live their lives through the approval of others. Rand couldn’t stand Billy Beck, but she couldn’t stop vomiting if she returned from Valhalla and wittnessed this disgusting display.

[Shem]

Revenue was a talking point in the debate over the 21st Amendment. Money talks.

There’s a compelling argument to be made that it was *the* talking point, and that complaints about gangsterism were just window dressing.

[Ernest Brown]

“abject surrender”

[VM]

AR – sent you email. Unrelated to discussion hier. Could have to do with UA or StX or something Ohio. Or might not. You’ll see.

*disappears in cloud of foam*

[Linda Morgan]

I see J sub D ducked out before I could ask if he would yet care to address my question about what he meant when he said that anarchists deny the basic nature of man. He might have considered offering one of the yes and no options since he was in such a hurry.

But I see that ARian has taken a stab: I don’t believe in human nature; humans are born tabula rasa.

And that certainly does help explain why s/he didn’t say “anarchists deny the basic nature of man” like J sub D did, and hints at why s/he does not offer the requested clarification.

[Shem]

However, if you stop serving me adequately, I will not lock you in a cage or take your property — I will simply stop serving you.

It’s so cute to see people who are too effete to defend themselves from society turn their weakness into a virtue by refusing to even try. Have fun figuring out how long withholding your services lasts in the land of (state) coercion-free living when Bubba with a hungry family and no grounding in anarchist theory realizes that a pair of colts beat four aces.

[Jeffrey Quick]

“If the Feds would lay off CA Med MJ, the state could steal its fair share.” — shorter NORML.

It’s a turf war between rival gangs. And the only kind of person who would cheer one or the other on is a gangster.

[Linda Morgan]

Have fun figuring out how long withholding your services lasts in the land of (state) coercion-free living when Bubba with a hungry family and no grounding in anarchist theory realizes that a pair of colts beat four aces.

You you mean to imply here, Shem, that the state defends you from your armed countrymen by requiring you to pay toward their upkeep?

[Linda Morgan]

Do you

[Billy Beck]

“It’s so cute to see people who are too effete to defend themselves from society turn their weakness into a virtue by refusing to even try. Have fun figuring out how long withholding your services lasts in the land of (state) coercion-free living when Bubba with a hungry family and no grounding in anarchist theory realizes that a pair of colts beat four aces.”

Thanx. I’ll take my chances.

Would that be a problem to you?

[Shem]

You you mean to imply here, Shem, that the state defends you from your armed countrymen by requiring you to pay toward their upkeep?

Some of them. The threat of the application of its force also provides a useful deterrent to others. The aforementioned Bubba, for example, who thinks twice about acting when the threat of incarceration is in play. I’d rather not have to dedicate all my energy to maintaining what I have in the face of uncontrolled barbarism. That’s no way to run a society. In fact, it’s not society at all. And, considering the fact that cooperation is the basis of every advancement that makes our life so pleasant, society is pretty important.

Billy-Not at all. Though it is vaguely irritating to have to listen to you crow about the virtues of your choice as if you were Prometheus bringing fire down to we heathens living in the shadow of Olympus. A little like having to listen to a younger brother who’s just learned his multiplication tables. But as I said above, amusement at your mixture of naivete and arrogance makes up for it, somewhat.

[Ernest Brown]

“Some of them. The threat of the application of its force also provides a useful deterrent to others. The aforementioned Bubba, for example, who thinks twice about acting when the threat of incarceration is in play. I’d rather not have to dedicate all my energy to maintaining what I have in the face of uncontrolled barbarism. That’s no way to run a society. In fact, it’s not society at all. And, considering the fact that cooperation is the basis of every advancement that makes our life so pleasant, society is pretty important.”

OK gang, it’s time for Hit N’ Run’s newest game show, SPOT THE CONTRADICTION!

[Mike S.]

Ayn_Randian: Hey Mike S., as someone who believes in benevolence and the goodness of most people, I hope that you free yourself from your mental prison and….

Explode brown, you crummy second-hander.

[Shem]

Tell me how it’s contradictory, Ernest. Because “in the absence of authority to prevent it, people will take advantage of each other to a degree that will render civilization impossible” seems pretty straightforward.

[Mike S.]

Shem? If “people” really are that slimy toward each other all day long if left to their own devices, what makes you think that giving them a government with authority over YOU to play with is such a wonderful idea?

[Kyle Bennett]

in the absence of authority to prevent it, people will take advantage of each other to a degree that will render civilization impossible

But that’s exactly what you advocate, and what you’ve mostly gotten.

[Billy Beck]

“Billy-Not at all.”

Fine, then. We’re agreed that government is not a value to me. Would you force me to pay for it?

“Though it is vaguely irritating to have to listen to you crow about…”

Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it’s all very regrettable, but that doesn’t matter to the political question. I have to listen to people like you singing paeans to government all day long, and all this is how things are naturally going to go until we get that question resolved. I’d have better things to do, too, but I’m not the one advocating making you pay for things that you don’t value, and this fact makes it pretty obvious where the essential problem is in all this.

[Shem]

Shem? If “people” really are that slimy toward each other all day long if left to their own devices, what makes you think that giving them a government with authority over YOU to play with is such a wonderful idea?

Because if you create one with hard and fast rules that can’t be transgressed, and a system of checks and balances to keep any one individual or group from gaining too much power, you can create a government that preserves freedom while maintaining the ability to act as a deterrent.

I’ll ask, what makes you so sure that a society without government *won’t* become just what I believe it will? I base my theory on having done social work, and seeing both A) scummy people who live to take advantage of others without concern for ethics, fairness, or even basic human compassion and, far more common B) desperate people willing to transgress just about any boundary to protect their families. What does your world view say about the existence of these people? How will your society survive them?

[Ernest Brown]

“Because if you create one with hard and fast rules that can’t be transgressed, and a system of checks and balances to keep any one individual or group from gaining too much power, you can create a government that preserves freedom while maintaining the ability to act as a deterrent.”

…and if the big rock candy mountain teleports itself next door, I’ll have sweets for the rest of my life.

Brother, you dare to say that -Billy- is a “mixture of naivete and arrogance” and then unload a bunch of idiotic ahistorical hooey like that?

[Kyle Bennett]

if you create one with hard and fast rules that can’t be transgressed, and a system of checks and balances to keep any one individual or group from gaining too much power, you can create a government that preserves freedom while maintaining the ability to act as a deterrent.

And how do you propose to do that with no authority over it?

[Ernest Brown]

“And how do you propose to do that with no authority over it?”

Shhh, Kyle, pay no attention to the man behind the curtin. Shem is the Great and Powerful Vote!

[Billy Beck]

“I’ll ask, what makes you so sure that a society without government *won’t* become just what I believe it will?”

All my half-century of experience with people all over the country. You get to cite yours — I get to cite mine. And the people that I’ve dealt with are not the manifest aberrations that that social workers deal with. They’re the broad span and stretch of this country, everywhere, every day. They’re not interested in murder. They’re interested in producing values.

So far. Anyone old enough can look around in broad daylight and see that character being leached right out of them, generation by generation, and there is one general reason for that. It’s that there is more law and order laying on their backs than ever before in American history.

This society is becoming what you say, right in front of you, because of the thing that you’re arguing for.

[Shem]

Brother, you dare to say that -Billy- is a “mixture of naivete and arrogance” and then unload a bunch of idiotic ahistorical hooey like that?

Because I acknowledge that it won’t be perfect. Because perfect isn’t possible. What I’m advocating is good, which is enough for now.

And the people that I’ve dealt with are not the manifest aberrations that that social workers deal with.

But those people exist. And it doesn’t take many of them to make life impossible for everyone else. If it weren’t so, then government would never have developed in the first place.

[Kyle Bennett]

But those people exist. And it doesn’t take many of them to make life impossible for everyone else. If it weren’t so, then government would never have developed in the first place.

Do you realize how true that really is? It’s just not in the way you think. Government developed of, by, and for those people. They sought a way to get out from under the authority of you, of anybody, and they found it. And yet you continue to forfeit your authority to them.

Next time you do your social work, take a good hard look at those people you describe. They are your masters. Even if they don’t realize it themselves.

[Billy Beck]

“…perfect isn’t possible.”

I’ve never referred to perfection. That’s your word. Observe:

“But those people exist. And it doesn’t take many of them to make life impossible for everyone else. If it weren’t so, then government would never have developed in the first place.”

To begin with, that’s just nonsense. In more than a thousand years (at the very least), the only entities that could begin to approach making life impossible for everyone else are governments and people fighting and killing to establish them.

Beyond all that, though, I never dispute that “those people exist”, because that’s not the point. It’s a plain fact that they do, and the question is what to do about them. Now, if they make you nervous, then I can see that that’s a problem. But you have no right to chain me to it as your solution.

I wouldn’t do that to you.

[Ernest Brown]

“Do you realize how true that really is? It’s just not in the way you think. Government developed of, by, and for those people. They sought a way to get out from under the authority of you, of anybody, and they found it. And yet you continue to forfeit your authority to them.

Next time you do your social work, take a good hard look at those people you describe. They are your masters. Even if they don’t realize it themselves.”

Excellent point, Kyle, and one that I was about to bring up. If the existence of the Lumpenproletariat acts as a veto on freedom, then it does so even more under government than in “anarchy.” A government limited by the desire for freedom is not going to provide security from parasites (cf. THE GANGS OF NEW YORK), and, likewise, a government whose prime justification is security is not going to care about the violation of the rights of any particular individual. (ditto for Rudy Guiliani’s rule of New York City)

[Ernest Brown]

“Because I acknowledge that it won’t be perfect. Because perfect isn’t possible. What I’m advocating is good, which is enough for now.”

No, you didn’t. You said:

“Because if you create one with hard and fast rules that can’t be transgressed, and a system of checks and balances to keep any one individual or group from gaining too much power, you can create a government that preserves freedom while maintaining the ability to act as a deterrent.”

There is no such thing as an untransgressable rule, no such thing as a “system of checks and balances” that doesn’t demand fierce attention and rational oversight, just the sort of attention and oversight that you and your allies here are too tired and bothered to deal with, which is why you “want George to do it.”

Well, George is “doing it.” He’s doing it -real good.-

[dhex]

They SHOULD HAVE also protected our right to put whatever substances we wish into our bodies.

ruthless, though i feel you on this, seeing as they missed out on how some human beings were legal persons and some where legal property was pretty fucked up (to put it as mildly as possible), i think the “you own yourselves” amendment was unfortunately impossible.

[Linda Morgan]

I asked:

You you mean to imply here, Shem, that the state defends you from your armed countrymen by requiring you to pay toward their upkeep?

Shem answered:

Some of them.

So if couldn’t get from government what government takes from you (ostensibly) on their behalf, they’d come gunning for you? There’s no other way for them to get what they need and there’s no realistic way for you to cooperate with others to defend your property and your life against their demands?

I’d rather not have to dedicate all my energy to maintaining what I have in the face of uncontrolled barbarism.

But you’re okay in the face of uncontrolled government? Or maybe you consider that you’ve got control, along with sufficient say over what is taken from you to placate Bubba.

That’s no way to run society.

Society’s a pretty big enterprise to “run”. I guess that’s why government has to be so big.

[C]onsidering the fact that cooperation is the basis of every advancement that makes our life so pleasant, society is pretty important.

Obedience enforced by the coercive government that you suggest is required to uphold and “run” society is anything but cooperation. Just as the requirement by government for you — and me — to fund its payment of protection money to people you fear is anything but the foundation of a free and sustainable society.

[dhex]

So far. Anyone old enough can look around in broad daylight and see that character being leached right out of them, generation by generation, and there is one general reason for that.

because you had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow?

also have you heard the music its fucking terrible.

in other news we all grow old and eventually we die.

[Mike S.]

Shem….
> Mike S….
> >Shem? If “people” really are that slimy toward each other all day long if left to their
> >own devices, what makes you think that giving them a government with authority over
> >YOU to play with is such a wonderful idea?
>
> Because if you create one with hard and fast rules that can’t be transgressed, and a system
> of checks and balances to keep any one individual or group from gaining too much power…
If the *premise* of your argument is that people are corrupt, then how does it automagically become possible for them to create such a thing?

Your argument destroys itself with its own givens.

[Ayn_Randian]

Yet, if he is living in a society of other men, it is not enough that an individual determine in his own mind that his use of force is retaliatory. Since whether an act of force is initiatory or retaliatory is not self-evident, and since a man who initiates force is by that fact a threat to society, any man who engages in force that has not been proved by objective means to be retaliatory must be considered a threat. This is the deepest reason why the use of retaliatory force must be delegated to the government: an act of retaliation that isn’t first proved to be an act of retaliation is indistinguishable from an act of aggression — and must be treated as such. – Diana Hsieh

Full Quote Here

[Ayn_Randian]

If the *premise* of your argument is that people are corrupt, then how does it automagically become possible for them to create such a thing?

Buzzer time…the premise of the argument was “some people” not “all people” are corrupt.

Despite Beckster’s wide and far travels and his overwhelming pentatarian cred, there are some people out there who are monsters. Actually there are a lot of them.

[Billy Beck]

I was arguing with Diana long before you ever heard her name, and she and her sketch of Rand on this are dead wrong. They’re both just as unilaterally presumptuous as any government ever has been.

[Patrick Chkoreff]

Ayn_Randian wrote:

“Do any of you anarcho-folks even realize that Rand supported the military (see: Rand’s Address to USMA) the courts and the police?”

Ayn Rand definitely supported a voluntarily financed military, court, and police system, and so would I. She stated her position clearly in The Virtue of Selfishness:

“In a fully free society, taxation-or, to be exact, payment for governmental services-would be voluntary. Since the proper services of a government-the police, the armed forces, the law courts-are demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance.”

I concur.

[Ayn_Randian]

I was arguing with Diana long before you ever heard her name

Well, aren’t you just Mr. Popular. Any more name-dropping you care to engage in, Beckster? How is the fact that you’ve been arguing with her for a long time relevant? Maybe you’re just very stupid?

she and her sketch of Rand on this are dead wrong. They’re both just as unilaterally presumptuous as any government ever has been.

That’s an assertion, and one you haven’t seen to fit to prove. So, until I hear a better argument out of you, I’ll go with Diana’s version, thanks.

[URKOBOLD\'s CADDY]

BILLY BILLY BILLY.

THERE IS A COUNTRY CLUB WHERE YOU’RE NEEDED TO PUTT THE WINNING SHOT.

OH – BILLY BAROO, NEVER MIND.

[Patrick Chkoreff]

Shem wrote:

“It’s so cute to see people who are too effete to defend themselves from society turn their weakness into a virtue by refusing to even try. Have fun figuring out how long withholding your services lasts in the land of (state) coercion-free living when Bubba with a hungry family and no grounding in anarchist theory realizes that a pair of colts beat four aces.”

I own two semi-automatic pistols and one semi-automatic rifle, and with those tools I can defend life and property against the odd criminal or two.

However, you are correct about one thing: I am not capable of defending life and property against “society” at large. For example, if a sheriff arrives at my door to evict me from my home because I refuse to pay for goods and services consumed by others, my three guns are useless unless I aim to commit suicide-by-cop.

Certainly that makes me “effete” in the sense that I am society’s bitch. I could try withholding the sexual favors, or maybe biting down real hard one day, but the cost would be enormous.

“Nobody enters this valley by faking reality in any way whatsoever.” (John Galt)

[Ayn_Randian]

Yeah, Patrick, Rand’s got a lot of contradictory stuff to say about anarchism, doesn’t she?

Anyway, I’m not going to rehash the whole “anarchy/miniarchy” argument. T

The summary quote: “The problem, of course, is everyone disagrees about what his rational self-interest is. Ask the Palestinians and the Israelis to define “rights,” “force,” “property,” “justice,” “self-defense,” and “protection.” Or ask the IRA and the British. Or George III and George Washington.” ~Bidinotto~.

[Billy Beck]

“Any more name-dropping you care to engage in, Beckster?”

You line ’em up, and I’ll knock ’em down.

“How is the fact that you’ve been arguing with her for a long time relevant?”

It’s at least as relevant as your rote-blind appeal to authority. If you have a brain in your head and an argument to make, then step up and do it.

[Patrick Chkoreff]

Ayn_Randian wrote:

“Yeah, Patrick, Rand’s got a lot of contradictory stuff to say about anarchism, doesn’t she? ”

No. First, she does not contradict herself, and second, she is not talking about anarchism. She simply opposes the initiation of force against other individuals, as do I.

[Ernest Brown]

If Hsieh wants to play that epistemic agnosticism card in a rationally consistent fashion, she would leave herself open to the just countercharge by collectivists that,by -her- argument, collective judgement is better than individual judgement.

If she wants to restrict it to force, she has to explain why force is different from say, education, in that the collective is better at determining the truth of force usage than the individual.

[J sub D]

Wow, Billy’s still here? Hey, Billy boy, who came first in the inane anarchist circle jerk?

[Billy Beck]

Bullshit.

[Ayn_Randian]

Try again, Ernest. She’s saying that because violent events are open to differing interpretations, and that violence is a threat to people, there’s no way to leave it up to one person to decide what was self-defense and what was aggression.

I don’t see any way to link Force and Economics without disaster. They should be categorically separated, else I decide to just up and murder you and claim self-defense with no one the wiser.

[Ayn_Randian]

And what individual would you trust enough to task with parsing what violent acts are justified and what acts are not?

[Ernest Brown]

“Try again, Ernest. She’s saying that because violent events are open to differing interpretations, and that violence is a threat to people, there’s no way to leave it up to one person to decide what was self-defense and what was aggression.”

Wrong, -ANY- event is “open to differing interpretations,” not just violent ones. If you are going to ride that hobbyhorse, ride it all the way to Collectivism Town and be honest with yourself.

The role of parents in education is “open to differing interpretations,” therefore, in order to exercise its superior collective rationality, the state should have sole control over the type and manner of the education of children.

[Jake Boone]

Boy, did I come late to this thread. I just feel the need to point out that I have anarchist sympathies myself. I think most people need to feel more comfortable with minarchy before there’ll be any chance of guiding them the rest of the way down that road.

That said, jumping into a thread on a largely libertarian board and excoriating people for not already thinking exactly like you do is a hugely counterproductive exercise (not to mention the unnecessarily rude manner in which you make the perfect the enemy of the good).

So well done, Billy and friends. You’ve made it that much harder to persuade anyone around here, because now “anarchist=asshole” is going to be the first thing that comes to mind for many of these folks.

Goddammit.

[Ayn_Randian]

The role of parents in education is “open to differing interpretations,” therefore, in order to exercise its superior collective rationality, the state should have sole control over the type and manner of the education of children.

If the differing ways of educating children were a threat to society. They’re not.

Violence, however, is. And you still didn’t answer my question: What individual would you trust enough to parse out what’s aggression and what’s self-defense?

If I wanted to overrun your property with about, oh, five of us carrying M16s wearing OTVs, helmets and wielding grenades and automatic weapons, guess what? You’re not going to be able to stop me…but the National Guard can. I’d get away with it about, oh, twice until the State stopped me. How long could I go on in an anarcho-capitalist society? Wanna find out?

The only thing constraining people who want to rule you by force is a government accountable to the people. I’m really not in the mood to have to set up concertina wire and land mines just because you’re having a temper-tantrum about “teh evil State”.

[Ayn_Randian]

First, she does not contradict herself, and second, she is not talking about anarchism.

Wait, if she’s lauding voluntary contributions to government only but in “The Nature of Government” has nothing but harshness for anarchism, how is that not a contradiction?

[Ernest Brown]

“If the differing ways of educating children were a threat to society. They’re not.”

I can think of one highly effective method of teaching, used in our colleges and law schools, that got the originator sentenced to death in a duly sworn court of law. Others have a “differing interpretation” about whether or not “differing ways of educating children…(are)…a threat to society.” Are you saying that it is a fallacy of false analogy to equate physical violence against children with the harm that miseducation does to them?

[Ayn_Randian]

It’s at least as relevant as your rote-blind appeal to authority.

What authority? If you’re referencing that I am quoting arguments from prominent Objectivists, that’s not an appeal to authority. It’s that they’ve already thought this through, come up with the arguments and presented them better than I could.

Unless you think that deferring to experts is “appealing to authority”, in which case I don’t know how you ever get your car fixed.

[Ayn_Randian]

Are you saying that it is a fallacy of false analogy to equate physical violence against children with the harm that miseducation does to them?

Yes, and I can honestly say that I regret coming at you like I have everyone else. You actually seem interested in discussion.

I await your response.

[Ernest Brown]

“Yes”

Are you sure? I seem to recall a very eloquent denunciation of the collectivist justification for progressive education that makes just that analogy.

“…and I can honestly say that I regret coming at you like I have everyone else. You actually seem interested in discussion.

I await your response.”

Well, to answer your question about the 5 guys with military hardware, I’d either have to accept the injustice or figure out a way to get back my land with the help of non-parasitic entities or friends. That is at least an existential solution, which is not available to me in this post-KELO era if the five guys -themselves- have NG uniforms on.

[Ayn_Randian]

I seem to recall a very eloquent denunciation of the collectivist justification for progressive education that makes just that analogy.

Again – good reference, but violence to the mind can be undone; death cannot be undone.

I’d either have to accept the injustice or figure out a way to get back my land with the help of non-parasitic entities or friends.

Yes, but if it were 50 men? 500? 5,000?

The practical implications of what you’re saying means perpetual warfare. Granted, the State can take your land, in this post Kelo era, for any reason it wants. But you have to ask yourself, then, why doesn’t it do so? After all, if we’re all as powerless against the State as you’re implying, why aren’t we slaves right now?

Part of the answer lies in the Second Amendment and the practical impossibility of subjugating an armed populace that enjoys its freedoms. But the other part lies in, loathe though you may be to admit this, the accountability of the State to the people and the outrage the people of America would exert upon that entity if such a drastic step were taken.

Of course, you could say that the State is slowly eroding and stripping our rights away, nefarious in its motives and careful not to move to quickly as to not alert the populace to its intent. But then, that’s what being a libertarian is all about, right? Slowing that encroachment?

So, then, the question lies in whether working in the system is a viable solution. I believe it is; otherwise, you should start arming yourself and get ready. Of course, you can do both…that’s the freedom of America, right?

[Mike S.]

Jake Boone: So well done, Billy and friends. You’ve made it that much harder to persuade anyone around here….

The drooling beast is not swayed by reason.

[Mike S.]

Ayn_Randian: But the other part lies in, loathe though you may be to admit this, the accountability of the State to the people and the outrage the people of America would exert upon that entity if such a drastic step were taken.

Shorter version: “Yay voting! It will save us from the government we voted for last time!”

[Ayn_Randian]

The drooling beast is not swayed by reason.

I’m not sure where you went wrong with Objectivism, Mike, but I sure hope you get the help you need. You’re one ugly, ugly individual.

[Billy Beck]

“What individual would you trust enough to parse out what’s aggression and what’s self-defense?”

The end logic of self-defense by committee is that there is no self-defense. Now, look around you: that’s about where we are in America today.

“Self-appointed” suits me just fine.

“If I wanted to overrun your property with about, oh, five of us carrying M16s wearing OTVs, helmets and wielding grenades and automatic weapons, guess what? You’re not going to be able to stop me.”

Not in my neighborhood. In any case, you have no way of knowing that, and there is nothing necessarily less likely about that than your mounting that weight of force, to begin with.

And your “mood” is completely impertinent.

[Billy Beck]

“The practical implications of what you’re saying means perpetual warfare.”

“There are no conflicts of interest between rational men.” Run that through your library and tell all the outraged who wrote it. Look: there will never be an end to evil. Some people will never grasp rational principles. But what you’re arguing is an implicit call to just give up on the whole idea in general, not to mention standing in direct defiance of centuries, now, of actual fact in this country.

[Ayn_Randian]

horter version: “Yay voting! It will save us from the government we voted for last time!”

Well, Mike, you’re just going to have to take that up with the Founding Fathers, who saw fit to write the Constitution. You know, the American Republic? The thing Ayn Rand called “the greatest American achievement”. Yeah buddy, she called instituting a GOVERNMENT the greatest American achievement.

So, complicated system of republicanism and minarchy (but according to you, EVIL GOVERNMENT!!!1!) = America

Anarchy = Somalia

I guess the results speak for themselves.

[Ayn_Randian]

Not in my neighborhood. In any case, you have no way of knowing that, and there is nothing necessarily less likely about that than your mounting that weight of force, to begin with.

What if what restrained me from mounting said assault was my fear of punishment and loss of freedom/life that the State can and will inflict on me? And as for not knowing if you’re going to be able to stop me? Have you ever heard of reconnaissance?

But what you’re arguing is an implicit call to just give up on the whole idea in general, not to mention standing in direct defiance of centuries, now, of actual fact in this country.

What you’re arguing is metapolitical; in order for the system to function, everyone has to be rational, or at least enough people do that the irrational/violent actors won’t take advantage or make a significant impact.

People saw fit to delegate part of their authority to a government to defend us from outside threats. We wouldn’t have time for art, philosophy, innovation or any other wonderful and good thing if everyone had to perpetually have enough arms and firepower to ensure that their neighbor remained polite.

[Ernest Brown]

“Again – good reference, but violence to the mind can be undone; death cannot be undone.”

AR, you’ve narrowed the field from violence in general to fatal violence. As Rand herself argues, violence can exist on the intellectual plane as well as the physical. In any case, it is just as possible to destroy a mind pass the point of recovery as it is a face, thus we need the state to ensure that children are not taught wrong concepts that will destroy their ability to reason. After all, it would be arrogant to assume that there is one individual point of view that is superior to another. You have already admitted your ignorance about determining whether or not retaliatory violence is rational. Why is your individual viewpoint on education any better?

[Ernest Brown]

“past the point of recovery”

[Ayn_Randian]

In any case, it is just as possible to destroy a mind pass the point of recovery as it is a face

That’s a contentious point and, if I may say, one I wouldn’t overwhelmingly endorse, in that the science on damaged thought processes isn’t even nearly advanced as physical medicine. After all, 30 years ago, homosexuality was considered a sign of a damaged mind and 70 years ago lobotomies were regular cures for the mind.

Shorter me: Physical damage is extremely obvious and apparent, whereas the concepts that are mentally damaging are nebulous and contentious.

If, however, it were discovered that teaching Principle or Concept X were shown to literally cause as much commensurate brain damage as an axe to the face were to cause physical damage, would you not support the use of force to ban teaching Concept X?

My example sounds ridiculous on the face of it, but that’s because it is silly to talk about teaching concepts in the same terms as hacking off limbs. They just don’t equate.

Unfortunately, Ernest, as surprisingly refreshing and mind-stimulating I have found this conversation, it is 0100 here in Baghdad and I must retire. I have sent you an e-mail encouraging you to continue this conversation via that medium. Thanks for taking the more polite, respectful route. (Billy, get your notepad out and learn something).

VR, AR.

[Billy Beck]

“What if what restrained me from mounting said assault was my fear of punishment and loss of freedom/life that the State can and will inflict on me?”

That would make you different from every murderer ever incarcerated on the charge by the state. Look at the record for how well that’s worked out.

“…in order for the system to function, everyone has to be rational…”

That is no more true than under a statist regime, and very arguably less so.

“People saw fit to delegate part of their authority to a government to defend us from outside threats.”

I don’t care. They might have asked me about delegating my authority before they put that categorical “We, the People…” down to include me the way they did.

(Brown — watch: I’m about to get Spiro Agnew for my trouble.)

[Billy Beck]

“Billy, get your notepad out and learn something.”

Drop dead puking and see if I care.

[Mike S.]

Ayn_Randian: Ayn_Randian | December 16, 2007, 4:31pm | #
horter version: “Yay voting! It will save us from the government we voted for last time!”

Well, Mike, you’re just going to have to take that up with the Founding Fathers, who saw fit to write the Constitution. You know, the American Republic? The thing Ayn Rand called “the greatest American achievement”. Yeah buddy, she called instituting a GOVERNMENT the greatest American achievement.

Which is completely beside the point of they had no right to do that to me — because that fucking monstrosity wants to tear the meat off my bones while brainless assholes like you stand around and *cheer*.

[Mike S.]

Ayn_Randian wrote: People saw fit….

Ambiguous Collective logical fallacy.

[Jake Boone]

Jake Boone: So well done, Billy and friends. You’ve made it that much harder to persuade anyone around here….

The drooling beast is not swayed by reason.

In that case, I suppose I have to ask… why are you here? If nobody outside your tiny band of revolutionaries can possibly be brought to understand the benefits of self-ownership, why bother engaging with outsiders at all? How, in fact, were you ever persuaded that anarchism was the best of all possible systems?

[Mike S.]

Jake Boone: If nobody outside your tiny band of revolutionaries can possibly be….

Is it possible you could ask a question without wrapping it up in gratuitous rubbish?

…brought to understand the benefits of self-ownership, why bother engaging with outsiders at all?

Because I realize that everyone who, prior to my engagement when them, denies that concept while simultaneously clinging fervently to the idea that the shirt on his back is his — is *insane* from the get-go. I.e., the drooling beast. Reason does not penetrate a broken brain.

….that anarchism was the best of all possible systems?

Anarchism is no more a (political) “system” than atheism is a religion.

[Jake Boone]

Is it possible you could ask a question without wrapping it up in gratuitous rubbish?

…asks the man who has just claimed that everyone on the planet — except, of course, for the tiny minority of people who believe exactly as he — is stark, raving mad.

Because I realize that everyone who, prior to my engagement when them, denies that concept while simultaneously clinging fervently to the idea that the shirt on his back is his — is *insane* from the get-go. I.e., the drooling beast. Reason does not penetrate a broken brain.

I ask again, then; how were you persuaded? I assume you weren’t born with the understanding of anarchy fully-formed in your head, so you must have encountered ideas supporting anarchy at some point before you became an anarchist, right? How, then, did you — at the time, apparently a member of the class of “drooling beasts” — become the paragon of rational thought that you are today? Clearly, as you’ve stated, reason doesn’t work… so was it an appeal to emotion? Psychoactive drugs? What?

Anarchism is no more a (political) “system” than atheism is a religion.

Yeah, I get that. That’s why I didn’t actually use the word “political.” But thanks for inserting it on my behalf so that you could point that out.

[Ayn_Randian]

I don’t care. They might have asked me about delegating my authority before they put that categorical “We, the People…” down to include me the way they did.

Perhaps you can go somewhere there is no government.

No really, we won’t mind if you go. Just send a postcard or something.

Minarchial republicanism = America
Anarchy = Somalia

I’ll bet my next paycheck you’re here for a long, long time.

[Ayn_Randian]

Which is completely beside the point of they had no right to do that to me — because that fucking monstrosity wants to tear the meat off my bones

You fancy yourself deluded m’boy. It must be awfully nice living in safety and comfort hyperbolically screaming about the government “tear[ing] the meat off your bones”.

You numbfucks must be those guys that believe that America got to where it is because it won the natural lottery in resources and goods. After all, its system of government is nothing but an organized gang of thieves, so fuck, it couldn’t be the freest system that helped propel America to #1, could it?

[Ayn_Randian]

What’s most galling to me is the rank hypocrisy and chickenshit war-hawking you guys are doing.

“The State’s so terrible!…it makes me plead for life on my knees and rips the flesh from my bones! I don’t even own my shirt!”

Well, you bed-wetting little pussies, maybe it’s time you got out there and physically defended yourself. Arm yourselves and start the revolution. Quit letting yourselves get raped and pillaged by the State and strike a blow for freedom. Enough of this bluster and bullshit, get out there and take action, you big bunch of whiners.

The rest of us, however, will not be sad at your deaths. Really, we won’t.

[Ernest Brown]

AR,

“You numbfucks must be those guys that believe that America got to where it is because it won the natural lottery in resources and goods. After all, its system of government is nothing but an organized gang of thieves, so fuck, it couldn’t be the freest system that helped propel America to #1, could it?”

The richness of America came from an imperfectly realized conception of freedom, which is currently being eroded as we speak.

The real wealth of a culture is not its raw materials, money or gold, but its intellectual and conceptual capital. That’s the real message of “The Comprachicos.” It is a Bastiat “what is seen/what is not seen” situation. Just because you don’t directly see the scarring of the rational facility doesn’t mean that the social outcomes don’t have the same ultimate cash value.

You deprecated the notion that those traumas to reason can be equated to physical abuse, but, when you undermine the very intellectual basis for freedom you create slavery -in fact- without the need for too much overt violence.

Insofar as the Constitution is a commendable document, it is so because it recognizes the a priori rights of the human individual, and it failed and continues to fail when it compromises that vision. “The Second Amendment” doesn’t -mean- anything, it is just words on a hemp roll that are as worthless as the fine promises of “rights” were in the old Soviet constitution. Without the appreciation of one’s own right to exist and the conceptual clarity to enunciate and defend that right, it expresses a nullity.

[Ron Good]

Ayn Randian: you wrote: “I’d get away with it about, oh, twice until the State stopped me. How long could I go on in an anarcho-capitalist society? Wanna find out?”

Actually, yes.

But…your argument is that I need fear anarcho-capitalism because of…you???

[Ernest Brown]

“(Brown — watch: I’m about to get Spiro Agnew for my trouble.)”

It appears so.

[Ron Good]

Ayn Randian: You wrote: “,em>And what individual would you trust enough to task with parsing what violent acts are justified and what acts are not?

Me.

Everybody else can make up their own mind.

[Billy Beck]

Tell me you didn’t see it coming, too, E.

“Love it or leave it.” As if he owns it.

When is this pretense ever going to end?

[Jake Boone]

Billy et al,

Seriously, what exactly are you trying to accomplish here? Are you just trying to piss off everyone who isn’t already an anarchist? How does this advance your goals in any way?

[Ayn_Randian]

When is this pretense ever going to end?

It will end when you man the hell up and start shooting cops and politicians.

When are you going to start doing it, Billy-boy?

[Ayn_Randian]

“Love it or leave it.” As if he owns it.

I’m sorry, do you have a rebuttal or are you just going to make catty, snarky comments like a woman?

When do you start popping cops, Billy?

[Ayn_Randian]

The real wealth of a culture is not its raw materials, money or gold, but its intellectual and conceptual capital.

Agreed – the question lies in whether an individual or a culture can properly maximize their intellectual capital while continually maintaining enough to arms to keep their neighbors polite.

I still note that the countries where anarchy reigns have yet to see fit to conform to the anarchists’ floating abstraction. I have the concrete evidence on my side here: America became the greatest nation on earth because its government is explicitly dedicated to individual rights, and the Supreme Law of the Land recognizes this.

I imagine I will grow old and die before the anarchy of Somalia propels it to #1. Somalia is, actually, a great case study in how anarchy does not work. Multiple warlords battling for territory who, by virtue of their perpetual warfare, had weakened themselves so much that they did not have enough strength to battle an outside threat: The Islamic Courts Union. The ICU rolled them up pretty quickly, and had it not been for the Ethiopian Army and help from an AC-130 gunship, we’d have yet another Islamic fundamentalist state.

The perpetual warfare that the implementation of anarcho-capitalism would lead to would produce similar results here. The perpetual warfare that would unleash on American streets in the presence of a power vacuum would stunt American growth and innovation and, in all likelihood, lead to an invasion from a foreign country (under the guise of “stabilization”) and our consequent subjugation.

Billy, you can accuse me of being a jingoist all you like, but “America” is a nation-state, with borders, a military and a government. Your advocacy of the complete and total elimnation of the American government would, in reality, lead to the elimination of the American nation-state. So, yeah, even though you don’t want to call it that, you’re not really a fan of America as a nation, because you hate nations.

That’s why I said “Love it or Leave it”, because you’re fundamentally opposed to the very idea of the United States.

[Mike S.]

Jake Boone: I ask again, then; how were you persuaded?

Nobody persuaded me, Jake.

Ayn_Randian: When do you start popping cops, Billy?

If the shooting starts, who will you support?

[Mike S.]

A_R, when you define Somolia as anarcho-capitalist, you’re a lying piece of shit.

Billy, you can accuse me of being a jingoist all you like, but “America” is a nation-state, with borders, a military and a government. Your advocacy of the complete and total elimnation of the American government would, in reality, lead to the elimination of the American nation-state. So, yeah, even though you don’t want to call it that, you’re not really a fan of America as a nation, because you hate nations.

And you’re not an Objectivist.

You’re a *fascist*.

[Ayn_Randian]

A_R, when you define Somolia as anarcho-capitalist, you’re a lying piece of shit.

Temper, temper, little one. Shouldn’t the elimination of the government in Somalia have naturally led to the your most optimal form of societal organization? Or are you admitting it doesn’t quite work that way?

And you’re not an Objectivist.

You’re a *fascist*.

[Ayn_Randian]

Yikes – post not completed.

And you’re not an Objectivist.

You’re a *fascist*

Yet another unjustified, unproven, irrational ad hominem. Did your mother not love you enough as a child or something?

If the shooting starts, who will you support?

Well, let’s see…you’ve called a fascist, a second-hander, wished death upon me…I wonder why on earth I would have no compunction in joining a side.

And why “if the shooting starts…”? Go ahead and start it yourself, little one. I mean, you’re the victim here! Get on down and start handing out some “retributive justice” to the ones who initiated force against you!

Or are you a blustery chickenshit?

[Ayn_Randian]

Nobody persuaded me, Jake.

Just reasoned yourself into it by the power of your mind, eh? I doubt it…you can barely refrain from name-calling those with whom you disagree. I sense that if your reasoning power could be harnessed, it might not even keep a 40-watt bulb alight.

[Jake Boone]

Nobody persuaded me, Jake.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but it appears that you’re claiming that the philosophy of anarcho-capitalism, sprang, like Athena, fully-formed from your head. But I could be wrong.

What I’m asking is how you went from State A (not an anarchist, and therefore insane and irrational) to State B (an anarchist, and therefore sane and rational).

(I suspect we’re going to find a logical contradiction at the bottom of all this, but I’m open to being proven wrong.)

[Billy Beck]

“It will end when you man the hell up and start shooting cops and politicians.

When are you going to start doing it, Billy-boy?”

Why do you have to lie like that?

[Ayn_Randian]

Why do you have to lie like that?

Perhaps it won’t end, you’re right, but I can’t understand (I mean it this time, I cannot!) why, if you believe the state has virtually made you a slave (as your rhetoric indicates) you don’t just pull a Spartacus and start a rebellion. Go out on your feet instead of your knees, and all that.

After all, you’d be in the moral right: the state, according to you, has initiated force against you. It would be moral and just for your to deliver retribution. You could claim self-defense.

So what’s the hold-up? Make a stand, man.

[Billy Beck]

“That’s why I said ‘Love it or Leave it’, because you’re fundamentally opposed to the very idea of the United States.”

That’s right. Nothing about any of that, however, confers on you the least sort of authority to determine who’s who here.

For fifty years, I have cultivated my love of my native land and everything about it except people who think they get to address it in the terms that you did. I didn’t take that from Nixon’s freaks, I didn’t take it from rank commies in Usenet who ran that bullshit on me a generation later, and you count for exactly as much as they do.

[Billy Beck]

“Perhaps it won’t end, you’re right…”

Bullshit. You’re just flat-out lying again with your shape-shifting from “Beck’s gonna go on an AK-47 rampage” to that hopelessly craven little “it”.

Who do you think you’re fooling?

“…but I can’t understand…”

I think that’s not true. You could if you put your mind to it honestly, but you can’t afford that.

[Kyle Bennett]

You could if you put your mind to it honestly, but you can’t afford that.

That’s right, he can’t afford it. So how long are you going to keep giving the moocher his alms?

[Jake Boone]

Billy on Dec 14, at 2:40 PM:

If you actually have to ask, then you have no serious business attending this forum.

Billy on Dec 17, at 10:06 AM:

Nothing about any of that, however, confers on you the least sort of authority to determine who’s who here.

It’s getting kind of hard to breathe in here with all the irony fumes.

[Kyle Bennett]

Jake,

Bullshit!

I just figured you could use another quote from Billy.

[Kyle Bennett]

From Jake: So well done, Billy and friends. You’ve made it that much harder to persuade anyone around here … Seriously, what exactly are you trying to accomplish here?

Don’t try to pretend you were accomplishing anything.

How does this advance your goals in any way?

Let me fix that typo for you, you really meant to say: “how does this advance my goals in any way?”

[Jake Boone]

Kyle,

Despite the sentence structure, your last post boils down to a second-grader’s “I know you are, but what am I?”

Any chance you’ll stop rewriting my comments and actually answer the question I asked?

[Kyle Bennett]

Jake,

The question you asked is not the question you want answered. You couldn’t care less how my (as one of the members of “and friends”) behavior accomplishes my goals, you only care that it interferes with yours. You said so yourself.

[Ayn_Randian]

Kyle continues to contribute to Comcast. When are you going to throw those theft-enablers out of your home and your computer, Kyle?

So how long are you going to keep giving the moocher his alms?

You are more than free to leave any time you want.

Billy, quit dancing around and state plainly: why have you not started dishing retribution to the State, those initiators of force against you? Why aren’t you killing agents of those who have violated your natural right to free exercise and self-governance? Answer plainly; state your case.

Right now the way I see it, you want it both ways: you want to bitch about how the State makes you live life on your knees and throw fits about it to everyone within earshot, but you’re too scared to do something about it. Anything less than a full, intelligent refutation, I’ll take as confirmation of my suspicions about you.

You want to play tough guy, but when it comes down to it, you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. Coward.

[Kyle Bennett]

AR, again, I wasn’t talking to you.

[Jake Boone]

The question you asked is not the question you want answered.

Oooookay, Mr. Internet Mind Reader. Since you claim to know what I care about better than I do (a particularly strange conceit for an anarcho-capitalist), how about this question: What are your goals here?

[Ayn_Randian]

AR, again, I wasn’t talking to you.

So what? Like I said, if we’re just moochers here sucking down all your good ideas and energy, then feel free to get the hell on down the road.

[Billy Beck]

“Why have you not started dishing retribution to the State, those initiators of force against you?”

That’s never going to solve the general problem. That’s why. I explained a lot of this in the article that I linked and in which you said I was lying. Well, that’s not true, and I cannot imagine what a person to whom fact do not matter might expect, at that point.

[Billy Beck]

Boone, you idiot: there are two categorically different concepts in the two lines that you quoted. For you to draw the equivocation that you did goes far beyond “irony”, and all the way into abject stupidity.

[Kyle Bennett]

What are your goals here?

To talk to the people that matter.

[Ayn_Randian]

That’s never going to solve the general problem.

Excuses, excuses. You’re a victim, you have the right to retaliate.

[Patrick Chkoreff]

Ayn_Randian wrote:

“
Wait, if she’s lauding voluntary contributions to government only but in “The Nature of Government” has nothing but harshness for anarchism, how is that not a contradiction?”

Simple.

1. She does not advocate anarchism. She wants a government.

2. She defines a proper government as an agency which protects man’s rights to life and property.

3. Therefore, a proper government must not initiate the use of force against the life and property of others.

No contradiction exists there. In fact, statement 3 follows logically from statement 2.

This is why Ayn Rand supports the existence of government, but opposes compulsory taxation and conscription. It is utterly simple.

In an excerpt from John Galt’s speech, Ayn Rand clearly defines all aspects of her philosophy of government in one handy paragraph:

“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.
“

[Kyle Bennett]

feel free to get the hell on down the road.

That wouldn’t be nearly enough.

[Kyle Bennett]

Billy,

That’s never going to solve the general problem.

What is the general problem?

[Ayn_Randian]

Patrick, that’s an interesting observation. Of course, in order to voluntarily fall under a government, one would have to sign a contract stating that they chose X government at some point in their life. Then, however, we would run into the problem of those with minds who are not able to assent to be governed. What is to be done about them? And at what age does one volunteer to be governed anyway?

“Why have you not started dishing retribution to the State, those initiators of force against you?”

That’s never going to solve the general problem.

Well, I guess that you have given the violence of the State sanction of the victim. No wonder they won’t stop persecuting you; you let it happen.

[Kyle Bennett]

Patrick,

See what you get for all the effort of making an interesting observation? Craven groveling for initiation of force on behalf of the least deserving, on the grounds that their minds are incapable of benefitting from what is demanded for them.

[Patrick Chkoreff]

Ayn_Randian wrote:

After all, you’d be in the moral right: the state, according to you, has initiated force against you.

Correction: the state has in fact initiated force against me. It is not “according to me” or a matter of opinion.

Just to be clear, I asked the local property tax collector lady what would happen if I refused to pay the $2800 charged to me for educational services I did not order or use. She said (very politely) that they would sell my house to pay it. I asked her what would happen if I remained on the property, and she said the sheriff would evict me. I then conceded that she had the upper hand regarding the use of force, and I paid the amount demanded.

She and her hired enforcers have clearly initiated force against me, in order to support the Tenth Plank of the Communist Manifesto. When I pointed out that this practice was rank socialism, she agreed with me and said that it should not be done this way.

It would be moral and just for your to deliver retribution. You could claim self-defense.

So what’s the hold-up? Make a stand, man.

I do not advocate retribution. At most I advocate defending your property from those who usurp it. However, even that could be suicidal in the face of overwhelming force.

As for challenging Billy Beck to “make a stand,” let me tell you one thing, man: Billy Beck has already made more of a stand than any pusillanimous poster on this board, including me, and he’s done it for decades, at considerable cost to himself.

If you don’t like freedom, you should leave the country.

[Ayn_Randian]

Craven groveling for initiation of force on behalf of the least deserving

Where did I grovel again? Is groveling usually phrased in the form of a question?

Quit pontificating and answer the damn question already.

And, oh yeah, I wasn’t talking to you, Kyle.

[Kyle Bennett]

Quit pontificating and answer the damn question already.

Ask an honest question and I just might.

[Ayn_Randian]

However, even that could be suicidal in the face of overwhelming force.

Well, Sanction of the Victim, then. No wonder the State walks all over you; you’re too afraid to stand up and fight.

“Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us” – Ayn Rand

So gets to Shrugging already.

Billy Beck has already made more of a stand than any pusillanimous poster on this board, including me, and he’s done it for decades, at considerable cost to himself.

Well, he did it to himself, for himself, so I have no sympathy….unless you’re saying he actually took a stand for others, but I can’t imagine that would be true.

[Billy Beck]

“Excuses, excuses. You’re a victim, you have the right to retaliate.”

You don’t believe that for one second.

Your cynicism is almost breathtaking. There really is no way to take you seriously.

[Ayn_Randian]

Kyle,

How does one assent to be governed when one lacks the rational faculty to make any form of meaningful assent?

[Ayn_Randian]

You don’t believe that for one second.

No, but you should, Mr. Slave-to-the-State. The fact that you do not shows that ultimately your principles fall by the wayside in the face of your fear of death.

Your cynicism is almost breathtaking. There really is no way to take you seriously.

That’s a new one. I’m generally considered the optimist ’round these parts. How am I cynical? And why are you continuing to sanction the State’s victimization of you?

[Billy Beck]

“Well, he did it to himself, for himself, so I have no sympathy….unless you’re saying he actually took a stand for others, but I can’t imagine that would be true.”

Wow. This — Kantian ethics — from someone who presumes his net.moniker.

How much more contemptible can this get?

[Jake Boone]

Kyle,

So the “people who matter,” plainly, include Ayn_Randian. Who are the other “people who matter” on H&R, in your opinion?

[Billy Beck]

“So gets to Shrugging already.”

I have.

[Kyle Bennett]

AR,

How am I cynical?

Since that’s as close as your likely to get to an honest question, I’ll give you an answer, though I know you’ll throw up all the strawmen you can in order to avoid the stark self-knowledge you’re being – probably undeservedly – offered.

Your view of human nature is one of irredeemable malice and incompetence, such that the only hope for avoiding continual low-level brutality is the imposition of periodic high-level brutality interspersed with periods characterized merely by fear and oppression and only occasional violence.

Your belief in not believing in human nature means that we can’t even begin to apply rationality to solving the problem, because the basis of rationality, that everything that is is something, is blanked-out.

Your stated assertion that the only response to oppression is blind and undirected violence of the most brutal nature one is capable of is either a result of or the cause of the above beliefs. Most likely, it’s a vicious spiral into deeper and deeper cynicism.

Your beliefs go so far as to declare that we all must have force initiated against us because those that are incapable of free will need to have their free will protected, at not only our material expense, but at the expense of collectively maintaining the fantasy that they have free will after all. What this amounts to is the plaintive cry that since some people are incapable of free will, then none of us should have it.

It’s a dark, cynical hole you’re in. Now go hide in it and pretend you never saw any of this.

And just change your nom to Jim Taggart, already, will ya?

[Kyle Bennett]

Jake,

plainly

*sigh* If only.

[Jake Boone]

Boone, you idiot: there are two categorically different concepts in the two lines that you quoted.

By gum, you’re correct; there are two different concepts there. Now that I’ve mischaracterized your argument and pissed you off, let me berate you for not subscribing to my exact philosophy. Do you suppose that’ll work to win converts?

Your rhetorical strategy is fantastic.

[Billy Beck]

Let me explain something to you very simply.

It doesn’t matter whether you like me, and I am not about to try buying rational conviction of crucial principles with a bright yellow smiley-face.

[Jake Boone]

Billy,

Do you, then, not subscribe to your compatriot Mike S.’s assertion that non-anarchists are immune to reason and rationality?

[Ron Good]

Ayn Randian: You wrote: “Well, he did it to himself, for himself, so I have no sympathy….unless you’re saying he actually took a stand for others, but I can’t imagine that would be true”

Ah, so you’re an “Ayn Randian” who explicitly states that altruism would be the only thing you would recognize as giving value to, Billy’s actions.

If Billy took his stand for himself: bad. If he took it for others: good.

Interesting take on Objectivism. AR.

[Billy Beck]

“What is the general problem?”

You know what the general problem is.

And I could set up an ugly death in a hail of cops’ bullets this very afternoon. It would be the easiest thing in the world, but it would not address the fundamentals of the thing.

[Billy Beck]

“Do you, then, not subscribe to your compatriot Mike S.’s assertion that non-anarchists are immune to reason and rationality?”

To begin with: try to grasp the basic fact that everyone here is authorized to speak strictly for themselves.

The answer to you question: No. I do not.

[Jake Boone]

It doesn’t matter whether you like me, and I am not about to try buying rational conviction of crucial principles with a bright yellow smiley-face.

In other words, you’d rather be a grandstanding internet tough guy prick then actually try using a modicum of politeness and persuasion. Gotcha.

[Billy Beck]

“In other words,…”

In fact, they’re your words.

[Jake Boone]

Well, feel free to point out where I’ve mischaracterized you, then. I’m sure it’ll be good for a few laughs.

[Kyle Bennett]

You know what the general problem is.

I’m pretty sure I do, but I also think we don’t come to the same answer – and there’s very few people whose disagreement makes me think twice, with purpose.

My answer is that for a long time, we’ve all been giving the moochers exactly what they need, to our great – maybe fatal – detriment. And that our money is absolutely the least of it.

[Jennifer]

It doesn’t matter whether you like me

You’re right, Billy: it doesn’t matter if people like you. But if you’re trying to persuade them to see things your way it does matter if they respect you, and I’ve not seen a single reason here why anyone should. I gave your blog a quick once-over and you keep talking about how you’re some elderly guy–over half a century old!–so why do you keep acting the way I did when I was around nine? “Nyaah nyaah” might make you feel better, but it won’t make anyone else smack their foreheads and say “By God, he’s right!”

[Billy Beck]

Well, sure… although — given everything that it means — I wouldn’t characterize our money as “the least of it”. It’s actually a very, very big deal, Kyle.

Chris Matthew Sciabarra underscored the essence here when he pointed out:

“The most subversive political implication of ‘Atlas Shrugged’, is that individual freedom is possible only to those who are strong enough, psychologically and morally, to withdraw their sanction from any system that coercively thrives off their productive energies.”

(“The Russian Radical”, 1995, p. 302)

The only way this thing will ever be brought under rational control is by starving it into submission.

[Billy Beck]

“But if you’re trying to persuade them to see things your way it does matter if they respect you,…”

It’s about the ideas, Jennifer, and I am not interested in people who stop at fashion. My respect goes out to thinkers, and my approach has gone far in weeding them out over a long time.

I don’t need your approval. It’s not about me, and anyone who thinks it is, is simply not hacking the course.

[Jennifer]

It’s about the ideas, Jennifer, and I am not interested in people who stop at fashion.

Yeah, the Hawaiian-shirt photo on your blog indicates as much. But I am sincerely curious: in all of history, there has never, ever been a single person who’s said “Wow, now that you’ve called me an idiot I realize that you are totally right and I am totally wrong.” What is it that makes you believe your debating techniques will be the exception to this rule?

[Billy Beck]

“in all of history, there has never, ever been a single person who’s said “Wow, now that you’ve called me an idiot I realize that you are totally right and I am totally wrong.”

You’re dead wrong about that.

“What is it that makes you believe your debating techniques will be the exception to this rule?”

Experience.

[Jake Boone]

My respect goes out to thinkers, and my approach has gone far in weeding them out over a long time.

I’ll bet it has!

[Jennifer]

You’re dead wrong about that.

Examples?

[Billy Beck]

They’re all mine. And I don’t believe that you’ll take that seriously.

[Elliot]

in all of history, there has never, ever been a single person who’s said “Wow, now that you’ve called me an idiot I realize that you are totally right and I am totally wrong.”

Perhaps not, if you limit yourself to cases in which the name-caller made no other arguments.

But that isn’t what is going on here, is it?

Bad ideas do not deserve respect, particularly when the implications of those ideas are plainly so destructive. Why should I be sweet and polite to someone who thinks that kicking a grandmother to the curb for not paying taxes is justified?

[Billy Beck]

“I’ll bet it has!”

That’s adorably cute, Boone, but you know exactly what I meant. (Look: when someone says they’re “weeding out” their garden, nobody actually thinks that they’re tearing up the flowers. You know this. So, stop it.) And: I got you to think about your own conflation of two obviously different concepts.

Here’s a clue: nobody has to be an idiot.

And there is a great deal of room in my philosophy for redemption.

[Jennifer]

Perhaps not, if you limit yourself to cases in which the name-caller made no other arguments.

Where are these other arguments? All I’ve seen Billy do is crow about his obvious (to him) superiority.

[Billy Beck]

Elliot: that’s exactly right.

I earn my right of invective.

[Billy Beck]

If what you just said is true, Jennifer (“all I’ve seen”), then you’re simply not paying attention because it does not represent the facts.

[Patrick Chkoreff]

I wrote:

Billy Beck has already made more of a stand than any pusillanimous poster on this board, including me, and he’s done it for decades, at considerable cost to himself.

Jim_Taggart wrote:

Well, he did it to himself, for himself, so I have no sympathy….unless you’re saying he actually took a stand for others, but I can’t imagine that would be true.

I see: you have no sympathy for one who acts in his own interest, but you might muster some sympathy for one who acts in the interest of others. You judge an action as noble if its motive is altruistic and self-sacrificial.

On the contrary, I strongly urge every one to act in his own interest. Produce goods and services which enhance human happiness, trade them freely, defend the property which you have thus earned, and defend the lives of yourself and your loved ones. Mind your own business, and mind it well. Never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser value. If you are forced to choose between defending your wife and defending a neighbor, defend your wife.

Be selfish: which means always work to attain your highest values and happiness. Never sacrifice these things to another simply because they are an other. The individual who should benefit from the fruits of your work is you, and not an other unless you choose it freely.

[Jennifer]

If what you just said is true, Jennifer (“all I’ve seen”), then you’re simply not paying attention because it does not represent the facts.

So throw a bone to someone who does not yet have the benefits of over half a century of existence: what were these arguments, again?

[Billy Beck]

BTW, Jennifer:

“Yeah, the Hawaiian-shirt photo on your blog indicates as much.”

Put your photograph up, Baby, and we’ll have a go on your premise.

Don’t fuck with me. I’ll eat you alive and never think twice about it.

[Jennifer]

Don’t fuck with me. I’ll eat you alive and never think twice about it.

Sincere advice: if you want to cultivate an Internet-tough-guy persona, don’t link to a blog photo showing that you’re a skinny bald old guy in a Hawaiian shirt. Link to a photo of somebody with muscles instead.

[Billy Beck]

“So throw a bone to someone who does not yet have the benefits of over half a century of existence: what were these arguments, again?”

They’re right in front of your face. “Some assembly required.” I’ve said to people like you countless times: nobody can reach into your pretty little head and bolt concepts together for you. You’re the only one who can do that.

If you really want to know, then pay attention.

[Billy Beck]

“Link to a photo of somebody with muscles instead.”

Would you suck my dick if I did?

[Jennifer]

Would you suck my dick if I did?

So long as you promise not to whine too much after it gets caught between my teeth.

[Billy Beck]

Knocking a few of them out would solve that problem.

Are you really up for this fight?

[Jennifer]

Of course, Billy! On the Internet, I too can be as tough as a skinny old bald guy.

Actually, I can even do that in real life.

[Billy Beck]

Well, then, shoot me your address and I’ll see if I can work you into my book.

Step right up.

[Jennifer]

So is “threatening to kick a woman’s ass over the Internet” standard behavior for old anarchists with one foot in the grave, Billy, or are you giving it your own sui generis spin?

[Billy Beck]

Nice hair color, Jennifer. Earl Scheib, right?

Really well done.

[Billy Beck]

Oh, look: she moans. From “internet tough guy” to fetal-curl feminist in one easy post.

You can have things your way, Jennifer.

You call it.

[Jennifer]

Awesome! The last time anybody made fun of my hair color with the hopes of actually hurting my feelings was in elementary school. I feel so young again! So I repeat my comment from 1:13, Billy: what do you hope to accomplish by behaving the same way I did when I was nine?

[Jennifer]

Oh, look: she moans. From “internet tough guy” to fetal-curl feminist in one easy post.

Who is moaning, Billy? I sincerely want to know who you hope to impress by threatening to kick my ass over the Internet. Who do you think will be impressed by your intellectual prowess?

[Jake Boone]

“So throw a bone to someone who does not yet have the benefits of over half a century of existence: what were these arguments, again?”

They’re right in front of your face. “Some assembly required.” I’ve said to people like you countless times: nobody can reach into your pretty little head and bolt concepts together for you. You’re the only one who can do that.

If you really want to know, then pay attention.

Yes, Jennifer, pay attention! Here’s a list of all Billy’s posts up to the point where he started saying that he’d already laid out his facts and arguments:

Shorter NORML: “Get your goons to lay off, and we’ll cut you a piece of the action.”

With friends like that, I might as well splash down a syphilis cocktail on the rocks.

Fucking disgusting.

J: If you actually have to ask, then you have no serious business attending this forum.

Stop. Just stop it.

Bullshit.

Sure. It was my remark on “J sub D’s” bullshit.

Read the goddamned thread, Kwix. Christ on a banana-peel, already; it’s right in front of your face.

Everything after that (aside from repeated insinuations that if everyone weren’t so stupid and had just paid better attention, we’d all be market anarchists) is a hand-crafted phantasmagoria of insults, false claims, and (newly added!) rampant misogyny, so you don’t need to read that. The facts are right there! There’s no need for Billy to point them out!

[Jennifer]

Oh, Jake, admit it: when he threatened to knock my teeth out, you immediately realized that he’s an intellectual paragon.

[Billy Beck]

“The last time anybody made fun of my hair color with the hopes of actually hurting my feelings was in elementary school.”

Well, I don’t know what kind of cheez-dick you’re accustomed to dealing with in your life, but people who crack on my hair falling out — or anything like the rest of your unilateral bullshit — are just exactly as hopeless. But look: carry on if you want to, and we’ll see who gets to whom, first.

[Billy Beck]

Jake: I see it now.

You edit the New York Times, don’t you? Admit it.

[Jennifer]

Nothing wrong with your hair falling out, Billy, unless you’re trying to pose as an Internet tough guy. Here’s what you need to do: shave your head (completely bald looks far more menacing than merely “balding”), gain about 20 pounds, work out extensively, stop talking about how you’re over 50, and lose the Hawaiian shirt.

The thing is, when you threaten to kick people’s asses, they won’t feel fightened unless they think you can actually DO it. I’m sorry, but you simply don’t look like you can.

[Ayn_Randian]

Yeah, for those of you who were playing a sympathy card with this:

Billy Beck has already made more of a stand than any pusillanimous poster on this board, including me, and he’s done it for decades, at considerable cost to himself.

I just wasn’t going to let you have any sympathy from me. You paid that “considerable cost” for yourself.

So, Billy, I’ll ask again: why are you continuing to sanction the State’s victimization of you?

I’ve seen no satisfactory answer so far.

[Jake Boone]

Oh, Jake, admit it: when he threatened to knock my teeth out, you immediately realized that he’s an intellectual paragon.

Yeah, I think that’s what’s really going to get the “thinkers” thinking, “you know, anarchism has a lot going for it. I didn’t think so, until I saw an old methhead* threaten a woman online after asking her for a blowjob.” Watch out, Leviathan!

* This is true. All of the facts proving it have been laid out earlier in the thread, idiots!

[Jennifer]

Don’t overload him, Ayn Randian! I still want to know who he hoped to impress by threatening to knock out my teeth. Was it you, maybe? Did you read that and think “Whoa, there’s a damned impressive wad of manhood and a paragon of intellectualism as well?”

[Jake Boone]

Jake: I see it now.

You edit the New York Times, don’t you? Admit it.

Did I leave something out? Some sort of “fact” or “argument” you’ve presented? If so, I suggest you either quote it or STFU.

[Stevo Darkly]

As an anarcho-capitalist myself, I would love to take part in a reasoned discussion about the pros/cons of anarchism on H&R.

Let me know if one pops up some day and I’ll join in.

Unfortunately, this thread went off the rails real early.

I’m afraid, Mr. Billy, that you make Richard Dawkins look like Dale Carnegie. Thanks a bunch.

[Ayn_Randian]

No Jennifer, the part that blew me away was when he swore out some lady collecting money for dead State Troopers…that was when I knew, that THIS GUY, he is an intellectual giant.

[Timothy]

In my mind this whole thread is on fire.

Jennifer: I think Billy’s making a pass at you, he might just prefer that methed-out toothless look.

[Billy Beck]

“Nothing wrong with your hair falling out, Billy, unless you’re trying to pose as an Internet tough guy.”

Well, then, what does that have to do with it, except to a chick who gets swampy over internet tough guys?

“Here’s what you need to do: shave your head (completely bald looks far more menacing than merely “balding”), gain about 20 pounds, work out extensively, stop talking about how you’re over 50, and lose the Hawaiian shirt.”

The last hair that falls out of my head will be as long as it can be, I like to control my weight with cigarettes, I routinely pull at least two hours a day of practice with a twelve-pound guitar slung on my shoulder (my favorite workout and you should try it before you remark on it), I’m proud of my experience and everything I’ve learned in all of it (you will be too, someday, if the paint-chips don’t eat your brain), and no man should ever be without at least one crisply wrinkled Hawaiian shirt. Ever.

That’s my story, I’m stickin’ to it, and what you think is irrelevant.

Thanks anyway. “What you need to do” is piss off.

[Patrick Chkoreff]

Linda Morgan wrote:

Is this to say that a need for coercive governance is fundamental in human nature?

Those who exclaim that nature is red in tooth and claw are often the ones doing the biting and scratching. Those who exclaim that life is nasty, brutish, and short often support the very philosophy which makes it so.

For centuries the Almighty Church used the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin to justify rule by the lash, Then the Renaissance briefly flowered, followed by centuries of the Almighty State using a variant of Original Sin to justify rule by the lash. But as it turns out, the only man who is irredeemably brutal is the one holding the lash.

In the same way that we ceremonialized the Church, rendering its lash powerless, we must now ceremonialize the State before there can be any further Renaissance.

** (Credit to Robert A. Hettinga for the concept “ceremonialize the State”)

[Minion of URKOBOLD]

BILLY BECK TOOK HIS INTERNETS LESSONS FROM THE URKOBOLD CHARM SCHOOL AND KNITTING EMPORIUM.

HE IS ALSO A WACKY, WAVING, INFLATABLE, ARM-FLAILING TUBE MAN.

ON TOAST, OR SOMETHING.

THAT’S URKOBOLD’S CHARM SCHOOL, MORE INFORMATION, INCLUDING TIMES AND PRICES (WHERE URKOBOLD HOARDS THE ABNORMAL ECONOMIC PROFITS) FOR 2008 TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON!!

[dhex]

this thread is now art and should be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Those who exclaim that nature is red in tooth and claw are often the ones doing the biting and scratching. Those who exclaim that life is nasty, brutish, and short often support the very philosophy which makes it so.

alternately, the price of existence is a kind of eternal warfare and competition is part of humanity. it just doesn’t have to be chattel slavery and kill ’em all style theatrics.

i mean, witness this thread! at the very suggestion of differing ideas – a resource that exists somewhere in the between space of the imagination and the physical – we have ourselves a (bloodless) clash that quickly gets down to insults, threats and intimidation. and this is over a non-resource.

[Ayn_Randian]

Serious question: Jennifer dislikes Hawaiian shirts. Billy likes them.

Can issues of taste ever be objectively decided? That is, is one taste morally correct and the other wrong?

[Bill Lumbergh]

um. yeaaah.

Okay, Billy, it’s time that you and I have, um, errrrr, a little talk.

You see, only last Friday was, um, yeah, Hawaiian Shirt day. You were free to go ahead and, umm yeah, wear a Hawaiian shirt. And jeans.

So I’m going to have to go ahead and ask you to remember the dress code hier at Innitech. That’d be grreeeaaaaaat.

Thanks a bunch.

[Kyle Bennett]

Billy,

The only way this thing will ever be brought under rational control is by starving it into submission. … I wouldn’t characterize our money as “the least of it”. It’s actually a very, very big deal, Kyle.

(and earlier) I don’t think these people are all that’s left of America.

This thing absolutely needs to be starved into submission. But this thing doesn’t feed on money. It doesn’t even need money to buy what it wants. Our money is its hostage. Our need for money – the fact that money is the way rational men go about acquiring values from each other – is its leverage. It doesn’t want to take those values for itself (aside from the small stipend needed to ply its wares), it wants to get in between rational men trading values, for no other reason than to be in between.

(Do you wonder why the penalty for not paying income taxes is less than the penalty for not submitting a signed form, even one that accurately documents that you don’t owe any payment?)

It’s more than happy to flush any values it thus acquires, (almost by accident or afterthought) right down the toilet, because those values aren’t values to it, and because flushing them adds credibility to its pleas for more. The only value it seeks is to be esteemed by reasoning men; but it confuses notice with esteem and spraking with reason.

Why have they made the focus of the entire thread about you, directed all their attacks at you? Why is everybody here going on and on about how you are failing to convince anyone, how this should be made more persuasive to many Californians? Why do they keep trying to pull you down into the muck of debating random, detached concretes while desperately shielding their eyes from anything resembling an abstraction? Why do you think they’re attracted to a site named “Reason”?

Why do you think that is so important to them, to get you to do all that, that they utterly refuse to see any other issue in these hundreds of comments? Why do they think it’ll work? How is it that for all of history, rational men have lost out to blind instinct?

Can you try to starve it and try to save it at the same time? It’s getting time to where the few that matter, the few that are left of America, have to let it go.

[Kyle Bennett]

In the same way that we ceremonialized the Church, rendering its lash powerless, we must now ceremonialize the State before there can be any further Renaissance.

And the essential characteristic of the ceremonialized church is that pretty much nobody gives a shit either way anymore. Nobody debates church doctrine as if their life (or even their afterlife) depended on it. Don’t assume that the cause and effect of that goes only one way.

The state won’t go away once enough people want the state to go away, the state will effectively disappear once enough people no longer care that much whether it stays or goes. We don’t need a revolution, we need millions of them. –me, elsewhere

[dhex]

what is it like being a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind?

[Jake Boone]

It’s getting time to where the few that matter, the few that are left of America, have to let it go.

Oh, so that’s the “people who matter.” People who share your philosophy. And you came here to talk to them, just like if I wanted to talk to my brother-in-law, I’d go to Oklahoma, where he doesn’t live and has never been. Now it all makes sense!

[Ayn_Randian]

the few that are left of America

Don’t talk about “America”; America is a nation-state, like I said before, with laws and rules and government. America was formed with the Constitution, a document that instituted a government.

[Jennifer]

The last hair that falls out of my head will be as long as it can be, I like to control my weight with cigarettes

So even if you were capable of knocking my teeth out, you’d be too wheezy and brinchial to catch me. Why, exactly, am I supposed to feel threatened by you? Is it the fact that your fingers are strong enough to type out the words “I will knock your teeth out?”

Jennifer dislikes Hawaiian shirts.

No, I just don’t thik they’re the right shirt to wear if you want people to think you’re tough. Have you noticed how Hell’s Angels never wear Hawaiian shirts? That’s why.

[Cesar]

Wow, I can’t say I’m sorry I didn’t pay attention to this thread before.

[Billy Beck]

“Did I leave something out?”

As if a question like…

[Billy Beck]

…that/a> could make it all…

[Billy Beck]

…just disappear.

Look: this is simply voodoo epistemology.

[Dangerman]

Hi Guys! Great Thread! Look, I was wondering, Billy, would you say that you yourself are a left- or right- anarchist? That is, in an anarchic state, would you tend to cooperate or compete with your fellow anarchians? Secondly, do you have an opinion on how your fellow anarchians would act, in a cooperative or competitive way? I know that AR touched on this with the whole “tabula rasa” thing, but that was so two days ago, and kinda stale. I myself think that the left/right anarchy idea is not precise enough to really describe any kind of real situation, but it never hurts to ask, right?

[Billy Beck]

“No Jennifer, the part that blew me away was when he swore out some lady collecting money for dead State Troopers.”

It wasn’t a lady. It wasn’t a woman at all. You just made that up, and you’re not paying attention.

[Ayn_Randian]

Yah, Cesar, you missed out.

[Kyle Bennett]

Oh, so that’s the “people who matter.” People who share your philosophy

People who don’t share the philosophy of this site, and of most of the people on this thread, and yours. People who can say “I” and mean it, and know what it means. The rest is of little importance.

And you came here to talk to them, just like if I wanted to talk to my brother-in-law, I’d go to Oklahoma, where he doesn’t live and has never been.

I came to where honest miscalculation could lead them to believe they belonged. And to where I used to think I belonged.

[Jennifer]

Why have they made the focus of the entire thread about you, directed all their attacks at you?

One night in college I was in a bar–one of those cozy little bars where pretty much every customer was a “regular”– and then some guy nobody ever saw before came in. Crazy man, poor guy, and probably homeless. He started yelling a bunch of stuff about the Illuminati or something, and then pulled his pants down and took a dump on the floor. Seriously. And then he tried picking a fight with one of the men, and then the cops came in, and–yeah, good times.

I can’t recall what my friends and I were talking about before he came in, but afterwards he was about all we talked about for the rest of the night. “Holy shit! Whoa, bad choice of words, but–holy shit! Did you see that? Jesus!”

That’s pretty much the same reason why we’ve made Billy the focus of this thread.

[Cesar]

The minarchy vs. anarchy argument is the most stupid one ever. You know why?

Because both minarchists and anarchists agree that currently, the state is too large and needs to be dramatically reduced. We disagree over how far the reduction should
go, but until the government is reduced down to a level where this makes a difference, who the fuck cares?

We should, in the meantime, work towards reducing the size and scope of the state.

[Ayn_Randian]

It wasn’t a lady. It wasn’t a woman at all. You just made that up, and you’re not paying attention.

How does the gender of the caller make you any less of a prick for swearing out someone collecting money for dead State Troopers?

I mean, Galt, I know Rand wasn’t big on charity, but that’s no excuse to be an ass to someone who’s just asking!

[Kyle Bennett]

We should, in the meantime, work towards reducing the size and scope of the state.

Yes, and we should completely ignore pesky questions like “how?”, or even “why?”

—-

That’s a great story, Jen. Did you offer to blow him, too?

[Dangerman]

Actually, I would want to know if those troopers were killed in no-knock midnight raids before I gave any money. And I would still be polite about it.

[Billy Beck]

“…the Constitution, a document that instituted a government.”

…and black slavery and dictatorial control over interstate commerce, for instance.

You really are a remarkably ignorant person. You think “America” is a line on a map and whatever a bunch of political presumptives manage to scratch out on a piece of paper for your herd’s approval.

Nothing more hidebound, flyblown and threadbare has been posted in this mess, so far.

America is a concept and — so far — it’s well out of your reach.

[Cesar]

Yes, and we should completely ignore pesky questions like “how?”, or even “why?”

Yes, because as we get bogged down in those questions government will continue to expand rapidly. I don’t care that your reason for reducing the size of leviathan is different from mine. All I care about is that you’re interested in reducing it, and so am I. Great!

When the state is reduced down to such a size where our factional differences will become important in reality, then we can debate these issues.

Meanwhile, lets leave the petty factionalism to the Marxists.

[Ayn_Randian]

Yes, and we should completely ignore pesky questions like “how?”, or even “why?”

Oh, I see you’re not a David Kelley fan.

That sucks.

[Kyle Bennett]

When the state is reduced down to such a size where our factional differences will become important in reality,

And when, exactly will that be?

[Cesar]

And when, exactly will that be?

When the state does nothing more than provide courts, police, and an army. In the end, whether or not the state should poses those functions is really my only difference with you.

[Kyle Bennett]

When the state does nothing more than provide courts, police, and an army. In the end, whether or not the state should poses those functions is really my only difference with you.

Yeah, but when. Gimme a timeframe. Oh, and let me know when you figure out how you’ll get us there. We’ll see if you come up with the same thing I did.

[Ayn_Randian]

dictatorial control over interstate commerce

You know what’s a fun game? Finding who can push out the most overbearing and reaching arguments ever.

YOU WIN, for equating “regulating” with “dictatorial control”.

Any other dishonesties you wish to engage in today?

America is a concept

A concept that entails what exactly?

[Billy Beck]

Dangerman: “I was wondering, Billy, would you say that you yourself are a left- or right- anarchist?”

Very good question. I do not stipulate to the dichotomy, which is a big part of why I find all left “anarchism” to be completely senseless. The whole tradition that comes down from people like Proudhon, Bakunin, or Goldman can only, if taken to its conclusion with logical integrity, demand a state for the purpose (for single instance) of destroying the institution of private property. These people and all their adherents are myopic at best and thoroughly evil at worst.

“That is, in an anarchic state, would you tend to cooperate or compete with your fellow anarchians?”

Both. For instance; in my work, I am competing and cooperating with the same people all at once, but it happens in different contexts and scales so that the thing cannot ever be put that simply.

“…it never hurts to ask, right?”

No sir, it does not, so long as the questions are as honestly rendered as yours.

[Cesar]

Yeah, but when. Gimme a timeframe.

How the fuck should I know? It could be ten years, it could be 100. What matters is that we continue to move in the right direction.

Oh, and let me know when you figure out how you’ll get us there.

By supporting organizations dedicated to promoting that goal. Convincing others that it is a worthwhile goal. Starting small.

I know lobbying to abolish the Department of Education or eliminating trade barriers doesn’t sound as sexy as having some bloody revolution in the streets, but its a lot more likely to happen.

[Billy Beck]

“Because both minarchists and anarchists agree that currently, the state is too large and needs to be dramatically reduced. We disagree over how far the reduction should
go, but until the government is reduced down to a level where this makes a difference, who the fuck cares?”

Whether you know it or not, you just told everyone here that principles don’t matter.

Nothing could be more dangerous to all this.

“We should, in the meantime, work towards reducing the size and scope of the state.”

For what reasons should we do that?

The answer to that question begins to inform the “how” of it.

[Jake Boone]

YOU WIN, for equating “regulating” with “dictatorial control”.

That’s not at all fair, AR, and you know it. What about equating a) support for the Constitutional version of government; with b) cheering while it “tear[s] the meat off my bones”? That’s a clear winner.

[Kyle Bennett]

Any other dishonesties you wish to engage in today?

*snicker*

[Billy Beck]

“How does the gender of the caller make you any less of a prick for swearing out someone collecting money for dead State Troopers?”

When you admit why you fabricated the facts about that “gender” way you did, I’ll answer that.

[Cesar]

One libertarian believes that the state should be dramatically reduced because government rests on a foundation of coercive violence, that is immoral at its core.

Another libertarian believes that the state should be dramatically reduced because everything it does could be accomplished more efficently by private means.

[Billy Beck]

“YOU WIN, for equating ‘regulating’ with ‘dictatorial control’.”

Splendid! I love it when the point is grasped.

[Cesar]

Crap, didn’t finish my post. Again:

One libertarian believes that the state should be dramatically reduced because government rests on a foundation of coercive violence, that is immoral at its core.

Another libertarian believes that the state should be dramatically reduced because everything it does could be accomplished more efficently by private means.

Are you saying that libertarian A should tell libertarian B to fuck off because of this difference?

[Kyle Bennett]

I know lobbying to abolish the Department of Education or eliminating trade barriers doesn’t sound as sexy as having some bloody revolution in the streets,

You seem like a decent guy, so I hope you learn to see other alternatives before it’s too late.

but its a lot more likely to happen.

Sadly, I doubt you’re right on that.

[Ayn_Randian]

When you admit why you fabricated the facts about that “gender” way you did, I’ll answer that.

Huh? Uhh, OK, I admit it…I thought it was a female because that’s the gender that solicits me about charities 9/10ths of the time.

[GinSlinger]

America

What’s all this then? What the hell is “America”?

Do you mean The Americas?

You realize that the name of this country is The United States of America, right? And that we are “Americans” in the same way that Mexicans and Brazilians and Canooks are, right?

Perhaps, you mean the concept of “Columbia,” (look it up) but regardless, you are wrong to refer to The United States of America as “America.”

If you can’t get that right, why should anyone believe that anything else you spew is right?

If human nature is not to dominate and control, then why does government do so? Are the people who compose government not human? Are they lizardmen from some other galaxy with a different “nature”?

[Kyle Bennett]

One libertarian believes that the state should be dramatically reduced because government rests on a foundation of coercive violence, that is immoral at its core.

Another libertarian believes that the state should be dramatically reduced because everything it does could be accomplished more efficently by private means.

Are you saying that libertarian A should tell libertarian B to fuck off because of this difference?

No, the “fuck off” comes from another class of “difference” entirely. You get this instead: I suggest you check your premises. Some libertarians believe that advocating a mere “reduction” of the state is a moral error and will lead to much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the route to ultimate failure.

And some libertarians oppose the state on grounds of – and ascribe it’s means and support to – things not included in your dichotomy.

[Billy Beck]

Cesar: yes.

It’s the same as the difference between arguing against the Holocaust as it happened because murder is immoral, and arguing against it because H-bombs would be better than Zyklon-B at wiping out the Jews.

There is no serious room in any of this for utilitarianism. That’s a big part of how we got to these straits to begin with.

[Ayn_Randian]

Splendid! I love it when the point is grasped.

Are you claiming that the term “regulation” really means “dictatorial control”?

Wait, you do know what “regulating interstate commerce” (STOP SNICKERING H&RUNNERS!) means in the context of the Constitution, right?

[Eric the .5b]

You realize that the name of this country is The United States of America, right? And that we are “Americans” in the same way that Mexicans and Brazilians and Canooks are, right?

Ohhhhhh, no. Don’t go there, man.

I ain’t a unitedstatian. You can be – I’m not.

[GinSlinger]

Half-a B, you can be a USAmerican (pronounced osamerican), if you like.

[Eric the .5b]

It’s the same as the difference between arguing against the Holocaust as it happened because murder is immoral, and arguing against it because H-bombs would be better than Zyklon-B at wiping out the Jews.

Wow, that’s not merely godwinning, that’s like godwin squaring.

Excellent work! Nobody will mistakenly think you are trying to engage in rational conversation.

[Jennifer]

Ayn Randian: “How does the gender of the caller make you any less of a prick for swearing out someone collecting money for dead State Troopers?”

Billy Beck: When you admit why you fabricated the facts about that “gender” way you did, I’ll answer that.

Gender is very, very important to Internet Tough Guys who are more than half past middle age. These-here teeth of mine won’t knock themselves out, you know! They need Billy’s gnarled nicotine-stained old-man fingers to do it for them.

[Ayn_Randian]

I’m actually still waiting for the “concept of America” to be unpacked and explained.

If America’s not a nation-state, what is it?

[Jennifer]

If America’s not a nation-state, what is it?

One of the more execrable 1970s bands.

[Billy Beck]

“OK, I admit it…”

Thank you. Here’s something else I know from experience with you over the past couple of days: that episode right there is quite emblematic, so far, of your intellectual ability.

The answer to your question: “the gender of the caller” has nothing to do with it. Now, since we now know that you read with comprehension on the order of a broken corn-harvester, you can go back and read it again.

“…about the fourth one this year.”

Let me know if you can’t figure the implications, and I’ll help.

[Ayn_Randian]

I’d like a serious answer to this as well:

Can issues of taste ever be objectively decided? That is, is one taste morally correct and the other wrong?

[Jake Boone]

If America’s not a nation-state, what is it?

It’s a concept! A concept of a magical land, where everyone is free to hold exactly the same principles that Billy does, and everyone is free to believe whatever Billy believes, and everyone is free to discuss whatever they want, so long as they don’t ask questions Billy thinks are stupid, in which case they have no business in the forum!

[Jennifer]

The answer to your question: “the gender of the caller” has nothing to do with it.

And yet you made a huge big deal over it anyway. Another one of those mystery points you think you’re scoring over here.

[Ayn_Randian]

Thank you. Here’s something else I know from experience with you over the past couple of days: that episode right there is quite emblematic, so far, of your intellectual ability.

The fact that I said the caller was a woman is emblematic of my intellectual ability…that’s seriously what you’re saying.

I don’t get it.

[Billy Beck]

“If human nature is not to dominate and control, then why does government do so?”

Take a good look at it. The people in government — for all the harm they do — are actually a very small percentage of the population. The fact is that most people really aren’t interested in running around ruling over their fellows’ lives. (At least: that’s been the run of things over most of our history. This is now changing rapidly.) The most extravagant estimates of popular interest in the Constitution at ratification run to no more than about one-third.

It is a crucial error to equate the urge to rule with “human nature”.

[Eric the .5b]

Half-a B, you can be a USAmerican (pronounced osamerican), if you like.

I don’t like.

One pretty much has to resort to redefinition to use “America” and “Americans” to mean anything but the common English usages you’re denying. “America” is not a collective term for two continents, nor is the term “Americans” ever invoked to refer collectively to the inhabitants of two continents except in forlorn attempts to deny the common usage.

Those redefinitions will gain acceptance roughly a week before the Randian definitions of “selfishness” and “altruism” do. 😉

[Billy Beck]

“Are you claiming that the term ‘regulation’ really means ‘dictatorial control’?”

In the context that we’re talking about?

Absolutely.

[Jennifer]

The fact that I said the caller was a woman is emblematic of my intellectual ability…that’s seriously what you’re saying. I don’t get it.

It’s because, quote, “the gender of the caller has nothing to do with it.”

[Billy Beck]

.5: Godwin was about half an idiot when he formulated his famous “Law”, and everyone after him has worked diligently to complete the form.

Stop acting like an idiot.

[Jake Boone]

The fact is that most people really aren’t interested in running around ruling over their fellows’ lives.

You’ve never been to a city council meeting, have you?

[Ayn_Randian]

In the context that we’re talking about?

Absolutely.

What dictator is it that was tasked with controlling interstate commerce again? (STOP LAUGHING YOU GUYS I SWEAR…)

[Kyle Bennett]

and everyone is free to believe whatever Billy believes,

You seem to be implying that everyone should be free to believe whatever whim they want to believe.

Which of course they are, but they’re not free to do so indefinitely. Reality will catch up with them, eventually.

[Jennifer]

Stop acting like an idiot.

. . .quoth the “man” who seriously compares the regulation of interstate commerce to the Holocaust.

By the way, Billy, when’s your manly old Viagra’d self gonna come over here and teach me a much-needed lesson? My teeth aren’t even loose, you bald wheezing pussy.

[Billy Beck]

“Can issues of taste ever be objectively decided? That is, is one taste morally correct and the other wrong?”

Define your terms.

It could be said that Charles Manson had a “taste” for murder, in which case the answer to your question starts coming into view.

[Eric the .5b]

.5: Godwin was about half an idiot when he formulated his famous “Law”, and everyone after him has worked diligently to complete the form.

That’s the most painfully vacuous thing I’ve read in the last seven calendar days.

Damn.

[GinSlinger]

Actually Eric, what you are referring to is actually already the redefinition as seen here and elsewhere.

[Billy Beck]

“And yet you made a huge big deal over it anyway.”

“Big deal”? {shrug} Call it what you want, but I never mentioned it until someone else here did, and for reasons that have slipped your Candy Apple helmet.

[Eric the .5b]

You seem to be implying that everyone should be free to believe whatever whim they want to believe.

Which of course they are, but they’re not free to do so indefinitely. Reality will catch up with them, eventually.

…But this tops it!

I have to admit, even the wonder of competition has a dark side.

[Ayn_Randian]

I’m not sure what it’s going to take to get this answered, but:

Can issues of taste ever be objectively decided? That is, is one taste morally correct and the other wrong?

That is, is my preference for lemon ice cream better or worse than yours for chocolate? Or is it *GULP* subjective?

[Billy Beck]

“The fact that I said the caller was a woman is emblematic of my intellectual ability…that’s seriously what you’re saying.”

That’s right.

“Reading is fundamental.”

“I don’t get it.”

I know.

[Jennifer]

I never mentioned it until someone else here did, and for reasons that have slipped your Candy Apple helmet.

Is that the pet name you’ve adopted for your Big Head, or your Floppy Little One?

[Billy Beck]

“You’ve never been to a city council meeting, have you?”

Of course I have, and the point holds under direct observation. Right in my little village, the Board comprises an infinitesimal part of the population, and they’re nearly universally despised. Everybody else does their best to mind their own goddamned business.

[Ayn_Randian]

I know.

Smugness is a warm coat, isn’t it, Billy? You claimed that the gender didn’t matter and then it became a big deal when I said the caller was one of the two choices I had.

Are you coming to a point here, or what?

[GinSlinger]

Billy,
It is a crucial error to equate the urge to rule with “human nature”.

How so? Are those with the “urge to rule” not human?

Or, are you suggestting that the urge is not natural? If not natural, where does it come from? Why did it arise? Is it possible that there is more that one human nature? And if so, how many? Before government we were all hunky dory eating out acrons from the ground of the oak tree that is our shelter?

[dhex]

There is no serious room in any of this for utilitarianism.

which may be why you stay in the realm of the imaginary.

[Billy Beck]

“…the ‘man’ who seriously compares the regulation of interstate commerce to the Holocaust.”

In fact, that was a contrast of political methods, honey. The matter of interstate commerce was a completely different remark and context.

Time to have your helmet buffed out.

[Ayn_Randian]

Everybody else does their best to mind their own goddamned business.

Strange then that they vote, huh?

[Jennifer]

Are you coming to a point here?

You need to address that question not to Billy, but to his Candy Apple Helmet.

[Jennifer]

The one he grips tightly while typing tough-guy threats online, I mean.

[Billy Beck]

“You claimed that the gender didn’t matter and then it became a big deal when I said the caller was one of the two choices I had.”

The “big deal”, if you insist, is in what you were unable to understand from plain English right in front of your eyes. That post says, “the guy on the phone,” and it went right past you while you were fantasizing.

I saw this in all your method here quite before you did that.

[Ayn_Randian]

There’s a question pending about ice cream here, people…ice cream!

OK, Billy, I’ll get straight to my point, and you touched on it a little bit with the “murder” thing (although you shouldn’t use the term “murder”, Billy, that’s a legal term and we know you don’t like laws), but as it concerns taste…is my taste for classic rock worse than yours for classical? Is my taste for kinky sex worse than yours for vanilla? And what point do you draw the line between kosher personal preferences and ones that are not OK?

And I dare you to say that whatever people choose to do so long as it doesn’t harm you is OK…I dare you.

[Eric the .5b]

Actually Eric, what you are referring to is actually already the redefinition as seen here and elsewhere.

To which part of that article are you referring? The relevant bit seems to me to be:

America or the Americas is preferred, American is a self-referential term for many people living in the Americas. However, much of the English-speaking world uses the word to refer solely to a citizen, resident, or national of the United States of America. Instead, the word pan-American is used as an unambiguous adjective to refer to the Americas.

In addition, some Canadians resent being referred to as Americans because of mistaken assumptions that they are U.S. citizens or an inability-particularly of people overseas-to distinguish Canadian English and American English accents.

Emphasis added. If you’d rather people not call themselves Americans with that definition, come up with a better name that people will. Trying to claim an old, common usage is wrong and should be re-applied to meanings that have a number of commonly-accepted terms already just won’t fly.

[Eric the .5b]

That should be “come up with a better name that people will prefer“.

[Billy Beck]

“Are those with the ‘urge to rule’ not human?”

Yes. In the most fundamental terms, that’s exactly right. The person whose name is currently being trampled around here by someone without the sheer spine to use her or her own once pointed out that “Man is the only entity that can sink below his own nature,” and what we’re discussing is the premier example of that in a political context.

[Ayn_Randian]

The “big deal”, if you insist, is in what you were unable to understand from plain English right in front of your eyes. That post says, “the guy on the phone,” and it went right past you while you were fantasizing.

Look, Wild Bill, I don’t know how megalomaniacal you are, but I was recalling that post from memory, not from reading off of your blog, which I did two days ago. I’m sorry, I didn’t know that being a rational being required total recall. Make hay out of the fact I misremembered your precious little post. The point is that you swore up somebody on the phone calling you for charity. Actually, charity has nothing to do with it…you were a right asshole because you felt like it. And you also somehow claim that was alright because it was the fourth time this year…jesus, you are a piece of work.

[Billy Beck]

“…which may be why you stay in the realm of the imaginary.”

There is no “imagin[ing]” left to be done when it comes to what government is doing to my homeland, sir, and I never “imagin[e]” that, say, voting is going to come to terms with it, like whole generations of outright delusionals have.

I’m the one addressing reality.

[Kyle Bennett]

GinSlinger,

are you suggestting that the urge [to rule] is not natural?

Good question. No, it isn’t.

If not natural, where does it come from? Why did it arise?

Another good question. One I don’t have a clear answer to, but this thread provides quite a few clues.

Is it possible that there is more that one human nature? …

See, now your right back to the asinine and cynical nonsense.

AR:

Strange then that they vote, huh?

You’ll never understand how close you just came to getting it.

[Billy Beck]

“Strange then that they vote, huh?”

Actually, most of them don’t. The rulers just carry on as if they had.

[Ayn_Randian]

The person whose name is currently being trampled around here by someone without the sheer spine to use her or her own

Erm, what’s that? Me ears are burning.

Of course, because I don’t agree with you about everything, I must be spineless.

[Jennifer]

I never “imagin[e]” that, say, voting is going to come to terms with it, like whole generations of outright delusionals have.

But going to an Internet forum and annoying the regulars, now–that’s where you start to see real progress being made.

Freedom shall never die so long as the Fighting Keyboardists are ready to risk Carpal Tunnel to defend it.

[Ayn_Randian]

Is it possible that there is more that one human nature?

So, you’re just going to dismiss that question with canards about it being cynical and asinine? Why is that an impossibility, Kyle?

You’ll never understand how close you just came to getting it.

What the fuck is this, The Price is Right?

[Jake Boone]

Some people don’t get that most folks use nicknames on the internet, and it’s not a big deal. I suspect it’s a holdover from CB radio, combined with the fact that if your real name is John Smith and you’re on the internet, you’re kind of screwed if you don’t have a more personalized handle.

Billy has apparently decided that using a handle is an admission of weakness. Billy is apparently a fool.

[Ayn_Randian]

Freedom shall never die so long as the Fighting Keyboardists are ready to risk Carpal Tunnel to defend it.

Yes, Jennifer, so true…but more strange than that is the time and energy spent on people (us) who don’t matter.

[Kyle Bennett]

Freedom shall never die so long as the Fighting Keyboardists are ready to risk Carpal Tunnel to defend it.

Is that what you think you’re doing here? I mean on this site in general, not specifically this thread. Defending freedom?

[Eric the .5b]

Yes, Jennifer, so true…but more strange than that is the time and energy spent on people (us) who don’t matter.

But he’s not spending it on you! Not when he responds to you, not when he asks you questions, and not even when he talks about you in the second person.

This is really all meant for the Incipient Anarchists out there. You’re just uncouth enough to see through the FNORD that’s supposed to keep you from seeing those comments.

[GinSlinger]

See, now your right back to the asinine and cynical nonsense.

No, I don’t see, and you don’t seem to be capable of illustrating, so I guess we’re at an impass.

If “the urge to rule” is not natural, it was learned. If that was learned, other cultural phenomenon can be learned as well.

Yes. In the most fundamental terms, that’s exactly right. The person whose name is currently being trampled around here by someone without the sheer spine to use her or her own once pointed out that “Man is the only entity that can sink below his own nature,” and what we’re discussing is the premier example of that in a political context.

I’m afraid, Billy boy, that it is you that seem to have the problem with reading comprehension. That quote does not suggest that they are not human, only that they are exisiting in an unnatural state. Better luck next time.

WHERE DOES THE “URGE TO RULE” COME FROM if it is not at least a part of human nature?

[Jennifer]

Is that what you think you’re doing here? I mean on this site in general, not specifically this thread. Defending freedom?

I am truly at a loss to know how to answer that question. I just re-read my original comment, in case maybe I’d misremembered the context or something, and then I started to type a response but could only shake my head in slow, amazed wonder.

[Kyle Bennett]

What the fuck is this, The Price is Right?

Might as well be, for all the bouncing around and flashing lights and jumping up and down to accomplish nothing. I’m only hanging around to make sure Bob Barker gets home safe after the show. He’s getting a little distracted, ya know, and doesn’t realize he retired a few months ago.

[Eric the .5b]

Billy has apparently decided that using a handle is an admission of weakness.

Until he includes his middle name, city and state of residence, and SSN, “Billy Beck” is pretty darn ambiguous a handle. How many thousands of William Becks (first name and preferred-middle name) are there out there?

[Jake Boone]

I am truly at a loss to know how to answer that question.

Kyle’s just doing his part to help “weed out the thinkers.”

[Billy Beck]

“…(although you shouldn’t use the term ‘murder’, Billy, that’s a legal term and we know you don’t like laws)…”

In fact, it morally precedes law.

“…..is my taste for classic rock worse than yours for classical?”

(Well, I think you have that about half-backwards, but I’ll stipulate.)

You know, “The Romantic Manifesto” made a good deal of hard-hitting sense to me, but what you’re talking about is one aspect of Rand that I had no choice but to reject. It wasn”t hard.

“And I dare you to say that whatever people choose to do so long as it doesn’t harm you is OK…I dare you.”

I would never say that. For instance: if I did, then I would have to write-off sixty million dead under Lenin and Stalin. No way.

[Eric the .5b]

Might as well be, for all the bouncing around and flashing lights and jumping up and down to accomplish nothing.

So true. But we’re not the ones bellowing “COME ON DOWN!”

[Ayn_Randian]

Billy has apparently decided that using a handle is an admission of weakness.

Is that what that was? Do you seriously think that, Billy? Because, I mean, my real e-mail address is in there and everything, and I don’t exactly have the commonest name in the world.

Steven Druckenmiller

I’m afraid, Billy boy, that it is you that seem to have the problem with reading comprehension. That quote does not suggest that they are not human, only that they are existing in an unnatural state. Better luck next time.

GinSlinger for the win.

[Eric the .5b]

In fact, it morally precedes law.

There’s an amusingly impossible point to prove.

[Billy Beck]

“I didn’t know that being a rational being required total recall.”

It dosesn’t. Nobody can do that.

“Make hay out of the fact…”

I’m not interested, and I’ll shut up about it when you do. In fact, I was shut-up about it before you.

“The point is that you swore up…”

Why don’t you get your facts in order? The fact is that I did no such thing. The fact is that I quoted every single word that I said on the phone in that post.

Look: try to imagine how impossible it is to reason with someone who’s not interested in facts.

There is a lot more to the issue that you’re writing about here, but there is no way that I’m going through it seriously with you, on what I’ve seen so far.

[Jennifer]

There’s an amusingly impossible point to prove.

No, actually it’s quite easy, provided you’re willing to buckle down and really sink your teeth into it. I’d do it for you, only I’m worried that Billy will come along and knock said teeth out, per his earlier tough-geezer threat.

[AC]

One of the more execrable 1970s bands.

Okay, now that’s just over the line.

[Ayn_Randian]

There is a lot more to the issue that you’re writing about here, but there is no way that I’m going through it seriously with you, on what I’ve seen so far.

I see, so I’m not worthy. Damn!

You know, “The Romantic Manifesto” made a good deal of hard-hitting sense to me, but what you’re talking about is one aspect of Rand that I had no choice but to reject. It wasn”t hard.

Now, wait a sec, does that mean you’re claiming there is no better or worse music? Art? Television? Food? Drink? Because all of these things are issue of taste. No better or worse type of sexual preference?

[Jennifer]

AC, there is no reason for me to show respect to anyone too lazy to name his goddamned horse.

[Billy Beck]

“Some people don’t get that most folks use nicknames on the internet, and it’s not a big deal.”

It is to me.

I have friends who do it, too, but I always count character points off.

[Eric the .5b]

There is a lot more to the issue that you’re writing about here, but there is no way that I’m going through it seriously with you, on what I’ve seen so far.

Oh, no. Flashback to pointless college debates with smug, asshole socialists!

If you were going to bring back my university days, why couldn’t you be a cute girl of Italian descent who wants me to read your poetry?

[Billy Beck]

“If ‘the urge to rule’ is not natural, it was learned.

So is burglary.

What’s natural is the ability to learn. That, however, say nothing about the values necessary to live like a human being instead of a predator.

[Ayn_Randian]

It dosesn’t. Nobody can do that.

Well, since you concede the point, why do you think my admitted misremembering is somehow indicative of my intelligence level?

[Eric the .5b]

It is to me.

Full legal name, municipality of residence, and/or SSN, or else you’re using a nickname.

Well, we can pretty much assume you’re using a nickname, unless you’re going to claim “Billy” is your legal first name.

[Jake Boone]

ATTENTION INTERNET: Please stop using screen names at once. Billy Beck needs to be able to find you in order to threaten you with the knocking out of your teeth and, possibly, forcible oral sex. Failure to do so will result in a loss of character points, which will particularly impact GURPS players. Thank you for your cooperation.

[Jennifer]

Billy Beck needs to be able to find you in order to threaten you with the knocking out of your teeth and, possibly, forcible oral sex.

I hope he at least uses Viagra first. I’m good, very damned good, but you can’t reasonably expect me to be all Jesus regarding his Little Lazarus down there.

[Ayn_Randian]

but I always count character points off.

Why? In what form or fashion is using a handle indicative of one’s character? Isn’t this just another personal preference issue (or matter of taste, if you will), given that my name is in the e-mail address you’re more than free to view?

For that matter, I don’t see where you have any MORE character for using your “real” name.

That leads to another interesting point: did you choose that name, in much the way Rand chose hers? Do you even like your name? If so, why?

[AC]

But it felt good to be out of the rain!

[Jake Boone]

In the desert, your handle isn’t your name, so there ain’t no one for to…

No, I can’t go on.

[Ayn_Randian]

What’s natural is the ability to learn.

Natural to whom? The severely mentally handicapped are generally unable to learn. Unless of course you’re calling that “unnatural”.

[Billy Beck]

Eric The Half-Ass:

William Joseph Beck III

1185 Daisy Hollow Road
Dryden, NY. 13053

DOB: 11/27/56
SSN: 430-21-4093, issued in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Anyone can use that number if they want to. I don’t use it. The government does.

Any more questions?

Don’t fuck me, punk. I’ve seen a million of ’em like you.

[Jennifer]

Don’t fuck me, punk.

Why would he want to? I’ve seen your photo, and you can’t even claim to have a Good Personality.

[Ayn_Randian]

Holy shit.

[Billy Beck]

“Now, wait a sec, does that mean you’re claiming there is no better or worse music?”

To whom?

You didn’t get Objectivist ethics at all, did you? If you did, then you would understand Rand’s premise that evaluations are worthless without accounting for the valuer.

Look: Frank Zappa is a hero of mine, but I have never ever understood his attachment to Edgar Varese. So? {shrug} That’s Frank’s lookout, and not mine.

[Patrick Chkoreff]

Jennifer wrote:

Freedom shall never die so long as the Fighting Keyboardists are ready to risk Carpal Tunnel to defend it.

I just searched back through every one of your posts and discovered to my amazement that you have not uttered a single statement of philosophical or political substance. (Snarkiness about blow jobs and hawaiian shirts doesn’t count)

I encourage you to take the floor now and contribute to the quality of this discussion. In particular, I welcome your views on effective ways to promote individual freedom.

I agree that mere keyboarding is not an answer in itself. It is only a way to discuss answers. With that in mind, you now have the floor.

[Billy Beck]

(on “character points off”)

“Why?”

It’s because I reserve a special respect for people who stand up for what they say on their own full authority and responsibility.

That’s why.

[Kyle Bennett]

The severely mentally handicapped are generally unable to learn

There’s that cynicism again, JT. Any question of human nature, and you immediately cling to the exceptions, the damaged and dysfunctional, in your desperate race to deny that you have a nature, that you are something, that you are.

Why is that your first gut reaction? Remember how it ended for you in the book, JT?

[Jake Boone]

Don’t fuck me […]

You are a veritable font of unintentional wisdom.

[Ron Good]

Great.

We’ve got so-called libertarians arguing in favour of NORML’s “buy ‘en off” sop to the politicos; Ayn Randian arguing in favour of state compulsion because he’s more afraid of his neighbours than he is of government power, and folks here are ganging up on Billy, who is one of only maybe two or three folks here who is plainly stating that emperor has no clothes.

Just freakin’ wonderful.

And Jennifer: you came in late in the game, but you are misapprehending Billy as badly as someone might misapprehend Audie Murphy if they only saw his cowboy movies–and for some of the sdame reasons.

[Billy Beck]

“Holy shit.”

You want my phone number?

Shoot me an e-mail. I tend to handle that a hair more discreetly. But I always subscribe a precept laid down in Usenet many years ago by someone who said, “Phonies don’t phone.”

I am as real as anything you’ve ever seen online, kids.

Try me.

[Eric the .5b]

William Joseph Beck III

…if that’s your real name…

Why not actually use that instead of a character-point-deducting handle?

Don’t fuck me, punk.

1) I’m not remotely cool enough to be punk.
2) I’m not into the non-con thing, and I won’t make the wearing-a-bodice-and-calling-me-a-wicked-pirate exception for you.
3) You’re really creepily obsessed with violent, forced sex, threatening to inflict it on others and considering any challenge to your bloviations to be an implicit threat of it against you. You might talk to someone about that.

[Jennifer]

I just searched back through every one of your posts and discovered to my amazement that you have not uttered a single statement of philosophical or political substance. (Snarkiness about blow jobs and hawaiian shirts doesn’t count). I encourage you to take the floor now and contribute to the quality of this discussion. In particular, I welcome your views on effective ways to promote individual freedom.

Snarkiness about blowjobs is an extremely effective way to promote an individual’s freedom to keep all of her teeth, sans fear of Billy’s mighty Fists of Anarchistic Justice.

[VM]

Mr. W Beck:

Dryden, NY. 13053

cool – finger lakes region. beautiful countryside!

aren’t there a coupla good vineyards nearby?

(BTW,Courtland College, near you, was a rival of ours in hockey)

[Eric the .5b]

You want my phone number?

We know who must call him, so as to make sure he’s not actually Eric Dondero. 😉

[Eric the .5b]

And Jennifer: you came in late in the game, but you are misapprehending Billy as badly as someone might misapprehend Audie Murphy if they only saw his cowboy movies–and for some of the sdame reasons.

I getcha. So, in some other unspecified venue, the alleged William Joseph Beck III is rational and argues in good faith.

Shame he only brought his cowboy catalog.

[AC]

In the desert, your handle isn’t your name, so there ain’t no one for to…

No, I can’t go on.

That’s too bad. Just a little farther and you would have made it to Ventura Highway.

[Ayn_Randian]

You didn’t get Objectivist ethics at all, did you? If you did, then you would understand Rand’s premise that evaluations are worthless without accounting for the valuer.

Oh, I got it, but stating that the evaluations are worthless without the subject is subjectivism. That is, when evaluating art, music, books, wine, food you give primacy to the subject.

So? {shrug} That’s Frank’s lookout, and not mine.

And where do you draw the line between acceptable differences in taste and different ethical outlooks? Why is there only “one way” [ethical egoism] in ethics but multiple “ways” [Vivaldi or Van Halen]in art and food?

How come you can’t just look at an altruist and go “hey, that’s your lookout”?

There’s that cynicism again, JT. Any question of human nature, and you immediately cling to the exceptions, the damaged and dysfunctional, in your desperate race to deny that you have a nature, that you are something, that you are.

You know, the exceptions do exist and calling names doesn’t address that fact. I know, I know “lifeboat ethics”, but did none of you ever seriously think that failing to address “lifeboat ethics” was, well, a failing of Rand’s?

[Billy Beck]

“finger lakes region. beautiful countryside!”

It sure is, even when it’s 22 degrees out with a twenty-knot wind blowing across two feet of fresh powder.

I’ve been privileged to see every nook and cranny of America in my life, and a lot of the rest of the world. This is the most beautiful place in the world, to me.

“aren’t there a coupla good vineyards nearby?”

Well, that’s what they say, but I’m not a real wine nut, so I don’t really know.

[Billy Beck]

“…if that’s your real name…”

A regular Pearls-Before-Swine moment, and I always go about 3-1 that that’s how it’s going to play: no fact or truth is ever transmittable over the ‘net to a catatonic skeptic.

{shrug}

[VM]

You really are living in nice countryside! definitely!!

“Well, that’s what they say, but I’m not a real wine nut, so I don’t really know.”

fair enough – actually, TWC is a regular poster who’s big on wine, so we’ll chat beautiful countryside, and he and i can chat wine.

[Eric the .5b]

A regular Pearls-Before-Swine moment, and I always go about 3-1 that that’s how it’s going to play: no fact or truth is ever transmittable over the ‘net to a catatonic skeptic.

True, but it’s at least 15-1 that anyone whining about skeptics has something worth saying…and they usually actually say something.

[VM]

Hay – wait a sec.

Mr. Beck – a quick search shows you’ve not been shy about your “socialist insecurity number” since at least 2003 on Radley’s site.

okay – you are sticking it to the man who tries to stick it to us, I’ll give you that!

[Ayn_Randian]

you immediately cling to the exceptions, the damaged and dysfunctional

Doesn’t sound like to me you’ve figured out what to do with the exceptions, either.

[Kyle Bennett]

did none of you ever seriously think that failing to address “lifeboat ethics” was, well, a failing of Rand’s?

Maybe, but not as an input to just plain old ethics. You prefer holding all ethics hostage to those to whom, by your definition of their capacity, ethics is irrelevant… just as you earlier held law hostage to those to whom law is – again, by your own description – irrelevant.

Do you see the pattern emerging?

[Timothy]

Might as well be, for all the bouncing around and flashing lights and jumping up and down to accomplish nothing.

So this thread is what happens when Billy takes Viagra?

[Billy Beck]

“Oh, I got it, but stating that the evaluations are worthless without the subject is subjectivism.”

The Objectivist argument over values is not that individual preferences must be reduced to “objectivism” — although That Woman very often got in her own way about this — but that values are necessary to human life and that some values will further it and others won’t.

At the root of the logic, there is nothing “subjectivist” about it.

“How come you can’t just look at an altruist and go “hey, that’s your lookout”?”

I can. There are people in my family with whom I do it all the time. For instance: a compulsion to go flying-off halfway around the world to minister to the needy on religious premises. “Everybody gets to go to hell in their own go-cart.” I’ve said it countless times, and I mean it.

Where I won’t tolerate it is in politics: forcing others to do likewise.

This is a crucial distinction.

[Billy Beck]

“Mr. Beck – a quick search shows you’ve not been shy about your “socialist insecurity number” since at least 2003 on Radley’s site.”

I’d have to look it up, but I’m pretty sure that I first published all that in Usenet at least ten years ago, when I was living in metro Atlanta.

[Timothy]

Somebody’s getting a mountain of new credit card debt for Christmas!

NOTE TO THE FBI: I AM JOKING!

[VM]

As I said, Mr. Beck, gotta hand it to you for sticking it to the man who sticks it to all of us!

TIMOTHY NEEDS ANOTHER CUPCAKE.
CUPCAKES!!!!!!!!

[Ayn_Randian]

You prefer holding all ethics hostage to those to whom, by your definition of their capacity, ethics is irrelevant… just as you earlier held law hostage to those to whom law is – again, by your own description – irrelevant.

Well, first of all, I never said any of what you’re attributing to me. You’ll note that I was asking questions. Secondly, did it ever occur to you that part of what makes a good philosophy is probing its weaknesses? Maybe, just maybe you should have considered that was what I was doing, instead of attributing these terrible motives to me.

And there you go…you couldn’t explain things in a reasonable tone to somebody who dared to question Objectivism’s ethical and political branches. Makes me wonder how you plan on getting other people, people who don’t already know the things that a lot of Objectivists know, to be as rational as students of Objectivism can be.

[Ayn_Randian]

The Objectivist argument over values is not that individual preferences must be reduced to “objectivism” — although That Woman very often got in her own way about this — but that values are necessary to human life and that some values will further it and others won’t.

At the root of the logic, there is nothing “subjectivist” about it.

Very well put.

[Timothy]

Serious Question for Mr. Beck: If a person of low moral character were to use the information you’ve provided here to steal your identity and make a bunch of fraudulent purchases in your name: would you prosecute this person under the law? Would you encourage or discourage the card issuer to prosecute this person under the law? If so does that make you a flaccid hypocrit?

[Ron Good]

in some other venue, the alleged William Joseph Beck III is rational and argues in good faith.

Yes. Exactly–and not just in some other venue, and I’ve never seen an exception in over 10 years, including what you’re seeing here today, but you might not recognize the truth of that (and that’s not Billy’s fault).

[Ayn_Randian]

See, the unfortunate part in all of this is that, no matter what, you get to keep your rights as long as you can defend them. You can be morally in the clear all day long, but it’s not going to do you any good against anybody with serious firepower and more bodies than you have. That is the true tragedy.

[Timothy]

Ron has apparently also been huffing paint in Billy’s mom’s basement. You know Ron, Mother Beck is never going to fuck you no matter how many times you offer to mow the lawn in hotpants.

[Jennifer]

Serious Question for Mr. Beck: If a person of low moral character were to use the information you’ve provided here to steal your identity and make a bunch of fraudulent purchases in your name: would you prosecute this person under the law? Would you encourage or discourage the card issuer to prosecute this person under the law? If so does that make you a flaccid hypocrit?

Aso, if you make good on your manly threat to knock my teeth out, which response can I morally make: call the police and let them prosecute you, or get my friends to beat you up in kind?

[Jake Boone]

[…] but you might not recognize the truth of that (and that’s not Billy’s fault).

And you’d see that, too, Eric, if you’d just take the time to climb over the gigantic mountain of assholishness he’s built around his words and ignore all the misogyny and give him ten years of attention despite the fact that he seems to go out of his way to show that he’s not worthy of said attention.

It’s your own fault, really, Eric.

Ron, is there some other venue in which Billy isn’t a belligerent, cockwaving prick?

[Kyle Bennett]

Makes me wonder how you plan on getting other people, people who don’t already know the things that a lot of Objectivists know, to be as rational as students of Objectivism can be.

Why do you keep insisting that I should be trying to do that?

Do you deny that in the case of human nature and ethics, you brought up people who you said could lacked the capacity to learn? Do you deny that in the case earlier of law you brought up people who do not have the capacity to exercise free will? Do you deny that those capacities are prerequisites for ethics and law?

I won’t argue it with you, because it’s not arguable, I just want to know if you deny it.

And my tone prior was eminently reasonable. Enjoy it while it lasts. You used to be abrasive, now you’re just simpering.

[Ron Good]

By the way, I’m not posting these asides to defend Billy. He doesn’t need it.

I’m doing it in the hopes that maybe one or two of you others might slow down, do some serious research, and get a clue. And I’m not doing that to help the “one or two of you”.

It suits my purposes is all.

[Billy Beck]

“If a person of low moral character were to use the information you’ve provided here to steal your identity and make a bunch of fraudulent purchases in your name…”

{hah!} Let ’em try it. Believe me: I’ve fucked that prospect all the way up, through a whole adult lifetime of hard work and dedication.

“would you prosecute this person under the law?”

The truth: this is one of those “how do you know how you’ll behave until you actually get shot at?” questions. And — as always — you get to take or leave what I’m about to tell you.

I don’t think so. Not the way law works, anymore. And I have enough experience with the state to understand a great deal more about my own strength than almost everyone here can remotely imagine.

I bloody hope not, and I have good reason to sustain the hope.

“If so does that make you a flaccid hypocrit?”

{shrug} You can take the first element of the evaluation with The Girl With The Earl Scheib Hair. For the rest of it, yes: I see no way around that.

[VM]

“And my tone prior was eminently reasonable. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Does this mean that you, too, are gonna get all tuff gai on us?

[Jake Boone]

Believe me: I’ve fucked that prospect all the way up, through a whole adult lifetime of hard work and dedication.

Does this mean you’ve got lousy credit?

[Timothy]

And I have enough experience with the state to understand a great deal more about my own strength than almost everyone here can remotely imagine.

So if we strike you down you’ll become more powerful than we can possibly fathom?

[Billy Beck]

“See, the unfortunate part in all of this is that, no matter what, you get to keep your rights as long as you can defend them.”

Very well, then. There is no reason in the world for moral outrage over sixty million dead under Lenin and Stalin, or, say, the murder of Anne Frank. In all those cases, we’re talking about people whose defense of their rights was unsuccessful, and we can just forget it all.

Well done. You’ve just cleansed the conscience of the whole post-modern world. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it, going forward.

[Jennifer]

Seriously, Billyboy: if you make good on your mighty Ich bin ein mann threat, what is the proper moral response for me, in your opinion? Do I call the cops, or find friends to beat you? If my friends are not capable of doing so, then is it morally acceptable to call the police?

What if I or my friends shoot you instead? Can we do so with a legally registered weapon, or does it have to be an illegal gun purchased without government knowledge?

[Timothy]

Note to self: Don’t approve Billy’s HELOC.

[Ayn_Randian]

Do you deny that in the case of human nature and ethics, you brought up people who you said could lacked the capacity to learn? Do you deny that in the case earlier of law you brought up people who do not have the capacity to exercise free will? Do you deny that those capacities are prerequisites for ethics and law?

Oh Jesus, with friends like these…

Look, dude, I brought them up because the philosophy has holes in these very areas. Yes, you need free will and learning to have ethics and law. My point was there exist people without that capacity who still have the right to life, being humans and all, and there are still not answers on what’s to be done with them, how their rights are going to be defended.

Why do you keep insisting that I should be trying to do that?

Because in the long run, and I know this is hard to face, you only get to keep your rights as long as you can convince those around you that you have them. Like I said before, you can be as morally in the clear as you want to be, but if you can’t convince the masses, the mob, the tribe that you have rights they’re not going to let you keep them.

You used to be abrasive, now you’re just simpering.

Seriously, I don’t give a shit what you think I’m doing…your fucking opinion doesn’t matter to me one whit.

[VM]

Timothy – you beat me to it. hrumph.

[Billy Beck]

“Lousy credit?”

Let me put it to you this way: the last time I heard, a long time ago, the IRS wanted a hundred and six thousand of my favorite dollars. Think about that.

I have no credit, as it’s understood today.

~~~~~

I’m going to leave this desk for a while. Everybody should do their worst while I’m gone. I’ll deal with it later.

[Timothy]

Have fun chasing the dragon, Billy!

[VM (Ritter der Kokosnuss)]

“Everybody should do their worst ”

neeh! neeh! neeh!

neeh!

neeh!

[Timothy]

VM – sorry, you know, banking.

[Ayn_Randian]

There is no reason in the world for moral outrage over sixty million dead under Lenin and Stalin, or, say, the murder of Anne Frank. In all those cases

Oh you are being deliberately obtuse. Is there any denying that overwhelming force can make your rights obsolete?

we can just forget it all.

That would, of course, be the biggest mistake of all. Reminding people that the suppression of the exercise of rights is what causes horrors like the ones you site is half of what keeps the world at bay right now, Billy.

What, you didn’t think that society came ready to go, did you? That it didn’t have to make some unfortunate, very painful and horrendous mistakes to understand important lessons about men’s freedoms?

[VM]

actually the Star Wars. hrumphity again.

/kicks self, misses, but, ooh, that was fun.

(NEEH!)

[Kyle Bennett]

Yes, you need free will and learning to have ethics and law. My point was there exist people without that capacity who still have the right to life,

Did you not even see that contradiction as you typed it? Hell, it should have slapped you in the face so hard it left a welt.

you only get to keep your rights as long as you can convince those around you that you have them.

Are you willing to die by that premise? Because that’s the only place it can lead. Wear your chains lightly, my friend, because they are of your own making.

And if you jump to the conclusion that the only alternative is blind violence, you’ve merely traded those chains for a rope around your neck.

Seriously, and I am talking to you now, I know you don’t give a shit what I think, but do you give a shit what you think?

[VM]

“My point was there exist people without that capacity who still have the right to life,

Did you not even see that contradiction as you typed it”

physically and mentally compromised people, for example.

but the contradiction did slap me and leave a welt, but on my bottom.

and it was goooooooood.

[Timothy]

Man, those contradictions get all the action. Also, Kyle, your mom is a bitch. A big fat bitch, the biggest bitch in the whole wide world.

[Minion of URKOBOLD]

HA!! TIMOTHY IS SLOWER THIS TIME. HA!!!!!

COULD WE SEE HIS MOM ON SUNDAY, TO CONFIRM WHAT THE NATURE OF BEING DIFFERENT IS?

[Eric the .5b]

By the way, I’m not posting these asides to defend Billy. He doesn’t need it.

Yes, just as these words Are Not Meant For Us despite the apparent engagement with us, these defenses are not necessary despite the apparent necessity.

One tax-evading Objectivist and some number of allegedly-not-sockpuppet lickspittle fans – sounds like some socialist’s half-assed modern parody of Rand.

[Ron Good]

Eric: quite true that my words were not meant for you. But thank you for reinforcing the point.

There are others here, and what I wrote was meant for some of them.

Ayn Randian: (serious question) As you understand it, what is the difference–or is there any–between a “right” and a mere “legal permission”?

[Eric the .5b]

quite true that my words were not meant for you

Yeah, yeah, we get it. It’s for your own clique’s self-amusement all those Incipient Anarchists y’all hope will fall in love with a belligerent, wheezing loony.

[Ron Good]

Yeah, yeah, we get it.

Not yet, *you* don’t.

Who is this “we” you speak of, and on what authority? Try speaking just for yourself, for starters; that might help.

[Jennifer]

AAAAUUUUGH! I step away for the Internet for a little while and return to discover Billy gone! Don’t go yet, Billy! Please? I still need you to enlighten me as to the proper anarchist’s reaction I’m supposed to have when you make good on your manly threat to knock my teeth out before I go down on you, remember?

[VM]

Ron Good | December 17, 2007, 7:03pm | #
Who is this “we” you speak of, and on what authority? Try speaking just for yourself, for starters; that might help.

His people, of course. They do lunch frequently.

And he is speaking for himself, for starters. But we are unclear why that might help?

And what do their authority have to do with stuff? Or: who is (are) the “you” you were addressing, and on what authority?

In case you were wondering, I speak with the authority of a slightly-deranged (micro)economist who spends way too much time thinkin’ about taints and BATIN.

p.s., your brother, Johnny B. rocks!!!!!

[Ron Good]

p.s., your brother, Johnny B. rocks!!!!!

yeah…I’m the blues guy in the family 🙂

[VM]

awesome!

[Jake Boone]

Who is this “we” you speak of, and on what authority?

Me, for one. Eric is more than welcome to speak on my behalf, and if I ever run across something he says on my behalf that I disagree strongly enough with, I’ll retroactively retract my endorsement.

There. Now maybe you could answer the question instead of playing semantic games (if you’ve forgotten, the question was something along the lines of “is there a place where Billy acts like something other than a gigantic douche?”).

[Ron Good]

is there a place where Billy acts like something other than a gigantic douche?

Perhaps you missed my earlier answer. The previous question’s wording was: in some other venue, the alleged William Joseph Beck III is rational and argues in good faith…

and I responded:

Yes. Exactly–and not just in some other venue, and I’ve never seen an exception in over 10 years, including what you’re seeing here today, but you might not recognize the truth of that (and that’s not Billy’s fault).

take for example his answer here/today:
Billy Beck | December 17, 2007, 3:34pm | #

In my view, Billy *always* argues in good faith.

[Jake Boone]

I didn’t ask about good faith. I asked about not being a prick — that’s different. Despite Billy’s apparent conviction, one doesn’t have to be a raging asshole to make persuasive arguments. Keep in mind that I hold a pro-market anarchist philosophy, but I believe Billy’s approach (and that of his hangers-on) is hugely counterproductive, because for every person he convinces with his swaggering douchebaggery, another dozen, predictably, write off anarchism forever as the province of swaggering douchebaggery.

I like the free market. Assholes, not so much. Makes me deduct “character points,” if you will.

[Ron Good]

So you can trot out “prick” and “douchebaggery” and so on, ’cause you’re just asking questions or calling it like you see it, but when Billy says “Bullshit” or “Fucking disgusting” and so on, he’s swaggering and posing.

Fascinating.

And, sincerely, I’m glad you support a “pro-market anarchist philosophy”. Me too.

[Minion of URKOBOLD]

THIS THREAD IS AWESOME!!!!!

[Jake Boone]

So you can trot out “prick” and “douchebaggery” and so on, ’cause you’re just asking questions or calling it like you see it, but when Billy says “Bullshit” or “Fucking disgusting” and so on, he’s swaggering and posing.

Yeah, pretty much. Of course, it helps that I’m using the words “prick” and “douchebaggery” to refer to the behavior of the person who started off with “bullshit” and “fucking disgusting,” and didn’t bother with any actual arguments until the next goddamned day.

If you want to declare (or, more accurately, imply) that the guy who comes in and shits in the punchbowl equivalent to the guy who calls him a colossal prick for doing so, well, there’s not much I can do about that, I suppose.

Fascinating indeed.

[Ernest Brown]

AR,

Thank you for your letter, but I see that you have continued on the conversation at REASON. Bearing in mind Billy’s admonition about speaking for others, might -I- suggest that you take a look at your own conceptual conundrum, namely how you can spin the dross of your own self-admitted ignorance into the gold of an involuntary collectivist grouping that does the judging about “retaliatory” violence?

There ARE ways in which the collective actions of individuals attain a higher level of success and rationality than the actions of just one, but they involve the very market forces that you and Mrs. Hsieh deny are applicable. Thus, one can only conclude that you have not found a way out of the vale of ignorance.

[Ron Good]

I actually thought, early on in this thread, it would have been obvious why Billy thought NORML’s position was fucking disgusting, and I also thought that REASON’s readers would have understood why he thought that way without much if any discussion being needed.

So–as I see it–NORML shit in the punchbowl, and I thought Billy was right when he said that was FD.

I was freakin’ astonished when J sub D chimed in with: “What is so disgusting about a business ‘paying income, payroll, business, and sales taxes, and offering workmen’s compensation, unemployment, and health insurance benefits to their employees.'” as a response to Billy’s statement, and I thought it was exceedingly apropriate when Billy responded with: “J: If you actually have to ask, then you have no serious business attending this forum“–after all, this is a REASON magazine forum, not the usual stomping ground of “Interventionists-R-Us.

Perhaps, however, Billy should have just referred Mr J sub D to Bastiat or Rothbard or von Mises (for starters) and let it go at that.

[Billy Beck]

An Kantian: “Oh you are being deliberately obtuse. Is there any denying that overwhelming force can make your rights obsolete?”

“Obsolete” is a concept from which only a fool or idiot would approach the concept of rights. And this is what you wrote:

“See, the unfortunate part in all of this is that, no matter what, you get to keep your rights as long as you can defend them.”

That’s ridiculous. A person has a right to his property even after it’s been stolen from him in an unsuccessful defense of his right to his property. A successful violation of rights does nothing to “obsolete” them. This is, after all, why we prosecute thieves. (Note: don’t hand me any rot about the state underpinning the word “prosecute” here. It doesn’t.) If rights were so dependent on their successful defense as you say, then there would be no point reason to pursue a thief or a murderer after the crime: no moral conclusion on which to act against the perp after the fact.

You haven’t thought any of this through.

And you really should retire your net.tag. It’s quite disgraceful of you.

[Ernest Brown]

Billy,

“Tell me you didn’t see it coming, too, E.”

I had my suspicions.

“‘Love it or leave it.’ As if he owns it.
When is this pretense ever going to end?”

The crack of doom, probably.

I suppose that if they want to focus on petty trivialities, one more shiny object won’t hurt them:

http://www.two–four.net/comments.php?id=P3310_0_1_0

[Billy Beck]

For Christ’s goddamned sake, already. Now, we’re cat-blogging. Jesus. What next?

[Jake Boone]

I actually thought, early on in this thread, it would have been obvious why Billy thought NORML’s position was fucking disgusting, and I also thought that REASON’s readers would have understood why he thought that way without much if any discussion being needed.

If everyone here were a market anarchist — which, I believe you will admit, they are not — then, yes, Billy’s terse verdict would have been perfectly understandable, even if arguable.

J sub D asked a valid question; while I think most folks on H&R would be disgusted by the fact that the business is required to pay taxes, insurance, etc., it’s something of a stretch to expect widespread disgust on the level Billy displayed (a “syphilis cocktail”? Really?) at the mere fact that the business was complying, just like “Patrick Chkoreff” reports doing in this very thread (not that there was any hint of outrage at Patrick’s recognition of reality).

To most libertarians, I imagine, playing off one level of government against the other seems a reasonable defensive tactic under the circumstances. But when J sub D asked for clarification (without, I might add, a hint of invective), he was met with:

J: If you actually have to ask, then you have no serious business attending this forum.

That was when the turd hit the punchbowl, in my opinion. With that in mind, I’ve fixed the quote below for you.

[…] after all, this is a REASON magazine forum, not the usual stomping ground of “Interventionists-R-Us. Strike the Root.

[Elliot]

Jake: …for every person he convinces with his swaggering douchebaggery, another dozen, predictably, write off anarchism forever as the province of swaggering douchebaggery.

So?

Why do you desire the approval of people who make such simplistic judgments?

[Ernest Brown]

“For Christ’s goddamned sake, already. Now, we’re cat-blogging. Jesus. What next?”

Beats me. I’m just showing them that you’re really a sweet huggable guy who wuvs widdle kitties, in addition to having styling taste in casual wear, loving and respecting your mom, etc. After all, those are the REALLY important things, not Ron’s silly and foolish little point about how NORML’s actions should be repugnant to anyone with a pretense of appreciating classical liberalism and laissez-faire capitalism.

[Billy Beck]

“(a ‘syphilis cocktail’? Really?)”

That’s right. “Really”.

Mixed-premises are no way to go through politics.

[Richard Nikoley]

B said, about his SS:

“I’d have to look it up, but I’m pretty sure that I first published all that in Usenet at least ten years ago, when I was living in metro Atlanta.”

It was at least that, the first time I saw it. Could have been as early as ’95 or so.

I’m just catching up still, so this may have been hashed out. To the rest of you, your amazement at Billy’s behavior here doesn’t compare to my amazement that you didn’t do your homework on him a bit first, because he’s been at this for a dozen years, at least, and BBSs before that. If you believe he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing you are surely deluding yourselves.

I’ve watched this very thing; many, many times in a dozen years.

I’ve also met Billy a coupla times, face to face and I don’t think for a second that Elizabeth wouldn’t melt (in a flattering, self-respecting way) in Billy’s very intense presence.

[Billy Beck]

{hah} You can be a real asshole, Ernest. I love it.

Man, I said no smiley-faces.

[Thomas Robinson]

I’ve also met Billy a coupla times, face to face and I don’t think for a second that Elizabeth wouldn’t melt (in a flattering, self-respecting way) in Billy’s very intense presence.

Funnily enough, people said similar things about Charles Manson.

I’ve watched this very thing; many, many times in a dozen years.

Awww, it’s like you’re part of his Family.

[Ginslinger]

What’s natural is the ability to learn. That, however, say nothing about the values necessary to live like a human being instead of a predator.

Sorry, doesn’t answer the question: What makes a human being? It’s east enough to make that argumnent, but since you and your boys don’t seem to agreee on the word “people,”? we gots problems on your “objectivist” credes. The fact is, you have yet to confront any of my objective-language take downs of you.

The fact of the mater is that I, like Jennifer, et al., think you are full of sound anf fury, signifying nothing.

(Plus, I’ve had a case of beer, and still make more sense than you and your buddies).

[Billy Beck]

You’re not going to get away with that, Rich.

I guess the drinks are on me next time we get together.

~~~~~

To anyone else who’s had anything nice to say about me:

You evil bastards. I’ve spent over three decades of backbreaking work at wrecking my reputation, and I am not about to have all undone now.

I do appreciate you, though.

[A CHUBBY LITTLE GIRL]

THIS THREAD SHALL NOT REACH 626 POSTS. THIS THREAD SHALL NOT TAKE MY CROWNING GLORY! MY HAM TEARS SHALL FORM A GREAT TORRENT, A MIGHTY RIVER THAT SHALL WASH AWAY YOUR BLASPHEMOUS PRESUMPTION IN A SALTY, HAM-SCENTED DELUGE!

[Ron Good]

…Ron’s silly and foolish little point about how NORML’s actions should be repugnant to anyone with a pretense of appreciating classical liberalism and laissez-faire capitalism

LOL 😉

[Jake Boone]

Why do you desire the approval of people who make such simplistic judgments?

I don’t understand why you don’t already know the answer to this question, but here goes:

Because if a free-market philosophy is embraced by only a tiny minority, we will never move closer to a free market. Unlike Billy’s little band of philosopher-kings, I’d rather try to do my part to move society toward a free market than wander around the web waving my dick in everyone’s face.

I really think you’re all helping to torpedo the chances of anyone — including yourselves — ever achieving greater freedom than they have right now.

Maybe that’s on purpose, because more freedom would mean that the bloody revolution fantasy you wank over would be longer in coming, or maybe it’s because in some sick, twisted way you think people are more likely to listen to your arguments when you act like you think you’re the fucking Jack-Booted Fuehrer of Proper Anarchistic Thought; the reasons don’t matter. The fact is, you’re hurting the cause of freedom, so I think you’re all a bunch of pathetic sons of bitches who need a good crotch-kicking.

Kindly fuck off.

EDIT: I don’t give a good goddamn how long Billy’s been actively wandering around being a prick. If people like you are his legacy, I’m not going to shed any tears about not being in his club.

[Kyle Bennett]

Hey, I hear it’s just like usenet over here. Well, the thread has been measured in days, but it’s still far too polite for the comparison.

And Ernest, that just wasn’t fair, letting them know he’s nicer to cats than he is to them, just because cats are more honest.

[GinSlinger]

I’m just catching up still, so this may have been hashed out. To the rest of you, your amazement at Billy’s behavior here doesn’t compare to my amazement that you didn’t do your homework on him a bit first, because he’s been at this for a dozen years, at least, and BBSs before that. If you believe he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing you are surely deluding yourselves.

Dondero??

Doooonderoooooooooo??

Seriously, Donderoooooooo?

[Kyle Bennett]

To anyone else who’s had anything nice to say about me:

You evil bastards. I’ve spent over three decades of backbreaking work at wrecking my reputation, and I am not about to have all undone now.

Well, I for one have tried my damnedest to refrain from putting lie to your black-as-coal-hearted rep. But for what it’s worth, I know you must get down to my neck of the woods once in a while, and I owe you a beer or two as well – at least. Just for justice’s sake.

[GinSlinger]

I’m just catching up still, so this may have been hashed out. To the rest of you, your amazement at Billy’s behavior here doesn’t compare to my amazement that you didn’t do your homework on him a bit first, because he’s been at this for a dozen years, at least, and BBSs before that. If you believe he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing you are surely deluding yourselves.

No, no, really, you’re making me laugh ’til I cry. Are you all, really, no, seriously, really, DONDEEEEERRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOO?

‘Cause if you are, you have, undeniably won troll of the year. Oh, and Billy bud, I know (and am close to) someone with a $2MM Les Paul collection. Figure out who it is, and you might just get one.

Dondero??

Doooonderoooooooooo??

Seriously, Donderoooooooo?

[GinSlinger]

Oh, and absolutely most important: What is the “natural state of man” and where does it come from? Have you, yourself investigated it? Or, are you accepting arguements from “authority”?

BTW, ’til you knock over a Brinks truvk–you’re all just posers!!

[Richard Nikoley]

“I like the free market. Assholes, not so much. Makes me deduct “character points,” if you will.”

Fine. As you will. I like the free market, and I like certain “assholes” so long as they know how to chart a course and navigate it. Me? I’m just a smartass, but I’m working on asshole.

[Ernest Brown]

“EDIT: I don’t give a good goddamn how long Billy’s been actively wandering around being a prick. If people like you are his legacy, I’m not going to shed any tears about not being in his club.”

Translation:

“Sniff, I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and if enough people REALLY REALLY LIKE ME, I’ll get a minimal-state pony.”

[Richard Nikoley]

“Funnily enough, people said similar things about Charles Manson.”

Should I care? Hitler’s mom loved him to pieces, I’m sure. Does your mom love you?

“Awww, it’s like you’re part of his Family.”

You know, we get pissed at each other about every six months, like clockwork. Hopefully, we each see it in a larger context, that we’re ultimately our own men, and we get it resolved, like men — like we ether come to some level of agreement or take refuge in the fact that neither are going to send goons to either’s house as our agent.

And if you think your snide “Awww” in any way describes my level of admiration for That Man, you’re mistaken. Neither will any or your predictable and further schoolyard taunting motivate me to otherwise “moderate” my cheerleading, when I think it’s warranted.

That said, I handle things differently than Billy. If I stick around, and I think you or anyone else is worth dealing with, you’ll see.

[Billy Beck]

While the action is breaking down to patented bullshit among the Munchkins and I’m trying to set fire to my own admiration society: “Oh, and Billy bud, I know (and am close to) someone with a $2MM Les Paul collection.”

How the fuck old are you? What on earth is your stupid point?

Another thought, while I’m pensive:

Matt Welch: I was really sorry to hear that you have to move to Washington, mate, but very much looking forward to your stewardship of the magazine. I very much agree with someone who recently sniffed at Gillespie’s effort. Let me only say that I think a great deal of that is reflected in the commentors all over this blog. I always have.

You would be doing good work to beat this place into a bit more serious shape.

[Timothy]

Oh, and absolutely most important: What is the “natural state of man” and where does it come from?

Naked in my consumption chamber, obviously.

Billy: Is the height of that horse giving you a little bit of delirium or is the syphilis finally cutting holes in your brain?

[Billy Beck]

“Just me and the pygmy pony, over by the mental-floss bush…”

[Richard Nikoley]

While waiting and watching for something to grab onto, a bit, here’s something for your all’s consideration. But feel free to taunt.

Yea, Billy’s been “rude.” So what? Are you all so young and inexperienced in life that you don’t sense anything beyond the “vitriol,” without even a whisper of a thought that by thins point, knowing now something of his history that he might already (long ago, actually) have you exactly where he wants you.

You can chalk that up to bravado, if you like, but just remember that an assessment like that exists only because sometimes it really isn’t a ruse. But feel free to call it however you like.

You all post here — and I can tell pretty easily — as though you’re really on the cusp of this REASON thing. And I’ll tell you that I received my first issue of the print subscription in 1990.

And Ernest Brown and I crossed paths on COMPUSERVE in 1992 or ’93, even before I crossed Billy on USENET in ’94 or so.

It’s meaningless, you say? Perhaps. Today’s facts are today’s facts. It’s true. “The Internet is libertarian leaning, you celebrate, with a tinge of pride. Have you any idea of what people were kicking commie ass in 1990 and after, people who are now libertarians and anarchists rather than entitlement cheerleaders.

Dismiss it. Put it out of your minds. Go ahead, and don’t even try to figure out if some people along the way figured out how you do that, and make it stick.

Don’t give it another thought.

[Ron Good]

Jake:

re this exchange:

I actually thought, early on in this thread, it would have been obvious why Billy thought NORML’s position was fucking disgusting, and I also thought that REASON’s readers would have understood why he thought that way without much if any discussion being needed.

If everyone here were a market anarchist — which, I believe you will admit, they are not — then, yes, Billy’s terse verdict would have been perfectly understandable, even if arguable.

J sub D asked a valid question; while I think most folks on H&R would be disgusted by the fact that the business is required to pay taxes, insurance, etc., it’s something of a stretch to expect widespread disgust on the level Billy displayed (a “syphilis cocktail”? Really?) at the mere fact that the business was complying, just like “Patrick Chkoreff” reports doing in this very thread (not that there was any hint of outrage at Patrick’s recognition of reality).

Exactly what is valid about J sub D’s question? Billy wasn’t commenting on the fact that businesses paid taxes. Billy’s point was simply and obviously only that NORML is a bunch of disgusting cretins for attempting to buy off the feds with money that isn’t theirs in the first place. JD’s question is no more valid to *that* discussion than me asking “How do you feel about people who drive Midnight Blue Cadillacs?” at a symposium on the Zapruder film.

So, J sub D missed the fucking point of Billy’s post and followed by asking a completely irrelevant question about companies paying taxes.

And you wonder why Billy responded with: “J: If you actually have to ask, then you have no serious business attending this forum.”

Or (you tell me) how in the hell did J sub D go from this:

Shorter NORML: “Get your goons to lay off, and we’ll cut you a piece of the action.”

With friends like that, I might as well splash down a syphilis cocktail on the rocks.

Fucking disgusting.”

to this:

What is so disgusting about a business “paying income, payroll, business, and sales taxes, and offering workmen’s compensation, unemployment, and health insurance benefits to their employees.”

?

[Matt]

Kyle,

‘The state is not the root of the “eeevil”, it’s the symptom.’

I hadn’t put it together that way before now. Thank you.

[Ron Good]

Ran as a Libertarian candidate in a Canadian federal election in 1984. Think I met Billy online in ’95 or so. Ran into REASON maybe 1978 or so. Ayn Rand, Mises, Rothbard, Bastiat et al…maybe 1976.

…just sayin’. It’s no big thing. There were folks doing serious work way before I caught on.

But Richard is still making a good point. And it’s generous and thoughtful of him.

My respect, Richard.

[Billy Beck]

Since we’re taking history notes:

I read Robert LeFevre in 1969, IIRC. I was thirteen years old. Went swiftly through Rand’s “Selfishness” and “Capitalism” that same year or very shortly after. Intense discussion on the first “hate radio” (that’s commie for conservative talk-radio) station I ever heard, and what must have been one of the first ever: KTRG Honolulu; 24-hour conservative/libtertarian talk radio. I used to listen to the rational anarchists way too late at night for my age.

By the tenth grade, I was at total war with my civics teacher by the third day of the class and it never, ever stopped. I failed that class in blinding Technicolor and it’s one of my proudest moments. That commie bastard never laid a finger on me when it came to ideas.

“I myself was spared the intellectual humiliation of a college education.”

(H.L. Mencken — and me too.)

I spent a good part of the 70’s getting my career-feet under me, but never stopped reading things that made sense — or taking slash-&-burn marginalia on things that didn’t. And I never kept my mouth shut — ever — when I saw the least chance of striking a blow for freedom.

By the mid-80’s, I was all over Hayek and Mises, Keynes, Hutt, et. al., moving through economics on a loop back through Rand toward all kinds of technical philosophy. Copleston as a chart, and the stuff that he didn’t cover, like some post-modern French assholes. Continental Pragmatism. etc. I connected my first computer online in 1986, and promptly went looking for a fight. Always found it.

By 1990, I was hanging at a BBS in ATL that included Bruce McQuain (from QandO). That place was full of writers: you couldn’t get in unless you passed the owner’s test. Bruce and I had a great workout, for which I will always be grateful. He, and everyone else, made me think about organizing ideas in writing more than I ever had before.

My first internet account in 1995: Usenet was shocking. Never in my life had I seen such concentrated and deliberate mendacity and it was just about always commies. I recognized the traditions as I cranked up serious study of Sovietology: it was Lunacharksy’s children out there. You had to see the Whitwater group, into which I waded as “Philosophical Liaison”, putting the Ozark Long March to work as an object-lesson in principles in practice. That was wild: it’s not for nothin’ that it was called “the first war in cyberspace”. It really was. We have John Huang’s fingerprints on it to prove it.

And here we are: in blogs, and it’s the same ol’ bullshit.

…except that every once in a while, I see a small light open up in the gathering Endarkenment: a whole culture of motherfuckers who cannot or will not think.

When that happens, it makes the whole weird trip eminently worthwhile.

[Richard Nikoley]

Oh, Billy, you’re far too modest. Even though you put it right there on your sidebar for them to find, I doubt any of them checked out your “Recommended Reading.”

http://www.two–four.net/weblog.php?id=P942

I’m wondering if even one of them has read (much less annotated and quotes form) a single one of those volumes.

You were just such easy prey. Why bother to understand the why?

[Elliot]

Jake: The fact is, you’re hurting the cause of freedom…

That is not a fact. It’s your ignorant opinion, because you fail to consider that the people whose panties are bunched up over the lack of niceties have, from the beginning, already compromised on the very principles on which any self-respecting “cause of freedom” must stand.

[Kyle Bennett]

Matt,

You’re welcome. Happy to help.

[Richard Nikoley]

Duh.

I just noticed that after however many comments the link to my blog crashes. Not essential, but certainly annoying for anyone who wanted to check up.

Fixed now.

[lunchstealer]

Hoo dawgy.

I haven’t seen quality crazy like this in a good long while. dhex is right. This thread should be included in the next Norton’s Anthology as some sort of Flannery-O’Connor inspired internet gothic short story.

BB, I hereby crown you King of all Londinium. Please see the receptionist for your shiny hat.

[Billy Beck]

“BB, I hereby crown you King of all Londinium.”

“If nominated, I will laugh right in your face. If elected, you’ll fuckin’-aye never find me.”

[Jennifer]

I guess Billy the Brave’s not going to answer my question after all. A tiny little woman’s all it takes to make his bad ass back down. What a surprise.

[Ernest Brown]

“I guess Billy the Brave’s not going to answer my question after all. A tiny little woman’s all it takes to make his bad ass back down. What a surprise.”

Girls just can’t resist kitty-lovin’ lighting techs. It renews my faith in romance.

[Billy Beck]

Honey, did you ever have a man look you up & down once, say in a bar, and then walk away and leave you standing there with a big wide drill-hole in your hopes and dreams?

Have an ice day.

[Ernest Brown]

“…then walk away and leave you standing there with a big wide drill-hole in your hopes and dreams.”

Reliable reports indicate that the was Zippy the Pinhead, even fictional microcephalics have better taste and higher standards than that.

[Ernest Brown]

“he was”

[lunchstealer]

Oh, don’t worry Billy. The duties of office are exactly what you’re already doing. The coronation was really just a formality. Keep up the good work, Your Majesty.

[lunchstealer]

Seriously, though. Imagine all the mutant libertarian flipper babies BB and Donderooooooooo could have.

[lunchstealer]

BB His Royal Highness and Donderooooooooo

Sorry, didn’t mean to offend Your Majesty.

[Jeffrey Quick]

“Jennifer | December 17, 2007, 4:58pm | #
I hope he at least uses Viagra first. I’m good, very damned good, but you can’t reasonably expect me to be all Jesus regarding his Little Lazarus down there.”

Given your “thought” processes, dear, I think the better comparison is your Pontius Pilate to Billy’s Jesus.

[Ernest Brown]

Jeffrey,

“Given your “thought” processes, dear, I think the better comparison is your Pontius Pilate to Billy’s Jesus.”

To paraphrase an old St. Louie boy, “Jennifer is the dumbest ditz, mixing stupidity and desire…”

[Jennifer]

Oh, Billy, I’d hoped you could do better than that. I ask a question with sincere repercussions for the Sacred Anarchist Cause (namely, the proper response to violence or threats thereof), and the best you can do is some pathetic implication that I’m suffering unrequited lust for you?

[Timothy]

This thread is like pure, distilled joy. Or, at least, what pure distilled joy would be if it weren’t already called “whiskey”.

[Ernest Brown]

“Oh, Billy, I’d hoped you could do better than that.”

He can, sweetums, which is why you don’t rate. It’s not his fault that you confused a rhetorical question with a statement of desire.

[Jeffrey Quick]

“Ayn_Randian | December 17, 2007, 3:32pm | #
dictatorial control over interstate commerce

You know what’s a fun game? Finding who can push out the most overbearing and reaching arguments ever.

YOU WIN, for equating “regulating” with “dictatorial control”. ”

When you can tell me what I can do with my wheat because it’s just like wheat that could have crossed a state line, that’s dictatorial control. And that was justified by the “goddamed piece of paper”, per SCOTUS.

One man’s regulation is his victim’s dictatorial control. Putting a bullet through your head would likely have a salutary effect on this thread; would that be regulation, or dictatorship?

[Jeffrey Quick]

“To paraphrase an old St. Louie boy, “Jennifer is the dumbest ditz, mixing stupidity and desire…””

…stirring dull roots with yellow rain.

[Richard Nikoley]

From Matt, quoting Kyle:

“‘The state is not the root of the “eeevil”, it’s the symptom.’

I hadn’t put it together that way before now. Thank you.”

This is a crucial thing to understand, and it’s at the root of why — as we see here — most limited-government “libertarians” have no choice but to accept the very premises every commie on the planet uses, and ultimately, when pushed to it by someone like Billy, will soon enough start arguing just like a commie.

It’s inevitable.

The root of the problem is laziness and dishonesty, both a product of two of the basest human emotions/motivations: fear and greed. To state it another way: humanity involves, most simply, the conscious and principled discipline and control of fear and greed, which one has no choice but to experience as a higher biological organism.

A good way to think about how the non-human homo sapiens respond to fear and greed is that they seek to hoard profits and spread losses. The chief motivation is laziness and chief tool to satisfy all is dishonesty. The interesting thing about dishonesty — self, other directed, and institutionalized — is that the better one is at it (the more dishonest) the less detectable and more powerful it is.

What’s interesting about laziness is how hard people work at not producing tradeable values. Consider a bum on the exit ramp day in, day out. I’ve seen some of them work their asses off at begging in the hot, cold, and rainy for years on end. How much easier it would be to work at a job.

It’s the labor theory of value. The lazy look to a world where raw physical activity, disconnected from any other requirements, is of paramount value.

Back to the current morass, here. To look at it in its plainest form, there are those advocating that some fears are just too great not to force others to pay for general anesthesia, and the argument turns on which anesthesia and in what dosage is most “efficient” and “useful.” Hey, maybe we can “privatize” the production and delivery of it, which still doesn’t address the root laziness, dishonesty, individual responsibility or accountability.

Then there are those, “the nouveaux ancaps,” who rightfully understand that you can’t hold consistently to individualist principle and advocate any degree of state coercion, but have failed to understand that the state is an effect of a deeper problem (as outlined above). They think that you have to win friends and influence people by trying to explain that life would be so much better without the state.

But you can’t truly understand anarchism until you accept that it doesn’t matter what society “would be like” without the state. It’s not the issue. The issue is that nobody has any right to chain me to their fears or satisfy their greed at my involuntary expense and anyone who thinks otherwise, even just a little tine bit can just go fuck right off and there’s simply no kind way to put that.

[Ernest Brown]

“But you can’t truly understand anarchism until you accept that it doesn’t matter what society “would be like” without the state. It’s not the issue. The issue is that nobody has any right to chain me to their fears or satisfy their greed at my involuntary expense and anyone who thinks otherwise, even just a little tine bit can just go fuck right off and there’s simply no kind way to put that.”

Exactly, once you start putting forth pragmatic arguments with no principled conceptual/rational justification, Bob’s your uncle and Hillary is your health care professional.

[Richard Nikoley]

I said:

“A good way to think about how the non-human homo sapiens respond to fear and greed is that they seek to hoard profits and spread losses.”

Those who know me’ll “get it,” but I could have stated it better. Rather than “hoard profits,” that should be something like: “gain the unearned.”

[Jennifer]

He can, sweetums, which is why you don’t rate. It’s not his fault that you confused a rhetorical question with a statement of desire.

Since Billy now needs Ernest and Jeffrey to make his arguments for him, I’ll redirect my question away from Jesus and to his two Beloved Disciples: if your master makes good on his manly and impressive threat to knock my teeth out in order to reduce the pain he’ll feel during the subsequent blowjob, what is (from an anarchist’s viewpoint), the proper response for me? Seriously: would it be acceptable under the circumstances for me to call the police and support a government prosecution of Billy? If this turns out to be unnecessary due to skillful application of my second amendment rights, do I toss his body onto my garbage heap, or turn it over to the authorities in deference to The Law? If the latter, am I destroying freedom by compliance with the laws regarding human-corpse disposal?

For that matter, is it even proper for me to speak of “second amendment rights?” That might be misconstrued as support for the idea that the government somehow “grants” these rights.

[Kyle Bennett]

They think that you have to win friends and influence people by trying to explain that life would be so much better without the state.

And I’ve been trying to explain to people that this formulation reverses cause and effect – it puts the cart before the horse. If the state is only an effect, taking it away does nothing to affect the cause. Think instead: the state would be so much less of a problem if life were better.

In other words, make the state irrelevant, then it goes away. Make yourself free of your fear and greed and need to placate the moochers, then the state becomes less relevant. Help enough people do the same and the state becomes both irrelevant and ineffective.

But you can’t truly understand anarchism until you accept that it doesn’t matter what society “would be like” without the state.

Right. Ask instead what are the kinds of political organization are possible to a society built on human nature. This society without the state would be just like this society – because it is the cause of the modern state, not primarily the result of it.

Libertarians are constantly saying that the state is not the source of freedom and of rights. Yet when it comes down to concretes, they continue to act by exactly the premise that it is.

[Kyle Bennett]

Make yourself free of your fear and greed and need to placate the moochers

And another phrase for that last is: guilt.

[Jennifer]

Libertarians are constantly saying that the state is not the source of freedom and of rights.

So hypothetically: do I have the “right” to keep my teeth in my mouth? If so, is this a natural right, a right granted by the state, or a right granted by the fact that Billy hasn’t got around to knocking them out yet?

[Kyle Bennett]

Jen,

If Billy has shit in the punch bowl, as you term it, why do you keep drinking the punch?

[Jennifer]

If Billy has shit in the punch bowl, as you term it, why do you keep drinking the punch?

I didn’t term it; you’re confusing me with someone else. And I really do want an answer to my question. I’m sorry that your master lacks the courage to offer one, but I’ll ask again: if your master makes good on his impressive, manly threat to knock out my teeth, what response can I give that will be in keeping with proper anarchist principles? Would I be harming the Cause of Human Freedom if I let the state prosecute him, or do I simply have my friends take care of it?

And if I shoot him in self-defense, am I supposed to comply with the laws concerning the reporting and disposal of a human corpse, or are such laws inherently erosive to the cause of freedom?

[lunchstealer]

Ok, so if Jennifer is Pontius Pilate, and Billy is Jesus, that would make Ernest and Jeffrey the Holy Ghost and The Father, respectively. So that makes Kyle John the Baptist, and Dondero would be Muhammed, or possibly Joseph Smith.

So VM would be HL Mencken, dhex would be ee cummings, of course, only scarier and funnier, and AR would be, say, Nero, and I think Jake gets to be Salome. J sub D, do you wanna be a Pharisee, or do you have something else in mind?

[lunchstealer]

How are we gonna fit all this into the Dan T pantheon?

[Richard Nikoley]

“And I really do want an answer to my question.”

Well, let’s be honest about it, K?

If you sincerely wanted an answer in the context of individual rights, you’d have realized about 10 iterations ago that the successful way to get questions asked is to loose they hyperbolic rhetoric.

What you really want is an answer to your question, not the or a question.

Everyone’s mileage may differ, but in 15 years or so I think the incessant restating of the same manipulative and dishonest question to the same person is about the dumbest debating tactic I’ve ever seen. Any review of that exchange shows it was clearly tit for tat: do this; will you blow me? sure, and I’ll bite you; not if I knock your teeth out. The end.

Now, you’re welcome to keep asking, but all Billy needs to do is two thing: the first is to let you keep asking and asking, and the second is to field all other honest questions. Eventually you’ll stop and the record will demonstrate something quite obvious.

I’d love to eventually leave this thread with the firm belief you’re not a moron. But hey; feel free.

[Ernest Brown]

“Since Billy now needs Ernest and Jeffrey to make his arguments for him”

Dear me, your mentation capacity is even lower than I could have possibly imagined. I’m -mocking- you, spud-dumpling, which is all you’ll ever merit in life.

[Jennifer]

If you sincerely wanted an answer in the context of individual rights, you’d have realized about 10 iterations ago that the successful way to get questions asked is to loose they hyperbolic rhetoric.

If “they [sic] hyperbolic rhetoric” is synonymous with “being obnoxious and rude,” I would suggest, in the words of your master, that you remove the beam from thine eye before concerning thyself with the splinter in mine own.

Any review of that exchange shows it was clearly tit for tat: do this; will you blow me? sure, and I’ll bite you; not if I knock your teeth out.

Tit for tat, really? Which of my own personal tits equated to “I’ll knock your teeth out?” Was it lefty or righty? (Seriously, though, that manly threat earned Billy some MAJOR admiration points here. It did!)

By the way, did your master ask you to backtrack on his behalf or did you do that on your own initiative? I’m guessing that he won’t be teaching me a toothy (or is it toothless?) lesson after all, but I’m sure that one of his disciples is brave and manly enough to pick up the torch he dropped. So whence my right to my own teeth, or is this alleged right to dentition merely another delusion?

[Ernest Brown]

“I’d love to eventually leave this thread with the firm belief you’re not a moron. But hey; feel free.”

“She’s” a fine example of failing the Turing test, to be sure.

[Jennifer]

You’re doing it wrong, guys! When you’re talking about a macho threat to knock out my teeth, it is I, the one who’s actually been threatened, who’s supposed to back down, remember? Not you! Stand tall! The future reputation of the philosophy of anarchy is riding on your manly shoulders, and the people reading this thread who thought “Wow, that Billy sure makes me want to be an anarchist just like him” are now thinking “but not when he and his friends combined lack sufficient balls to stand up to a little tiny woman on the Internet.”

If you can’t even stand your ground against me, how can you possibly expect to stand firm against The State?

[Timothy]

Well, that’s better than failing the basic hygiene test or the “not living with your mother” test. Can I come over later, Ernest, I bet you guys have the BEST bukkake parties!

[Richard Nikoley]

Ernie:

Well the old “poor little me,” “hey tough guy,” and “take me to your leader” is such old saw, but maybe she doesn’t know that yet.

Someone pointed out her lack of substantive contribution to the thread, which most others have managed at some level, in spite of the generally lousy signal/noise.

I guess she’ll keep playing damsel in distress until she finds a rescuer. You wanna rescue her from herself, Ernie? Were you ever young and dumb enough to try?

[Jennifer]

I guess she’ll keep playing damsel in distress until she finds a rescuer.

Shockingly, it turns out I don’t need a rescuer after all. My attacker backed down. Wow. Who could possibly have known that threats of violence made by a skinny old bald guy on the Internet are not worth taking seriously?

[Timothy]

If anybody needs a contribution substantiated feel free to call Eric DONDEROOOOOOOOOOOOO! He’s always substantiating bigboy contributions, wink wink nudge nudge.

[Jeffrey Quick]

Rich dealt with this just fine, but:
Since Billy now needs Ernest and Jeffrey to make his arguments for him,

No, he doesn’t. He can and has bitten your head off just fine, but your legs are still wiggling so weez cats is playing mouse hockey with you, ’cause it’s fun.

I’ll redirect my question away from Jesus and to his two Beloved Disciples: if your master makes good on his manly and impressive threat to knock my teeth out in order to reduce the pain he’ll feel during the subsequent blowjob, what is (from an anarchist’s viewpoint), the proper response for me?

Since you accepted his invitation to suck his dick, biting it would be a violation of the implicit agreement to treat Billy lovingly, and an initiation of force. One could argue whether the counterforce of knocking your teeth out was proportionate or not, but it would be deserved, as much as biting a rapist’s dick would be deserved.

Seriously:
There’s nothing serious about founding an argument on rhetorical hypotheticals, but if you want serious, up there it is. If you don’t, then let me suggest that anyone who would get intimate with you would deserve anything he got, as society and the law frown on sexual relations with the retarded.

[Ernest Brown]

“I guess she’ll keep playing damsel in distress until she finds a rescuer. You wanna rescue her from herself, Ernie? Were you ever young and dumb enough to try?”

They do seem to be excrementally obsessed, don’t they? I suppose that since they’re full of it, it has to come out somewhere.

[Timothy]

If you keep talking like that Jennifer, nothing untoward will happen! FEAR ME!

[Jennifer]

Since you accepted his invitation to suck his dick, biting it would be a violation of the implicit agreement to treat Billy lovingly, and an initiation of force.

Wow. Seriously? If cluelessness were publishing, you guys would be Gutenberg.

[lunchstealer]

Dear me, your mentation capacity is even lower than I could have possibly imagined. I’m -mocking- you, spud-dumpling, which is all you’ll ever merit in life.

You do recognize that that’s mutual, right?

I have to admit that you’re an interesting change from the freepers that usually invade.

But really the “I’m more of a libertarian than you” thing was done to death by Dondero, so if you could steer clear of that line, we’d probably all find it easier to keep our interest levels up.

kthxbye

[Timothy]

This is sort of like beating up the retard in gym class: it feels good at the time, but later on there’s nothing but shame.

[Patrick Chkoreff]

Jennifer, I read Billy’s post and he was only suggesting one possible solution to a certain logistical problem you mentioned. Take it or leave it, he was just being helpful.

Congratulations on your first glimmer of substance on this thread: your observation that rights are not granted by words on a piece of paper. Girl, that was awesome!

[Ernest Brown]

“Wow. Seriously? If cluelessness were publishing, you guys would be Gutenberg.”

That, my friends, is the textbook example of unintentional irony.

Seriously, sulfur-lumps, I’d recommend getting some therapy for your obsessions with mastery and masochism.

[Richard Nikoley]

“Tit for tat, really?”

Clearly.

You’re not being honest, yet, but here’s a clue anyway: you initiated the hypothetical aggression. You asked something of Billy, he told you his condition. You upped the ante by including physical violence, and he responded in kind.

Since then, you’ve phrased your repeated question in a dishonest manner to imply that the teeth knocking hypothetical was completely out of the blue and unprovoked. Why you think that being dishonest about it will work for you I don’t care to speculate about.

And you’re welcome to keep taunting me all day long with speculations and insinuations you can’t possibly know anything about. Perhaps you’ll do so in order to see what convenient assumptions I’ll invoke about you. Keep it up, for you never know. Perhaps you’ll land another opportunity to ask a manipulative question three dozen times. That would be so much easier than putting in the