Billy Beck

I am a Declaration American: To me, America consists mainly in the idea of individual liberty and found its most compelling political expression in the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution was a counter-Revolutionary act, and Lysander Spooner was right.

Stay out of my life, you goddamned vampire.

Who raises a slattern like Sara Jacobs?

Warren does extremely tedious work at teasing apart the mindless gibberish of people like Pakman. I used to do this with them in writing, at Usenet many years ago. In those days, it was called "Fisking". (Go look it up). I don't bother much anymore, because of their fundamental dishonesties. If he lives long enough, Warren will get over it, too.

Once, aboard Shinkansen from Nagoya to Tokyo, I was exiting the train when we stopped, and I realized that I had left a very valuable book in my seat pocket. I turned around to go back and get it. About halfway back toward the door, the train began moving. I thought, "I'm pretty sure that that would not be happening if I could still get off this train." Later, one of my tour mates told me that he had tried to hold the doors open for me. "Four cops appeared out of *nowhere*." Those doors closed, and I rode to Kyoto and back by myself.

This is not necessarily true. It certain can be, when it comes to people who would rather prey than produce. In rational times when people are cultured to think, they are a minority that cannot overwhelm the thinkers producers and producers. What benefits "man," in general, is production and trade, which are pursuits available to individuals of understanding and initiative. They are the ones who have brought humanity as far as we've come down through the ages.

Yes. This.

Waitaminnit -- "you're basically saying that we can use our reason to determine" "Can"? We have to. There is no choice about it: we have no other way to conduct our lives and that's what reason is for. Consider this: a "value" is something for which a person acts in order to gain or keep. There is a lot in that statement that bears understanding. Right away, we can see that other species sort of "act for values" when they prey on each other. Let's get that out of the way by observing that their own nature demands that: it's expected by all and nobody reasonable would try to indict a tiger for doing what tigers do. What man does is uniquely different because in the same way that a tiger has its mode of existence, so does man. We are able to conceive complex abstract values far beyond immediately concrete-bound percepts (like: food for hunger), ranging from agriculture to space travel. Simply understanding and controlling fire (we're the only ones who do it) is held as importantly as it is because of its demonstration of the power of this thing that makes us what we are, in all of its implications. Now, to this: "And that these things that are best for human fluorishing are then to be considered 'the' true morality?" No, Sir. Not really. All that comes later. The essence of morality in a political context is the question of whether man is free to act on his own judgment as his nature demands. Morality only arises in social contexts, and I would point out that it's not exclusively political. (The politics only enters with any given application of force.) The very idea of "discrimination" is universally despised for generations now, but it is a fact that value discrimination is also essential to human life. One implication of this is that there is nothing wrong with judging anyone's morality in the values that they choose, so long as there is no unilateral force brought to bear on any side. For example: I would endorse Donald Trump's values all day long over those of a Portland fent-fader, and leave them both alone. In general, humans, when properly cultured past a cave, a fire, and a ready chunk of meat, will choose life saving and enhancing values. If that weren't true, then we wouldn't be doing what we're doing right now while the world is filling with marvels every hour that enhance our lives. It's just what humans, living as humans do.

"I never liked any of you sonsofbitches but I always wished I could have." (my prospective epitaph)

<shrug> Go ahead and give it a name, and watch who hates you for naming it.

Yeah, yeah, @HillaryClinton but, the thing is, you ain't never ever gonna be the Head Bitch Boss. You're going down in history as The Biggest Loser, and all the viddies from that election night will entertain generations for as long as anyone cares to remember you. Don't get me wrong, now. I still want to know who really wrote that perjured affidavit that Ira Magaziner filed with Judge Lamberth's court, and you bloody well know what I'm talking about. I still want to know things like why there was no blood on that Colt .38 in Ft. Marcy Park or how that torn up suicide note was "found" in Bernie's briefcase, and a lot more. It'll never be enough for me, just that you lost that election to the Golden Elevator Guy. I can live with it, though. How're you doin' with it?

This is like saying that the burglar might give my hovel a pass, but I don't care. I do not live at his grace, and I want the bastard destroyed.

Elsewhere, epistemology was brought to the matter of morals. In the matter of "deduction" vs. induction: this is correct and I always like to say so. "The process of observing the facts of reality and integrating them into concepts is, in essence, a process of induction. The process of subsuming new instances under a known concept is, in essence, a process of deduction." (Ayn Rand -- "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology", 1967, p. 36)

This woman displays perfectly retarded inability to attend the essence of the proposition. She just cannot achieve the concept. She can't think. It is impossible to discuss serious matters with a mind this disintegrated, and they are everywhere.

To begin with, morality is a question that only concerns humans, exclusively. No other species faces this problem, and that's precisely because they do not live by reason as their only mode of existence. We do. Reason is all we've got. We're not fast, big, or well-armed by nature. What we have is a conceptual faculty with which we -- unlike any other species -- adapt the world to our purposes, and not the other way around. (The rise of tools illustrates this, and that was just the beginning.) If man is going to live as man, then he must be free in every social context to apply his mind to the problem of his existence and flourishing. Morals arise from a basic understanding that this condition of life is necessary to every member of our species who can live up to it. It's a necessary discrimination against those who cannot or will not, and who must be separated by their own actions from those who can, and do. Morals exist because of what we are. There is nothing arbitrary about them. That is the most principal fact of this whole issue, and everything follows from it.

"What's the opposite of demoralization..." *Moralization*. The rediscovery of morals: what they are and what they're for.

When words no longer refer to concepts in reality, all bets are off.