A Rational Defense of Marriage

Greetings.

Mr. Rowlands: Slavery is repugnant to most of us, except obviously those who "think of the children" and assert a positive right to married parents.

Mr. Stolyarov: You absolutely ignored my response to Mr. Howison’s assertion, which opposes the nature of all binding contracts:

“So, if Tom signs a contract by which he will give $2,000 to Tim if Tim delivers a shipment of tires to Tom’s automobile factory, Tim, once he receives the payment, has the right to “change his mind” at any time and “leave the contract” as he sees fit without delivering on the promised services? That is called fraud, Mr. Howison. A contract mutable by a single party is no contract; it does not have any sort of significance outside of a mere list of ideal circumstances of the proposed value trade. In order for a contract to be voided, all involved parties have to consent to this, and this consent needs to be objectively documented by an impartial arbiter (i.e. the court system or some entity whose testimony can be held up in court).”

If binding contracts are slavery (to whom and for what???), then call me a slavemaster all you want; the word simply loses meaning, just as “collectivism” or “marriage” would under your excessive broadening.

Mr. Rowlands: Your views of indiscriminate sex still only reflect your own mindset.  You classify everything that isn't a permanent marriage as indiscriminate.  Here's something to ponder.  Isn't it possible to discriminate out side of marriage?  Can't you pick someone you like?

Mr. Stolyarov: Yes, an individual can be “discriminating” when he picks one harlot out of a whole bunch of them in order to sleep with. This is not the sort of discrimination I refer to.  Aside from the immense health hazards (undisputed and known for centuries, as a matter of fact) of venereal disease from pre-marital intercourse, the firmness of the non-abstinent (anyone who has intercourse except with his/her legal spouse) is to be put under great question. If a romantic relationship is indeed of the highest possible proximity, and the act of intercourse is its ultimate manifestation, to share the ultimate manifestation with just anyone you happen to “like,” without also committing oneself to the responsibilities resulting from such an affection would mean downgrading “highest possible proximity” to “just something that feels good.” In that case, optimal compatibility goes out the window, and the sort of lecherous lifestyles experienced in abundance today come about.  “Highest possible proximity” loses its fysical capacity for manifestation, and thus is no longer capable of being manifested by the non-abstinent.

Mr. Rowlands: No, the problem is yours.  Your own desperate need for security drives you to begging the government to enslave mankind so you can maintain a firm foundation.

Mr. Stolyarov: “Enslave mankind?” Sounds like desperate demagoguery to me, and ridiculous in the context of what I actually wrote.

Mr. Rowlands: I have a different view.  I don't feel the need to enslave a woman to stay with me.  I offer her a choice.  I offer value for value, and try to make it worth her while to stay.  I don't care for a relationship based on coercion and fear.

Mr. Stolyarov: You seem not to like to agree on things in advance… The only sorts of voluntary agreements you would brook in your relationships would be agreements at the spur of the moment, which may well be mutually beneficial, but most likely will not be without a foundation of more essential principles to draw upon, enumerated in your individual contract (which contract you would not have). Ayn Rand had a name for acting on the spur of the moment without prior guidelines: pragmatism. (And that, too, only when the mentality was dressed up into something respectable in the universities where Dewey and James discussed it; in the hands of leftist hippies, it became whim-worshipping emotionalism, pure and simple.)

So you are essentially willing for your only line of defense for the relationship to be whatever moods you and your partner happen to be at the moment; and if your moods drift away from each other, and lapse into boredom, “diminishing returns,” or just the desire for some “new adventure” with someone else, you leave immediately. Of course, if you live on the spur of the moment, every slightest bit of turbulence or discomfort will spur you from the proper path to success and happiness. In order to live effectively, and to effectively relate to others in a relationship requiring intimacy and commitment, one needs prior foundations, and, moreover, explicit prior foundations to refer to. I suggest (only suggest, mind you!) that, even prior to marriage, one should have informal, non-legally binding contracts with one’s partner… give the partner a trial period, discover common value-premises and applications, attempt to formulate these explicitly, and draft a document of expectations for the relationship, which will be a useful set of guidelines for the future.

“Nothing can bring you peace but the [triumf] of principles.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mr. Rowlands: But who ever said diminishing returns was evil? 

Mr. Stolyarov: Who ever said that losing values that formerly benefited oneself, due to one’s own decision was evil? Rand did. She called it altruism.

In order to justify indulgence without consequence, you are willing to go so far as to renounce self-interest in principle, just as Ms. Kanabe was willing to renounce self-interest in principle to justify abortion. I call this obstruction by periferals. And in this case, the periferal viewpoint must be wrong, not the basic premise that is renounced.

This debate is ultimately a debate about which lifestyle is moral and prudent; all the name-hurling w.r.t. “slavery, statism, and fascism” are mere cover-ups for the principal objection that you harbor for my theory. As Rand pointed out, dishonesty will be exposed as such inevitably—and thus, the cover-ups become cruder as this debate proceeds.

Mr. Rowlands: You thought that two people, who otherwise love each other, would simply abandon one another over the smallest of problems. 

Mr. Stolyarov: I merely do not assume that people are omnipotent or omniscient; however high their moral standards and affections, however worthy they are of a heroic relationships, this does not immunize them from mistakes of factual knowledge, or occasional slight misjudgments, or blowing those slight misjudgments out of proportion. In a relationship understood to be desirably permanent, these minor errors will be far outweighed by the capital gathered in each party’s “emotional bank account.” However, with the identity-swapper, who shifts commitments and relationships whenever he feels like it, this capital may be lacking, and any negative spur of the moment will bring about the “diminishing returns” you refer to.

Mr. Rowlands: Your comments on boredom carefully avoided discussing whether something can be objectively more boring than something else.  You claim boredom is just a state of mind, which you have full control over.  But that's not right at all.  You can't just turn off boredom, or pretend to be excited.  That's evasion and lying to yourself.

You can, on the other hand, avoid boredom by finding something more interesting to do.  Something interesting. But this just confirms that some things do get boring.

Mr. Stolyarov: No, you just need to take the effort to constantly expand upon your foundations; then you will proceed forward in all areas, without ever exhausting a given field or relationship. You seem to think that the resources to be attained from a given relationship are capped at a certain finite limit. I disagree. If a relationship were comparable to a cup filled with water, you might come to it on a warm day and drink the water and be refreshed—according to your mentality, you would then throw the cup away and move on to find other things.  I say, keep the cup and keep filling it! It can serve you indefinitely, and hold not only water, but soda, juice, coffee, even ice cream, if you wish it! (Of course, the variety of services a cup provides pales greatly in comparison with those of a relationship, but I used a simple analogy as a gateway to understanding a far more complex fenomenon.)

Follow my advice, and you will never be bored! You will have too many plans, undertakings, and ambitions on your mind to ever enter such a state.

Mr. Rowlands: If you get bored with the relationship, why is it that you should struggle to make it the slightest bit interesting?  Why not move on?

Mr. Stolyarov: Because a relationship is not a mere performance to be watched: it requires active participation, contract or no contract. And if you do not respond to it actively, you will be bored, of your own fault! You make the mistake of thinking inactivity is derivative of boredom. I say boredom derives from inactivity.

Mr. Rowlands: First, let me note that you said "It ceases to identify with state-based coercion".  Collectivism is an ethical position, not primarily a political one.  One manifestation is statism, but that's a consequence.  The primary fact is the belief that the group is an entity, with it's own values and interests, and the individuals are to be sacrificed to the collective.

Mr. Stolyarov: Rand’s definition of collecitivism is “[The doctrine] that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to “society,” to the tribe, the state, the nation and the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force—and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism.” (p. 149, The Virtue of Selfishness)

Note that state coercion is the only way to actualize a collectivist mindset; voluntary associations are automatically excluded from the definition. Some such associations may be altruistic, as may be individuals in a married relationship (for example, a husband who, returning from work each day, gives in to demands by his wife to cede to her the entirety of his earnings for her sole control), but not all marriages are altruistic. Most are not; anywhere where a mutual value trade is seen by both parties, and embodied in the contract, it is not an altruistic relationship.

Once again, this is a question of terms; I insist on very specific, delimited definitions and applications—you insist on a very broad definition of collectivism and an unjustifiably broad application (leading to the claim that, though not all legally binding marriages are collectivist, their underlying spirit somehow is. How can that be? Blank-out.).

Mr. Rowlands: What I said was that marriage can be a collective.  Not that it necessarily is.  Just that it can be. 

Mr. Stolyarov: We disagree on terms. Yes, some marriages can be altruistic (both in initiation and undertaking), but not all by far. Nevertheless, though you do not think all marriages share this vice you speak of, you nevertheless have gone to great lengths to enshrine these vices as a part of marriage in your essays on “Marriage” and “Valentine’s Gifts.” Then you proceeded, in discussions, to suggest that marriage as an institution was obsolete and legally binding contracts in relationships unnecessary. This looks like you are focusing of the bad possibilities of a given form of relationship, despite the fact that many people in this type of relationship experience almost solely the good possibilities! Malevolent-universe premise? Looks like a clear case of one to me.

I am
G. Stolyarov II

Greetings.

This debate is becoming quite redundant. Mr. Rowlands’ eight posts merely rehashed his old arguments, laden with gratuitous attacks; I am now a “communist” and “blackmailer,” and Mr. Rowlands has also plunged to the level of explicitly mentioning names of genitalia in several of his paragrafs. That much is utterly beneath my dignity to address; I can be fairly tolerant w.r.t. mere tactlessness and ad hominems, though I consider them moral atrocities; but “potty-mouthing” is something I will not sanction in conversation. In this debate, you have intellectually bankrupted yourself, Mr. Rowlands. Admit it.

Now, as for the glitch in the algorithm, my observation has always been that the value of an individual’s Sanction votes would equal Atlas Level + 1, in which Mr. Tingley, at Level 2, would have the ability to contribute 3 Sanctions per vote. If this was a mere glitch, and not a deliberate disenfranchisement, I deserve to apologize for thinking it to be the latter. However, I will not officially offer an apology until Mr. Perigo and Mr. Howison offer theirs for their disgraceful conduct on this thread. It shall then be a gentlemen’s exchange of honors; I will give SOLO what I owe to it, and it will give me what it owes me.

When I again come to Mr. Rowlands’ comments on the chronological queue, I will see if there is any shred of novelty to address in them. For the moment, I shall focus on Mr. Lamont’s words.

Mr. Lamont: If Mr. Stolyarov is not post-rationalizing, it’s utterly amazing that on every single issue of social freedom/individual rights, he comes down on the side of religious conservatism.

Mr. Stolyarov: Cloning? Drug War? Legalization of prostitution? How do my stances on those issues come down on the side of religious conservatism? I support legalized drug use, prostitution, and pornografy, though I deem all the above abhorrent, because I will always support the individual’s right to destroy himself fysically and intellectually; I will never consent to calling such actions moral, however, nor will I assent to granting individuals the power to destroy or harm others, which are implied in abortion, euthanasia, and child abandonment.

As for cloning, my defense of it is to be found at http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Morality_of_Cloning.html.

I think someone is trying to drop context in order to rationalize his impression of me as a “religious conservative.” No, I think for myself, and have more often been blasted by certain (though not all) religious conservatives for stances where I oppose them than those where I support them.

Mr. Lamont: As has been pointed out at length, the existence of a marriage contract does nothing to enhance the defining characteristics of a romantic relationship. There is nothing inherent in the properties of ink and paper that make people better partners, lovers, companions or friends.

Mr. Stolyarov: See my defense of explicit, long-term planning based on fundamental premises rather than spur-of-the-moment decisions without a prior foundation to build upon. Nothing can be clearer than the written word; if a couple establishes a written agreement of expectations for the relationship, they will be able to abide by them despite forgivable human imperfections (such as forgetting spoken promises, or falling prey to slight misunderstandings once in a while).

A contract for a romantic relationship is like a blueprint for a machine; you can be as skilled a technician as there is, but if you lack explicit guidelines for building the machine, you are most likely to err somewhere along the way, which will increase the likelihood of the machine’s dysfunctionality.   

Mr. Lamont: Over in Stolyarov-World, however, they play down the restrictive nature of contracts. They claim that because Ayn Rand focused on man as he could and should be, we can ignore the restrictive nature of contracts, because the ideal man would never consider breaking them. But Ayn Rand did not, for one moment, presume that every man would rise to her vision. If she did, she would have no need to expand on Objectivist politics and law, providing for police, justice, defense, contracts, etc. Ayn Rand recognized that Objectivism would not “overwrite” free will and that men would still choose to be irrational or have honest disagreements.

Mr. Stolyarov: Honest disagreements are precisely why contracts would be needed, to establish a standard for resolving them without annulling the relationship! Men need not be absolutely perfect, moreover, to fit the criteria needed for lasting romantic happiness; men are not omnipotent or omniscient, and Rand knew this, but she also knew that men were capable of heroic deeds, both within and outside relationships, and any expectation of failure runs counter to this sense of life and basic Randian metafysics about the nature of man and the universe.

Yes, some men will choose to be irrational, and suffer (this is not the same as making honest mistakes). Rand advised to let them suffer, but allow them to let no one else suffer! Moreover, their irrationality will not be a standard for my filosofy.

Mr. Lamont: People enter into contracts because they have little visibility of the other party’s moral character, honesty or integrity. We have no knowledge that other party’s word is good enough. A contract makes a promise legally enforceable. As relationships become more intimate, the need for contracts diminishes as we have greater visibility into the other party’s integrity and character.

Mr. Stolyarov: If we have greater visibility of the other party’s character, then we can make better contracts! Those contracts will be more consistent with the other party’s genuine intentions in the relationship, and moreover will announce to the world (as Mr. Tingley had aptly pointed out) that the relationship is exclusive. 

 To say, however, that one needs contracts less the more one knows an individual is tantamount to saying that one needs principles less the more one knows an individual; because a contract is but a binding affirmation of shared principles and a listing of their practical applications. Because of your experience with the individual, you claim the ability to substitute precedent for fundamental understanding, and typical generality for explicit guidelines.  In other words, you abandon the attempt to explicitly chart your relationship through reason in favor of “sensing” your way through it by means of faith in the other person. If Rand taught us anything about faith, it is that faith is the equivalent of intellectual abdication.

No matter how much I value someone, I will not “trust” their integrity “on faith.” I will not sacrifice myself in that manner.

Mr. Lamont: It’s entirely possible for couples to maintain a romantic relationship while remaining financially independent. Indeed, it’s desirable for all the same reasons that individuals should keep what they earn. Funding of joint financial projects/property can be negotiated as they arise. They might even formalize a strategy for how they would fund these in advance, but this needn’t take the form of a marriage contract. Even Stolyarov concedes that it’s unnecessary to collectivize wealth, implying that this isn’t the essence of the arrangement.

Mr. Stolyarov: The only thing I concede is that property-sharing arrangements should be made open to individual decisions in the context of their financial situations. Nevertheless, I have gone to great lengths to show instances in which property-sharing is of optimal benefit (the wealthy heiress example), and why that is true as derived from basic premises (see my segment on this in the treatise, paying special attention to the passage w.r.t. the mind-body integration offered by such an arrangement).

But you said it: where significant wealth is involved (as it usually is in a marriage), it makes sense to have a contract to protect the investment.

Mr. Lamont: However, there is nothing less “technically complex” and more pure than the spirit of a romantic relationship.

Mr. Stolyarov: You think a romantic relationship is the embodiment of simplicity? I would claim that it is the most complex interaction possible. The greater the proximity between two individuals, the greater the complexity, since an increasing amount of facets to those individuals’ personalities come into contact, along with an increasing fraction of those individuals’ material lives—nowhere are the contexts, intentions, and values to be traded more manifold and “technically complex” than in a romantic relationship. By comparison, a business exchange is immensely straightforward and far less subject to misinterpretation. If anything, marriage is more deserving of a contract than a business exchange!

Mr. Lamont: No rational person would make this a restrictive, legally binding agreement.

Mr. Stolyarov: The Washingtons? The Jacksons? The Reagans? Every happy and officially married couple in all of human history is now dubbed irrational?

He who is currently reading this in the audience must certainly realize that this is an attack on the best of men in order to morally immunize those who are more pervaded with folly, folly that had led them to experience less full and less successful relationships?

Mr. Lamont: I’ve said that the only benefit to getting married in Stolyarov-World is to be eligible for the “license” to have children. Stolyarov calls stripping unmarried couples’ fundamental right to seek justice if they have children “encouragement.”

Mr. Stolyarov: I cannot see how this can be inferred from anything I wrote. Surely, child-raising is a benefit, but there are numerous others about which I had written to great lengths in the treatise and in this debate; moreover, Mr. Tingley pointed out others still. Any discerning reader who has followed this discourse will note that Mr. Lamont’s statement is simply untrue.

Mr. Lamont: In Stolyarov-World, only married (and, by extension, only heterosexual) couples can raise children (and maintain their rights.) The basis for this decree is “statistics.”

Mr. Stolyarov: No, the basis for this is unavoidably observable differential gender behavior in relationships; statistics are not the foundations of my argument; they are just used to buttress it in order to demonstrate a convergence of logical principle and empirical data.

Mr. Lamont: It’s collectivism, pure and simple. It’s a sweeping, broad generalization based on the historical trend of an arbitrarily defined group (married heterosexuals), followed by the application of laws that favor members of that group. No doubt Stolyarov could produce statistics showing that whites make better parents than blacks. Would he strip blacks that have children of their right to seek justice too?

Mr. Stolyarov: This claim is absolutely irrelevant and absolutely disgusting in intentions to make me seem a racist when, in fact, I had vocally opposed judgment based on metafysically insignificant issues such as race. Race has no impact on behavior, and my observation w.r.t. gender is that it has certain aspects in which it corresponds with differential behavior; once again, you have evaded the fact that this is irrefutably true.

Mr. Lamont: There may well be a reason for the statistical trends Stolyarov cites. There’s a relationship between selflessness and the need for social approval. Perhaps people who seek a social/religious/legal sanction of their relationship are more likely to have a selfless devotion to their children, resulting in ostensibly better outcomes for them. Who knows?

Mr. Stolyarov: Selflessness and good parenting go hand-in-hand, by your argument? Whatever happened to the Objectivist condemnation of selflessness as both immoral and impractical? Obstruction by periferals again?

Mr. Lamont: The point is that statistical trends do not establish a causal relationship. It’s entirely possible for a homosexual, single parent to raise his children better than a married, heterosexual couple.

Mr. Stolyarov: I have stated that, under my system, I would still allow just about anyone to adopt children so long as the RGs under the new custody are superior to what the child used to have (in an orfanage or in a home where it was unwanted). This means that a homosexual parent is better than no parent, though he will still need to sign a binding document asserting his custody of the child. However, if a child was conceived out of wedlock, and parents have no intention of marrying or adopting out the child, the child lives under constant threat of being deprived of a de facto RG. The State’s role is to ensure that the child is not wantonly robbed of whatever RGs already exist for it.

Mr. Lamont: The application of a paralyzing drug is fundamentally different in nature to a divorce/a separation/not-being-raised-by-a-heterosexual-married-couple. Let’s stay within the realms of sanity and focus on a divorce. Here’s how they’re different: (a) Children have free will and can control how they process a divorce – their physiology doesn’t; (b) With careful management and continued love and support, a divorce need not affect a child’s psychological health at all; (c) Even if the child is affected in the short term, there’s no guarantee harm will be “irreversible.”

Mr. Stolyarov: Here is how the analogy fits: (a) Paralyzed people also have certain free will to regain control of lost appendages in certain situations. FDR did it, and so did certain injured purveyors of “extreme sports.” (b) I am also certain that, if a paralyzed man had the care of the best doctors and technology in the world and had the best personal intentions to recover, he would have a substantial (that is, not insignificant) chance of doing so. (c) Nor is there a guarantee that the harm will be irreversible with the paralysis drug. Let us propose that an isomer of the same drug exists, which has a 25% chance of not harming the child at all, a 65% chance of harming it irreversibly, and a 10% chance of harming it “only” temporarily. Does this still justify allowing parents to administer the drug?

The more fundamental question is: why risk depriving a child of an existing RG, when it is one’s obligation to take care of this child?

Mr. Rowlands: Now, here's a completely different meaning.  Imagine the friends decide to contract their friendship.  They sign something that says they have to be friends forever.  They're not contracting for specific services, but a permanent continual obligation.  Once signed, you have to go to movies whenever the other person wants, you have to listen to their problems, you have to go on vacations with them, etc.  You're signing yourself into perpetual slavery.  And you can't leave without the other person's permission.  You've literally signed yourself into slavery. 

Mr. Stolyarov: I see. So you will allow people to contract property all they want, but should they dare to commit the egregious “enslavement” of promising, in a legal writ, a personal commitment to another, you will bar them, with the force of government, for crafting such documents. Who is acting like the statist here?

Mr. Rowlands: Very interesting.  Seems he's now decided that private property might be better than joint property after all.  He then gives an irrelevant story of an heiress giving a gift (her money) to her starving artist husband.  I say it's irrelevant for two reasons.  First, it's not her money to give.  If they're married, and they have joint property, it's his for the taking.  It's not her decision to make. 

Mr. Stolyarov: Yes, it is her decision. It was her decision to marry in the first place, and she wishes to give her husband unmitigated access to any money he would require to finance the art patronage project and to live life in a comfortable, even luxurious, manner. (She also decided to share her many mansions with him in the marriage contract, so that they can always be at each other’s side.)

Whenever I present an example of how joint property, shared households, and other conveniences established by the marriage contract, could be of benefit to people, Mr. Rowlands brushes it aside as “irrelevant.” The only things relevant, to him, it seems, are forecasts of boredom, failure, and dissolution.

Mr. Rowlands: To which Stolyarov said he did argue that the blackmail would only work on loving parents.  I take responsibility here, since I wrote that sentence in a  very poor way.  What I was trying to say is that Stolyarov defended his blackmail as good because it would work, instead of arguing against any of my three points.
1.)  That it was an attack on the child, not the adult
2.)  That bad parents wouldn't be bothered, and that it only hurt good parents.
3.)  That the attack on the child is in fact blackmail.

So when Stolyarov admits point #2, he's just making explicit what we already new.  He doesn't care that his action is a grave injustice because he thinks it'll work.  The ends justify the means.

Mr. Stolyarov: This is an absolute misconstruement of my argument. I respond thus:

1)      The attack is on the parent; the parent will be deplaintiffied. The “illegitimate” adjective applied to the child means that the parent does not have legitimate guardianship of the child, just like an “illegitimate” prisoner of war might be someone who is not held in custody in accordance to international law, though it may not be his fault.

2)      Bad parents won’t care about the status, and will thus remain punished. Good parents will and will get married, thus obtaining full plaintiffication. So the bad parents get hurt, not the good ones.

3)      Since the attack is on the parent, not the child, Mr. Rowlands’ #3 is absolutely incorrect.

Mr. Rowlands: Stolyarov asks "You mean to say you do not accept that a child has the right to a good bring-up?".  To which I answer: Hell no!!!

I adamantly reject the notion of positive rights, in any form.  It does lead to slavery, as you have shown so clearly.

Mr. Stolyarov: Then, you, by extension, accept the “rights” of parents to abandon their children, to refrain from feeding their children, to refrain from giving their children a roof under their heads, or anything that is more than just “leaving the children alone?”

”Libertarian” Andre Marrou (a former Presidential candidate) used the same rationale to justify child abandonment as a filosofical position. He is a known deadbeat father, except he is deadbeat on principle! Nihilism, if ever there was such a thing.

Mr. Rowlands: For instance, say you like chocolate.  You grab a candy bar and eat it.  It was good.  You grab another.  It wasn't as good.  Evidently your an altruist because you once benefitted from it at one level of intensity, but on the second bar it didn't give you as much pleasure.  You're an altruist, evidently.  Did you know that?  We're all metaphysically altruists.  Damn...there goes that rational self-interest.

Mr. Stolyarov: Eating one chocolate bar is practically harmless to one’s health; eating too many in a short time span may cause indigestion, weight gain, and other unpleasant consequences. I do not see how this links to a romantic relationship, where there are no fysiological harms. Personal connections, when pursued actively, can only broaden, expand, and be fortified over time.

Mr. Rowlands: And this doesn't really lead us anywhere.  If you think the value you get from someone is all about your own positive attitude, and not based on any objective criteria, then it makes sense that you would dismiss diminishing returns.  You might even say they're immoral because you have the choice to value what you get less the more you have of it.  But that's all subjectivism.

Mr. Stolyarov: So, am I an intrinsicist or a subjectivist? It looks like you are just hurling the entire array of names you know of at me, despite their mutual incompatibility.

I say the only way to keep getting values is to pursue them actively, and I am called a subjectivist. How? Blank-out.

I will finish this later today, and provide my own summary of the debate.

I am
G. Stolyarov II