Good article, Ed.

It is telling that a person can be an anti-semite and it is okay if they are black, but let a black be a conservative or libertarian, and they are singled out as race traitors, puppets, and uncle Toms.  Other blacks who've gotten a free ride on their anti-semitism are the supporters of the Nation of Islam: Like Louis Farrakan and Malcom X.  Black Liberation theologists have a record of racism, and sometimes anti-semitism but aren't called on it.  The New Black Panther Party is blatantly racist.

I think that there is a psychoepistemology pattern that is visible here.  The use of emotion as rhetoric, and the use of invective as argument.  Make ugly emotional statements about their opponents - arguments that accuse them of being rascist, but since the arguments aren't really about ideas, just about winning (in an arena where the ends are thought to justify the means) - it makes a twisted kind of sense in that they would never address those examples that logic brings up when the examples are on their side.

The Imams are however actively recruiting through the prison system.

I was thinking "socialist scum"... but that didn't seem to go over very well before.  Maybe things have changed.

...who has been giving these people a 'free ride'?

The talking heads of the left.  The liberal media outlets.  Progressives.  The same people who regularly crucify someone like Thomas Sowell, or Clarence Thomas.

-----------------

You didn't answer my question:  "What do you call a person who falsely accuses another of racism?"

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 3/01, 11:17pm)

Matthews,

Sowell and Thomas can be criticized for their ideas from the left because that's what the right/left spectrum is about.

But that isn't what I discussed.  I said, "...let a black be a conservative or libertarian, and they are singled out as race traitors, puppets, and uncle Toms."  Are you saying that this doesn't happen and that individuals like Sowell and Thomas are only criticized for their ideas?

-----------

Try entering into a forum where real people actually have different ideas from you own...

I have. Unlike you who has probably only been posting for a short number of years, I have been on the planet and contending with different views for over half a century. Besides, with you on this forum I don't need to go elsewhere to find someone who does not believe that there are such things as objective, universal individual rights. You think that 'individual rights' are just subjective ideas that this or that person conjures up in the mind and are often totally unlike what anyone else thinks.  I think that alone means that your status should be "Dissenter" - not as punishment, but simply put, you are not an Objectivist and you hold views that are strongly opposed to Objectivism.  And you should be a welcome addition to the dissent forum.
--------------

...the vile stupidity of some on this forum to call my common-sense observation 'socialist'.

They might be calling your view points "socialist" for other reasons - perfectly valid reasons, given the wide range of types of socialists that exist (there are even "libertarian socialists" which I see as completely nutty).

There are posts where you have supported activities that involve redistribution. There are posts of yours where you treat majority vote as sufficient even if it sacrifices an individual. You came onto this site with a fierce defense of Krugman. You support anti-trust laws.  You are okay with FCC regulation of the airwaves.  I could go on and on, but why bother. I don't think anyone on this site thinks of you as a libertarian - not any kind of libertarian that we would recognize, i.e., one whose basic premise is NIOF.
---------------

No, It's not within the standard canon of leftism to accept Afro-Islamico-mumbo-jumbo.

You can do better that that. I didn't say it was "within the standard cannon" - I said they turn a blind eye to some who do accept it.
----------------

What is true, however, is that three major tv news providers take a value-neutral stance, which is somehow seen as a geometric left of Fox's outright hostility.

If you really think that the major tv news providers are value-neutral, they you are standing so far over to the far left that it is distorting your view.
----------------

I wrote what I wrote because it's clear that others not named "Wolfer' or 'Matthews' do indeed use such a steriotype.

Therefore, calling someone a 'racist' is an issue of terms, ranging from my particular employ of generic steriotyping, to that of outright dislike of an individual based upon color, to that of genetic coding of IQ via physical appearence.

So, no, I don't see calling someone a racist is necessarily a moral fault, but rather, merely a question of right vs wrong by virtue of definition.

Bullshit.  Look at the context. You wrote that comment in a post addressed to me, immediately after I had named specific black, pro-Islamic militant figures that the left chooses to accept and doesn't condemn for being close to militant Islamisist. So, your statement was a dishonest way of sneaking up so close to calling me a racist in a declarative sentence that it amounts to the same. Next, you go on about it not being a moral fault to call someone a racist because it is a matter of definition or fact. Here is what I asked - note the part I've emphasized: "What do you call a person who falsely accuses another of racism?" And by "falsely" I mean without evidence, or knowing that there is no evidence.

That is the question you still haven't answered!

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 3/02, 9:27am)

Fissile?  So now I am Uranium 235.  Well Eva at least you are not a slow neutron!

I find it amusing that you have repeatedly asked that your age and sex not be entered into any equation when it comes to judging the validity of your arguments while at the same time refuting or denigrating people here who have been around a long time.

I for one have not done so and have only replied to your words.

Just because you toss around the "idea" that taxes should be lowered is only a small part of the equation and does not mean you are libertarian.

As Steve and others have pointed out numerous times you do not argue in good faith nor are your ideas much more than regurgitated slanted history lessons.  What you are lacking is integration of these ideas and making them your own.  You need to think more and back up your assertions if you want to be taken seriously.  This is not an attack but simply advice.  

By the way lumping people into a group you have termed "fissiles" is highly offensive and derogatory.  If you want people to take you seriously attack a persons ideas and not the person. 

>>>>Would the reduced taxes be matched with decreased spending [?],,,

Well yes, duh. Must everything be spelled out?

EM

Ayn Rand refused to endorse Ronald Reagan. In fact, she condemned him.  His first administration did, indeed, cut taxes but not the budget, running up America's national debt.  However, the Laffer Curve predicted the resulting jump in productivity and (as the government measures it) employment. If Carter had been re-elected we would not have had a computer revolution with Apples and Radio Shacks and Commodores and Ataris. 

I posit that government borrowing does not distort the free market because at that level all lenders are the most rational of actors.

The government of the United States might end up as bankrupt as Detroit (or Edcouch, Texas: read here). In fact, it will.  But it will endure, as have many private firms that lived through bankruptcies.  I am currently reading a biography of James J. HIll, and I have read a biography of his financier, John Stewart Kennedy (Wikipedia here). The biography was The Man Who Found the Money by Engelbourg and Bushkoff. Early railroads went through receiverships with alarming regularity. Bankruptcy is not a moral condemnation, but only a business decision, from which many businesses emerge. The Founders of our Republic understood that, which is why they gave to the national Congress rather than the states the right and the power to write bankruptcy laws.  So, yes, balancing the federal budget is preferable to national bankruptcy, but Matthews is not incorrect in recommending the one without the other.

As I understand it, Objectivist purity (measured how??) is not a requirement here on RoR, but only open and honest intellectual engagement within an Objectivist framework; and Matthews generally has offered that.  If we are going to relegate current partipants to Dissent, then I nominate Dean Michael Gores for his endorsement of seeming Neo-Tech revisionisms.  Fred Bartlett has been pushing freedom of association as a primary.  I agree with the sentiment, but it is not a primary. Should he be relegated to Dissent? I must object. Also - correct me if I am wrong - but is it not true that Steve Wolfer enjoys Mozart and Beethoven and even would vote for a woman for President of the United States, if she were ideologically acceptable? Dissent only for Steve? Galt forbid!

The good thing about having a very short memory is that I'd forgotten how much I dislike Marotta's strained relationship to logic.  The bad thing about it that he is back and I now remember.

-----------------

I posit that government borrowing does not distort the free market because at that level all lenders are the most rational of actors.

Does that mean that the money is magical and therefore never needs to be repaid?  Does that mean that none of that money would come out of the pool of money that would have been available to private borrowers and leave less for them?  When Marotta says all lenders at that level are the most rational of actors, does that include money sent to support dictators in foriegn nations?  Solyndra?  Government spending - rational?  Give me a break!

Is his little mini-lecture on bankruptcy a way of saying that America should just declare bankruptcy?  It kind of reads that way.

----------------

As I understand it, Objectivist purity ... is not a requirement here on RoR, but only open and honest intellectual engagement within an Objectivist framework; and Matthews generally has offered that. 

Who the hell is talking purity?  I smell a Marotta strawman.  Tell me ONE thing that Matthews agrees with that is a basic principle of Objectivism.  Just one.  I can tell you of many, many things where she is diametrically opposed to basic principles.  

Does Marotta believe that Rand would be opposed to "free association" or would she see it fully consistent with her principles - a description of a primary right?  Clearly Marotta decides to ignore the basic fact that someone who totally disagrees with Rand, who makes snide disrepectful remarks about Rand, and dimisses Objectivism and members on this board... and he calls it "open and honest intellectual engagement within an Objectivist framework."  

Does Marotta think that arguing that there are no such things as objective moral principles, or that individualism comes second to the collective, or that there should be government regulations on the economies (e.g., FCC, anti-trust laws), claims that Galt stands for monopolies, and repeated unsupported statements that Rand got it wrong, that there are no moral property rights, and on and on, are not arguments that should be made in the Dissent area?