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Toastmasters Clubs teach members not only to speak, but to listen and to think.  Unfortunately, communication relies on the effectiveness of all three skills in order to succeed.  Perhaps my letter proved too terse or perhaps others read too carelessly, but these two responses made their way into the April 2008 issue of the magazine. (Read the entire blog entry)

I picked the following quotes because of the unique response that they could have on the socialist mindset. It's not just what you say, but how you say it.

I remind my blog readers here that I'm a former zealot-Christian-socialist, and that when I first heard about Rand -- that she promoted selfishness -- I experienced moral revulsion and a deep fear of her (bordering on hate). Even after purchasing the Ayn Rand Lexicon, I avoided the "A" section like the plague (because it contained "abortion" and "atheism").

Using the point that how you say it is about as important as what it is that you have to say, I looked at quotes with a narrow aim. These quotes are meant to appeal to the mind without stirring up the emotional revulsion so common -- perhaps universal -- to the socialist mindset of which I was once a willing victim.

If I had first been approached with these quotes -- instead of being just told to read some Rand -- then my "persuasion" wouldn't have taken the precious months that it did. (Read the entire blog entry)

A chronological list of highly-relevant quotes (Read the entire blog entry)

Because both of my parents came from large families, the memorial service packed the church with my many cousins.  I never really discussed my loss of religious faith with any of them -- or my immediate family for that matter -- after I left home simply because I saw no point to the effort.  However, evidently someone somewhere must have gotten wind of it because of what happened after the service.  As my wife and I packed the display items in the lobby, the husband of one of my cousins -- a man I barely know -- came to me.  I noticed he wore a tie with holy buzzwords such as Jesus, Savior, etc. written all over it. (Read the entire blog entry)

More current events out of the Dark Ages. (Read the entire blog entry)

Take a trip through time. View reasoning or criticisms of centralized power from one epoch and compare and contrast them against those of other epochs. Enjoy integrating them where it's possible to do that without forming a contradiction. Allow history to inform your judgments of the current policies and procedures of current administrations of current governments. Should we do any less than that? (Read the entire blog entry)

The following review was instigated in response to criticism that the marketeers of Airborne give Capitalism a bad name (instead of the class action lawyers and defendants; who are coming out of the deal with over $20 million to divvy-up amongst themselves) (Read the entire blog entry)

In the latest issue of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Andrew Schwartz offers a new way of thinking about the nature of the self. (Read the entire blog entry)

Personal blogs are stored thought -- thinking out loud about something you feel is important. Some folks feel that "love" is either fundamentally mysterious, or something that you can't get any better at by thinking about or understanding it better than you did before; they'll react negatively to the following guidelines for becoming a more loving person (though, for some reason, they might not react negatively to these same behaviors if they were personified in the fictional characters of a novel!) (Read the entire blog entry)

DirectTV is ruining America through theft, lies, and fraud, furthering the Hillary Obama agenda in the process. (Read the entire blog entry)