philosophy

[shereads]

This thread has finally come down to a level I can participate at.

Finally! I couldn't have hidden my genius much longer.



No thanks are necessary, honey. It's my pleasure.

Saul would reduce amicus to foaming apoplexy.

Reduce? You can't reduce cheese to goats' milk, RG. You're talking nonsense here.

Opium is turning you into a plagiarist, or Timothy Leary.

 

[shereads]

Gotta go with Joe here. I'm more or less anti drugs (or anti indiscriminate use and glorification of)

I neither glorified drugs or proposed that people should use them, indiscriminately or otherwise. I objected to the dismissal of Kesey as irrelevent because he used drugs. Would I be glorifying water if I said that not everyone who swims, drowns?

Joe rebutted by agreeing, a debate technique that I find interesting, then he added the "but" that typically follows and which hinted at a subtext: Joe objects when "anti-establishment tools" take someone's opinion as infallible because he's a drug user, has traveled a lot, or has participated in protests.

I have no idea where the protest and travel references came from; I must have missed something in an earlier post. But the bit about drug users' opinions being more valuable than other people's opinions has no more bearing to my post than a dislike of S.T. Coleridge has on the question of whether drugs are useful to some people as a tool to free their creativity. You don't have to like the poetry to be open to the idea that opiates may have helped the process more than they hindered it. And you don't have to be a fan of Kesey to see to that drugs didn't turn him into the drooling drunk who never communicates a valuable thought because he's busy vomiting in the corner at some bar - legally, of course. A man likes his beer, right?

I have a perspective on drugs that you and Joe probably do not. During the 70s and 80s before the right-wing sat around sipping single-malt scotch and debating the merits of mandatory prison sentences for pot smokers, millions of people experimented with drugs in the privacy of their homes and the homes of friends, and nobody knew who we were. Some of us used drugs to overcome shyness about public speaking, and the difference between our "straight" performance the week before and the chemically enhanced one the week after was so positive that we received a standing ovation instead of being met with an embarrassed silence.

Should we have gone to prison for that? Did it harm us?

I really should limit the question to those who have traveled widely, and participated in a protest. It's the only way to get an infallible answer.



For what it's worth, Ray Charles said in an interview that the reason alcohol isn't classified as a drug, while marijuana is, goes back to the time when marijuana was the cheap, relatively harmless drug of choice for black musicians. They'd smoke pot to "get in the groove" for a performance, and they'd write music that was sexier and less inhibited than they might have otherwise. Marijuana was still a "Negro drug" in the US until the Sixties when white kids snapped it up and made it their own, like rock 'n roll.

The dismissal of anyone who has enjoyed drugs as some kind of loser is silly, inaccurate and uninformed.

Please notice that I did not just advocate drug use, nor deny that drugs can be abused with fatal results, as can beer and sex. I objected to a stereotype and a type of political correctness that some of us know from experience is inaccurate. It's also dangerous, because it encourages the so-called War on Drugs, which makes the existence of a violent drug-smuggling culture profitable; and it encourages the continuation of sentencing guidelines that have filled prisons in the U.S. with non-violent offenders, some of whom are guilty of having bought a joint fifteen years ago from a college roommate.

 

[amicus]

Cantdog...

"The infant is a sensorimotor organism, possessing no language, no logic, no narrative capacity. It cannot grasp historical time. "The self," as Piaget put it, "is here material, so to speak."


An excerpt of your post as pasted by shereads....

I find it interesting that Piaget begins with an infant to provide a basis for human epistemology; Ayn Rand takes the same path.

I doubt you will appreciate this information, but Ayn Rand published an 8 part essay on Epistemology in the '60's. I have most of the essay from her Newsletter, The Objectivist, with part 1 being published in July of 1966. The Ayn Rand Institute likely could provide you with the entire essay.

Again, I do not expect you to jump with joy, but of all the attempts by major and minor philosophers to lay out a consistent, progressive explanation of Epistemology, I find this the best by far.


Amicus...

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by shereads
I neither glorified drugs or proposed that people should use them, indiscriminately or otherwise. I objected to the dismissal of Kesey as irrelevent because he used drugs.

No, you stated that a particular viewpoint bugged you. I responded in kind (and that that viewpoint's opposite bugged me). I had also gone on to assure you that I wasn't Ad Hominem'ing Kesey based on drug use... I was asking for clarification on which Kesey was being used as a reference for a rational argument about subjective and objective natures.

But the bit about drug users' opinions being more valuable than other people's opinions has no more bearing to my post than a dislike of S.T. Coleridge has on the question of whether drugs are useful to some people as a tool to free their creativity.

As your post was "X bugs me", statements about how "Not-X bugs /me/" bring to bear perfectly what they're intended to... yours was a clarification on why your opinion was the way it was (because "X bugged you when Y"). So was mine.

I objected to a stereotype and a type of political correctness that some of us know from experience is inaccurate. It's also dangerous, because it encourages the so-called War on Drugs, which makes the existence of a violent drug-smuggling culture profitable; and it encourages the continuation of sentencing guidelines that have filled prisons in the U.S. with non-violent offenders, some of whom are guilty of having bought a joint fifteen years ago from a college roommate.

Ultimately, all I did was object to the extreme on the other end.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

No that wasn't my story, Gauche. I wouldn’t write something like that, with someone thinking they’d discovered “the meaning of life”, because drugs aren’t like that. I don;t know who wrote it, but he's almost certainly never used any serious drugs.

I’m an old unrepentent user myself, though I don’t do them anymore because they’re a bit much for me at my age. I’ve never heard of anyone thinking that they’d discovered any ‘secret of the universe’ on drugs, any more than I’ve heard of people suddenly thinking they could fly and jumping out the window. Both stories are apocryphal as far as I know, like the stories about women getting drunk and suddenly turning into a taging nymphomaniac. It just doesn't work like that

Most of the insight I gained on marijuana was illusory, or maybe I should say 'temporary'. You can’t bring that knowledge back with you. Things may seem profound while you're high, but they rarely seem that way when you’re straight. That’s one of the reasons I gave up pot. (I think that ‘profundity’ is an emotion, and marijuana is very good at triggering that emotion: the dope-smokers ubiquitous ‘Oh Wow!’ at the profundity of it all.) Dope is very good for heightening perceptions and synesthesia: for having perceptions bleed from one senorium to other, so you can taste colors and feel sounds. That kind of stuff doesn’t come back to sobriety with you though.

Not so with other drugs. They can really teach you things. I knew nothing about architecture until I took LSD and in one night in Chicago I suddenly understood architecture: what they were trying to do and how they tried to do it. (Chicago was a terrific place to have that revelation too.) Suddenly I realized why sidewalks were laid out the way they were, to gradually reveal a building to you as you walked towards it, and why the landscapers had put bushes there and trees over there. It was quite literally a revelation.

It just opened my eyes to something I’d never had the capacity to see before, and what I learned that night I retain to this day. There were other sessions too. I never felt that I had discovered some secret of the universe, but it does allow you to recognize patterns which you ordinarily don’t see. I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything.

As for artists and writers: I can tell you exactly what drugs Kerouac was taking when he wrote each and every one of his books, because I’ve taken them too and I know what they do to your writing. (Of course, he was much better at it than I am.) Now, you can debate whether Kerouac is a front-line writer or not, but he’s certainly not the only substance abuser in the arts. Most writers seem to use drink as their drug of choice, but just about all of the good ones have made use of drugs in one form or another. Mailer, Kesey, Hemingway, Doestoevsky, Faulkner. I won't even get into rock and jazz.

I don’t make a big point of all this, because I’ve been straight and I’ve been high and I know what both states are like. I’m not interested in convincing anyone to take drugs and I certainly don’t think they’re for everyone, so I usually keep my mouth shut about it. I’ve been there and I know.

But it does bother me to hear people talking dismissively about something they have no experience with. I’m used to it by now, but it still bothers me.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

Bumped as a courtesy to amicus.

quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by amicus


I chose not to copy an article which implied the fire was set by those attempting to Unionize the Ladies Garment Industry, for obvious reasons.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SR:

The main one being that there was a trial, which left a paper trail of evidence a mile long and never turned up anything of the sort. Despite the fact that women's rights and worker rights weren't exactly the Flavor of the Month at the time.

quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amicus:

Now, you believe, and you are asking us to believe, that the 'Robber Barons' the factory owners and the investment bankers behind them were so immersed in a chase for profits that they knowingly risked the lives of many people, destroyed a building and a business, brought the wrath of government and the labor movement down upon them, on purpose?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SR:

That last bit they definitely didn't foresee. Fortunately for the greedy ones, as is so often the case, so much wealth was acquired while labor issues were being debated and government piddled along in bureaucratic fashion, that the continuing worker abuses were entirely worthwhile financially, despite the eventual lawsuits and regulatory steps. White-collar crime pays pretty well. Ask the gentleman from Tyco...

As for the chase for profits and knowing risk of lives? The historic record "asks us" to believe it, not me.

quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amicus:

Take into consideration that most of the workers were jewish immigrants from all over Europe who were being coerced to join Unions for higher wages...
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SR:

Higher wages? They were being arrested for demanding the right to pee twice a day. Higher wages were a distant dream at the time of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, amicus. These were just people who didn't want every moment of their work day to be spent in misery. If someone had been willing to accommodate them, maybe the history of labor unions in America would have been cut short.

quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amicus:

On a wider scale, even in current times, there are cases of nightclub and high rise fires that needlessly take lives because someone did not install a sprinkler system, a back up elevator, another exit...

Do people make mistakes? Are there criminals in the business community" Do they cut corners?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SR:

At every opportunity, amicus. Greed is a powerful force. It trumps compassion every time.

quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amicus:

Of course, all that happens...but let us not throw the baby out with the soiled bathwater....
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SR:

No one would want that; the mystery is why you are so opposed to throwing out the soiled water, with or without the baby.

quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amicus:

As you can determine, both of these examples have been highly publicized in college classes to illustrate just what you have been led to believe: namely, that it is 'capitalism' the free market system, the 'robber barons' who are to blame for the tragic events you listed.

Do you really buy that?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SR:

I buy the historic record over your wishful thinking, yes. And since you've implied that the Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy - and the hundreds of newspaper articles, legal briefs, documents submitted into evidence by police and fire departments, etc., are the product of one website host with an agenda, here's what a Google search of the words "triangle shirtwaist fire" turns up:

Results 1 - 10 of about 9,590 for triangle shirtwaist fire. (0.19 seconds)

quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amicus:

Mankind makes mistakes, we used rivers as sewers until we learned better....
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SR:

No, we used rivers as sewers until government was pushed and pushed and pushed to defy its own wish to please its campaign contributors, and regulated toxic dumping. You still haven't said how you would solve the problem of a neighbor upstream who poisoned your water and told you to go f**k yourself when you complained. You'd be on the phone with your congressman so fast your neighbor's head would spin, but to say that would be to negate your entire argument. Which, for reasons you haven't made clear, insists on taking a view no less extreme than the pinkest commie in Moscow: no regulation, ever; trust the good sense of Misters Mellon and Carnegie to make that dam safe, they'll get around to it after a few fishing seasons at the camp. They're busy right now, but don't worry, Johnstown.

I'm trying to advocate a middle ground. Not even advocating it, but simply stating that I can't see any proven alternative to having as much freedom as human nature will allow without there being abuses of power and rampant greed that cause terrible suffering. Every year, my local electric utility bitches and moans about some regulatory action or other, meanwhile its CEO is the single highest paid executive of a publicly held company in the state, making $11 million a year in salary and bonuses, plus stock options and other variables. Life is tough for a capitalist in a socialist state like Florida...

<sigh>

Exhausted from the futility of it.

 

[shereads]

Ultimately, all I did was object to the extreme on the other end.

The numbers say otherwise, Joe.

If X equals "I am introducing the stereotype of the idiot drug user as a way of diminishing the value of a writer someone here likes"

and if Y equals the square-root of "I have drug use bound up in my mind with political activism and people who think they're superior because they've traveled"

then the square-root of X plus Y can only equal, "Someone has objected to X; I can use my reply as an opportunity to express my disdain for 'anti-establishment tools.'"

You and humility won't always be such strangers, Joe. Life will mellow you. Be careful, though, because there's also a chance that it will turn you into an anti-establishment tool. Be on guard! Never admit an error!

 

[shereads]

CONSOLATION BONUS

Joe, if you can identify the failure of logic with which you opened your most recent post, you win the kitchenette and a year's supply of Tide¨:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by shereads
I neither glorified drugs or proposed that people should use them, indiscriminately or otherwise. I objected to the dismissal of Kesey as irrelevent because he used drugs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

No, you stated that a particular viewpoint bugged you.

Did you find it yet?

Humbly,

Shereads

 

[gauchecritic]

I neither glorified drugs or proposed that people should use them, indiscriminately or otherwise. I objected to the dismissal of Kesey as irrelevent because he used drugs.

I never said that you did, I said I was opposed to it. Nothing else.

Joe rebutted by agreeing, a debate technique that I find interesting, then he added the "but" that typically follows and which hinted at a subtext: Joe objects when "anti-establishment tools" take someone's opinion as infallible because he's a drug user, has traveled a lot, or has participated in protests.

I have no idea where the protest and travel references came from; I must have missed something in an earlier post. But the bit about drug users' opinions being more valuable than other people's opinions has no more bearing to my post than a dislike of S.T. Coleridge has on the question of whether drugs are useful to some people as a tool to free their creativity. You don't have to like the poetry to be open to the idea that opiates may have helped the process more than they hindered it. And you don't have to be a fan of Kesey to see to that drugs didn't turn him into the drooling drunk who never communicates a valuable thought because he's busy vomiting in the corner at some bar - legally, of course. A man likes his beer, right?

I have no idea where you're coming from with this. My point was that it's not provable that drugs enhance anything, artistic or otherwise. Hence my small re-telling of the anecdote. I will not concede otherwise. Likewise you don't have to be a fan of Iggy Pop to see that drugs didn't turn him into someone lying dead in the corner in a pool of their own filth unable to utter anything, sage or otherwise.

I have a perspective on drugs that you and Joe probably do not. During the 70s and 80s before the right-wing sat around sipping single-malt scotch and debating the merits of mandatory prison sentences for pot smokers, millions of people experimented with drugs in the privacy of their homes and the homes of friends, and nobody knew who we were. Some of us used drugs to overcome shyness about public speaking, and the difference between our "straight" performance the week before and the chemically enhanced one the week after was so positive that we received a standing ovation instead of being met with an embarrassed silence.

Should we have gone to prison for that? Did it harm us?

I really should limit the question to those who have traveled widely, and participated in a protest. It's the only way to get an infallible answer.

And by the same token you don't have the perspective that Joe and I have. I can't answer for Joe but certainly for me, the prospect of being so totally out of it by injection, instantly, has never held any appeal, though a friend tells me it's the greatest high ever. (but then neither does he have very many comparisons that he can make) Smoking dope in the 70's was a one off for me and I wasn't impressed, it just didn't feel good.

For what it's worth, Ray Charles said in an interview that the reason alcohol isn't classified as a drug goes back to the time when marijuana was the cheap, relatively harmless drug of choice for black musicians. They'd smoke pot to "get in the groove" for a performance, and they'd write music that was sexier and less inhibited than they might have otherwise. Marijuana was still a "Negro drug" in the US until the Sixties when white kids snapped it up and made it their own, like rock 'n roll.

Again for myself. You're giving again, that which Joe protested. The opinion of a drug user taken as some sort of gospel and endorsment. And once more I say that you cannot prove the validity of statements like that.

The dismissal of anyone who has enjoyed drugs as some kind of loser is silly, inaccurate and uninformed.

I haven't read anywhere in this thread that drug users are losers, perhaps that's what you read, but it isn't what's been said.

Please notice that I did not just advocate drug use, nor deny that drugs can be abused with fatal results, as can beer and sex. I objected to a stereotype and a type of political correctness that some of us know from experience is inaccurate. It's also dangerous, because it encourages the so-called War on Drugs, which makes the existence of a violent drug smuggling culture profitable; and it the continuation of sentencing guidelines that have filled prisons in the U.S. with non-violent offenders, some of whom are guilty of having bought a joint fifteen years ago from a college roommate.

I think you're reading far too much into our objections to drug use and as for sterotyping, the portrayal of musicians who use drugs being somehow able to write better music or poets better verse whilst under the influence is also dangerously misleading and unproveable too.

You want to take drugs? You take them. I'll stick to beer and cigs, but please don't try to imply that loss of inhibition is the golden gateway to great art.

Gauche

 

[amicus]

The period from about 1840 to 1890, the heart of the industrial revolution, saw many changes in the American continent.

The Railroads with steam engines bridged the nation

The Steel mines and manufacturers provided ore and raw material and jobs and buildings and factories for tens of thousands.

Agricultural and Mining equipment replaced animal and human labor, the production of food and machinery and housing and jobs, lifted and transformed an agricultural, rural society into the first really 'modern' civilization in the history of the world that did not use human slaves as labor.

Electric utilities also began in that era, as a result of the industrial revolution. Electricity changed the world forever, it brought light and hope to replace the dark and the fear of the night.

It also brought medicine into the modern area and knowledge about nutrition and diet, through independent 'private' research on how to preserve foods by freezing, how to transport food and other commodities quickly and over long distances.

The two examples given, 'Johnstown Flood' 'Triangle Shirtwaist Fire', were not typical of the age, they were the exceptions.

Those exceptions have been singled out and propagandized for generations by those who wish to demean and excoriate the entire concept of the free market of the United States.

There should always be room for opposing viewpoints, it keeps those of us who advocate freedom and human liberty on our toes.

I am however, continually disturbed by the visciousness of those who attack human freedom.

When they are asked to defend a 'left' agenda, they will not even accept the name of 'liberal' as John Kerry is now refusing to do.

What is worse, and more dishonest, they will not come forth and expose the reasoning that allows them to use the point of a gun to force you to provide them with the means of intstituting their grandiose programs of health, education, welfare and a host of other programs they want 'you' to pay for.

Most people will not readily part with their time, energy and money without a fight, but they claim to do it for the 'greater good' the benefit of all mankind.

Bullshit.

Spend your own money. Dedicate your entire life to the promotion of your own social agenda. I could care less and give you complete freedom to do it.

Just leave me and mine to hell alone.

Thanks...

Amicus...

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by shereads
The numbers say otherwise, Joe.

If X equals "I am introducing the stereotype of the idiot drug user as a way of diminishing the value of a writer someone here likes"

and if Y equals the square-root of "I have drug use bound up in my mind with political activism and people who think they're superior because they've traveled"

then the square-root of X plus Y can only equal, "Someone has objected to X; I can use my reply as an opportunity to express my disdain for 'anti-establishment tools.'"

You and humility won't always be such strangers, Joe. Life will mellow you. Be careful, though, because there's also a chance that it will turn you into an anti-establishment tool. Be on guard! Never admit an error!

Honestly, I'd be delighted for you to show me where I am in either contradiction or error. I admit it is possible, but if your response to my points is limited to gibberish and sarcasm, I really would like to know why.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by shereads
CONSOLATION BONUS

Joe, if you can identify the failure of logic with which you opened your most recent post, you win the kitchenette and a year's supply of Tide¨:



Did you find it yet?

Humbly,

Shereads

Not really... as the whole statement is more like "No, you said a particular viewpoint bugged you and [contextual reference] I did the same right afterward". I don't see how logic factors in, there, nor which logical fallacy (I'm familiar with many, its what I do for a living) is appropriate. Please elucidate.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Honestly, Shereads, if I have somehow offended you then I'm sorry... but I'd much rather you showed me how and why I'm wrong politely than anything else, should you honestly believe something I've said is wrong. I am not unaccustomed to being corrected, in my profession its pretty common, but I am unaccustomed to the notion that I made an error being danced in front of me like childhood taunt.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Just leve me and mine to hell alone.

Thanks...

Amicus...

Believe me, nothing would give me greater pleasure. But it seems to be you who keeps on bothering us.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

I never said that you did, I said I was opposed to it. Nothing else.



And by the same token you don't have the perspective that Joe and I have. I can't answer for Joe but certainly for me, the prospect of being so totally out of it by injection, instantly, has never held any appeal, though a friend tells me it's the greatest high ever. (but then neither does he have very many comparisons that he can make) Smoking dope in the 70's was a one off for me and I wasn't impressed, it just didn't feel good.



I haven't read anywhere in this thread that drug users are losers, perhaps that's what you read, but it isn't what's been said.



I think you're reading far too much into our objections to drug use and as for sterotyping, the portrayal of musicians who use drugs being somehow able to write better music or poets better verse whilst under the influence is also dangerously misleading and unproveable too.

You want to take drugs? You take them. I'll stick to beer and cigs, but please don't try to imply that loss of inhibition is the golden gateway to great art.

Gauche

I'm not implying it, I'm saying that for some artists, it may be the only way. Significantly, I also began by acknowledging that for most people - including me - it's more likely to produce ideas that seem brillaint at the time but are absurd in the light of day.

See? I can concede a point to the opposition and even be self-effacing. I've seen you enjoy a moment of levity at your own expense, too, and you seem to have survived with your gonads intact. It didn't hurt your credibility, either.

I can even stay on-topic until prodded to do otherwise. Or did I imagine the prod?
Somehow, I missed the path that led us in the space of a single post, from a debate about drugs as they affect thought and art, to the introduction of terms like anti-establishment tool, and a bewildering slur against people who travel and protest. Had there not been discussions in recent political threads about the relative merits of candidates who have and have not traveled outside the US, and have/have not participated in protests, I might not have read too much into this, as you accurately point out. I stand corrected.

Now, if someone can just explain how those topics were relevent in rebuttal to what I had just posted, I'll apologize to Joe for thinking he was trying to be inflammatory.

To your point about shared perspectives: You and Joe, unless you have some experience with drugs, cannot share my perspective or Dr. M's. All drug users, on the other hand, were once non-users, so it's not accurate to say we lack that perspective. If you meant that you have a unique experience involving a drug-abuse tragedy, I'm sure each such experience is unique but you are not alone in having been close to people who wrecked their lives in an attempt to escape reality. In my family's case, it tends toward alcoholism, but I've also seen it happen with drugs. I don't know whether you can also appreciate the particular irony of having witnessed someone so drunk she was hardly audible deliver a lecture about drug users and why they should be jailed.

I don't do drugs anymore, not because they were dangerous to me but because the War on Drugs is dangerous to me.

I also didn't equate marijuana use with black musicians. Ray Charles did. He may not have protested or traveled, but he was a drug user at one time, so his opinion is gold.

He might also have had some knowledge of black musicians and their culture that you and I can't fully appreciate.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by shereads
...and a bewildering slur against people who travel and protest.

The assertion that included those two things was meant to show that "drug use" as a predicate was no more significant than a possible series of other traits that don't necessitate "solid, true advice or opinion".

Just a clarification. If you really want to go on mocking it, that's your business, I suppose. But its intention was relavent. I was clarifying my position, for better understanding. I am not "drug user hate mongering" with my statements any more than I'm "protest hate mongering" or "travel hate mongering"... I'm just saying that narcotic use is not synonymous with "wise" and to stereotype it as such is dangerous.

 

[shereads]

Honestly, I'd be delighted for you to show me where I am in either contradiction or error. I admit it is possible, but if your response to my points is limited to gibberish and sarcasm, I really would like to know why.

You may demean my gibberish, but my sarcasm was flawless. I just ranted at Gauche about something you did that ticked me off, so I'll apologize for overreacting, if that's what it was, n advance of referring you to my reply to him for an expanation.

The "taunt" was intended in fun, because we do that here. I should have realized that you and I don't know each other well enough to do that and have it come across as playful, which was the intent, rather than just bitchy, which wasn't entirely accidental but was unavoidable because you pushed my buttons.

Did I make that clear?

No?

Joe, I did my best.

I should also admit that I was reading you and remembering some other people who used to use "anti-establishment" and "liberal" in the same tone with which you might say, "fecal matter."

For that, I'm sorry. Really.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

So, we're cool, then?

 

[shereads]

So, we're cool, then?

We are more than cool. We are fine.

~ "Fine" used with permission. (c)2000 Smoove B, Love Man

 

[shereads]

Believe me, nothing would give me greater pleasure. But it seems to be you who keeps on bothering us.

---dr.M.

Dr M, just so there's no bad blood between you and Amicus, I'll take the liberty of interpreting for him. He and I have a bond of understanding that he isn't aware of and that frankly mystifies me, but I grew up with his politics and I think I know where he's coming from.

By "leaving him and his alone" he means, don't take some of his money and use it for social programs; don't ask him to explain the logic of being against laws that define property rights and the responsibility of polluters, while proposing that disputes ought to be setttled in the courts; and please don't accuse him of racism, misogeny, homophobia or selective ignorance unless you mean these things as a compliment.

Also, it's okay for you tax-and-spend liberals to spend more on weapons and meals-ready-to-eat, to whatever extent is necessary to bring American democracy to undeserving savages with swarthy skin tones. But use someone else's money, not his.

Now give Amicus his wallet back - I saw you take it! - and you two shake hands. I won't insist that you hug. There may be homosexuals in the forum who will force you to marry at gunpoint.

 

[amicus]

Dr, Mab....


You are one of several who have suggested that 'Amicus' that be me, is bothering this normal liberal forum.

I scrolled back up to the top of the page and clicked on, 'author's hangout' I think that it is what is called here.

It did not say authors hangout for left wing, pro gay, pro abortion, anti american Liberals only.

Had it said that, I would certainly not have participated.

You and others have demonstrated the real moral bankruptcy of the Liberal left wing of american politics.

Seldom do any even pretend to defend and support their basic political philosophy.

Rather, they attack, call names, and ignore any who dare comment on the secular group grope mentality.

I will no doubt soon tire of this and leave you hunkered around your flea infested medieval campfire, looking for others to sacrifice to your altruistic ideals.


I remain, Amicus the intolerable...

 

[shereads]

Seldom do any even pretend to defend and support their basic political philosophy.

This is irony, right?

 

[cantdog]

amicus.

Flip the mirror over. My taxes go to make Halliburton and Chevron richer and blow up muslims for God. I resent that. I believe Halliburton should foot the bill for make themselves rich, but there go the taxes anyway.

Whatever. This is a philosophy thread, let's get back to watching people I like hack each other up about drugs.

cantdog

 

[amicus]

Shereads....Thank you for the second laugh in two days I have gotten from a post here on the forum. The first was by someone who caught me flatfooted by ending his post with, "Keep my daughters locked up until age 30.""


Just so you can be accurate in criticizing my thoughts, I advocate total property rights on every square inch of property within the political confines of the United States.

I advocate specifically designed laws concerning property rights that give total control to the owner of that property. In many States, when you purchase land, as I have, the County or State or Federal Government retains mineral rights, I disagree with that.

To be more specific, if the largest corporation in the country violates the property rights of even the smallest owner, the Courts should be at the beck and call of both land owners to resolve the issue.

No property owner, large or small and surely not the Government at Hanford, or White Sands or Oak Ridge has the right to pollute, contaminate or otherwise lessen the property value of the adjacent or downstream owner.

Again..thanks for the laugh...I needed that!

(Especially after sitting through 50 minutes of Kerry)

Amicus

 

[amicus]

cantdog...The Clinton administration hired as many Haliburton workers as does the Bush administration.

Camels use very little crude petroleum.

amicus