The top Saudi clerics have found another person to execute for free speech. We have previously seen a number of people accused of blasphemy for brief tweets or Facebook entries or even reading a book or speaking insulting thoughts at prayer. There is now a campaign to execute 23-year-old journalist Hamza Kashgari for a tweet that he sent to Mohammad on his birthday about Kashgari’s faith. There is no evidence that Mohammad is actually one of his followers but Mohammad’s followers are pretty ticked and labelled Kashgari an “apostate” who must be killed for his offense to Islam.
You are probably thinking the tweet must be pretty darn bad to fit serious blasphemy into 140 characters or less. Yet, Kashgari is being charged over a fake conversation that he had with Mohammad, who is not even listed as one of his “followers” on Twitter. Kashgari (who has apologized) wrote “On your birthday I find you in front of me wherever I go. I love many things about you and hate others, and there are many things about you I don’t understand.” As also tweeted “No Saudi women will go to hell, because it’s impossible to go there twice.”
The faithful even created a festive Facebook page with nearly 10,000 members dedicated to executing the journalist — declaring “The Saudi people demand Hamza Kashgari’s execution” already has nearly 10,000 members.
The committee of top clerics confirmed that these people are only doing what is right and told Saudis that “Muslim scholars everywhere have agreed that those who insult Allah and his prophet or the (Muslim holy book) Koran or anything in religion are infidels and apostates.” They called on him to be “judge[d] based on sharia law,” which demands death for those who insult Mohammad or the religion.
Other clerics repeated prior warnings that good Muslims do not Tweet. Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh announced that Twitter is “a great danger not suitable for Muslims… it is a platform for spreading lies and making accusations.”
Once again, these stories show the perils of the effort of the Obama Administration to establish standards for the criminalization of anti-religious speech with Muslim countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Source: Washington Post
“I might believe you if you could point to a government monopoly which has provided goods or services for less than a competitive market can. Off the top of my head, I can think of none.”
The USPS. We’ve had mail service in this country that is cheaper and more dependable than almost any country in the world. What’s killing the USPS isn’t the lack of competition or the competition for package services created by companies like UPS and FedEx. The USPS is dying because the underlying technology of communication is changing faster than they can adapt. When most people communicated by letter, the USPS did just fine. Most people use e-mail or phones now and the USPS hasn’t been able to adapt quickly enough to compensate although they are adapting. Their one price per size box shipping is boosting their package revenues, but the bottom line is that the costs for regular home delivery cannot be met under the changes in how people communicate. Those costs made sense at one time. They don’t now. They need to change to 2 or 3 day a week home delivery, do away with home delivery in some areas (relying on PO Boxes – they’ve already done this in some rural areas), and reconsider their priced for bulk mail customers. Junk mail has become such a huge part of what they carry for delivery that it no longer makes sense to give these industrial mailers a discount. They should be charged standard rates or even premiums. But the struggles of the post office weren’t created by their monopoly. They were created by technological change.
First, of those inefficiencies puzzling pointed to, the only one with substantive merit is the way insurance is regulated at a state level instead of a Federal level causing inefficiencies due to disparity of local laws. A lot of gaming the various systems for profit is indeed part of the problem, but its a problem not rooted in regulation at the Federal level, but rather diverse regulation at the state level. The remedy to that is to take insurance regulation out of the hands of the states and put in under a Federal umbrella so laws are uniform first. That this industry that clearly operates across state lines and impacts interstate commerce has been allowed to abuse the situation disparate state laws creates instead of coming under Federal control is simply a reflection of the power of the health care insurance lobby. Without their interference, I suspect health care insurance (and most other kinds for that matter) would have long ago been subject to Federal rather than a patchwork of state regulations. Optimization can come later and will come later as optimization is an ongoing process.
Second, when you look at the matter as a cost/benefit analysis, this is an area where not only monopoly makes sense because of the infrastructure savings realized to health care providers by having to deal with only one channel of payment paperwork (thus making cost of provision lower), but it makes sense because universal coverage creates the largest risk pool possible (also lowering cost of coverage). Making government be the provider also eliminates the inefficiencies of money being redirected for specious “administrative costs” like perks, bonuses and executive salaries that are way out of line with actual value for work done for the endeavor and are dependent and/or contingent upon profitability. Precisely because government can work on a not-for-profit basis better than private industry, then the maximum number of dollars possible can be spent where it needs to be spent: on patient care.
That this will by necessity create a triage system where some people will have to wait to get treatment is a small price to pay for everyone getting the help they need. I know both Canadians and Brits who will complain about the wait on non-critical treatment, but I don’t know a single one who would rather have the system we currently have where your coverage is left entirely to the profit motive of an insurance company.
“(providing for the common defense”
that is protecting individual rights, if you are invaded you could lose life, liberty and property.
“Partially. That you continually fail to recognize that our government has other functions as defined by the Constitution (as informed by the Declaration of Independence) is your failing.”
How so? What is there beyond those 3 things to protect? All of the Constitution is about protecting peoples rights, oh and the general rules like coining money. But those are side issues to the main agenda which is the protection of individual rights.
“monopoly would reduce the costs to health care”
I might believe you if you could point to a government monopoly which has provided goods or services for less than a competitive market can. Off the top of my head, I can think of none.
Health care has a good many inefficiencies which are caused by government. Puzzling has pointed those out, so I wont reiterate.
Why do you think a system run by the people who contributed to the inefficiencies will work more efficiently when they run the whole program?
“So why would you use a system that is inefficient and expensive to put fish on the table when you have an efficient system in place?”
So why do you assume that a system has to have profit built into it to be the most efficient when it is demonstrably not so? Again, I point to the health care insurance industry. The purpose of health care insurance is to pay for health care coverage for subscribers. The profit comes from collecting premiums while not paying for claims. The goal of the system and profit motive are at conflict with the primary function of the system: providing care with costs minimized by maximizing the size of the risk pool. The maximum efficiency in delivering and administering health care insurance is to make the provision of health care insurance a not-for-profit monopoly – no profit expectation means that money can be spent on care and a monopoly would reduce the costs to health care providers in the form of reducing their paperwork/payment channels to one thus reducing their overhead and realizing costs that even further benefit patients – that covers the largest risk pool possible: everyone.
“A government does not have power over people.”
Displaying once again that you have no idea how government works under the theory of social compact. All governments have power over people. Without enforcement, laws would suggestions and just about a useful for maintaining order and pursuing justice.
“A government is for protection from people who defile a persons life, liberty or property.”
Partially. That you continually fail to recognize that our government has other functions as defined by the Constitution (as informed by the Declaration of Independence) is your failing.
“An individual who does no harm to others is no threat to society and government properly has no power over that individual. But government has a responsibility to protect that persons rights.”
Ideally in a democracy, yes, but you are still failing to realize that protecting your rights requires the ability to enforce that protection. In an egalitarian form of government respecting the Rule of Law, this enforcement is done equally.
“In fact that is only reason government should be instituted, to protect individual rights. Government has no power and should not have power over individuals who respect others rights.”
That’s your opinion and it’s wrong as a matter of legal and sociological fact. Time and again it has been shown that government has other functions in addition to protecting individual rights (providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, the pursuit of justice, the creation, administration and enforcement of laws, etc.). Government protects your rights through laws. When you respect the rights of others is cause for you not to have sanction of law, but it is not the same thing as being immune from the Rule of Law. The government has power over you by nature of you being a citizen. The only way not to be under the power of a government is not to have citizenship anywhere. You won’t be subject to their laws if you are not a citizen, however you also won’t have the protections for your rights that the Rule of Law and government provide. That is a dangerous proposition. With no government to protect your rights from abuse by others, you are only able to defend your rights as well as you can yourself.
“Our government as currently constituted has enormous power over us, it has stepped way beyond the limits of good governance.”
“That is what your interpretation of the Constitution has given us, a soft tyranny which could become hard.”
Not my interpretation of the Constitution.
Under my interpretation of the Constitution, corporations wouldn’t be allowed to participate in the political and legislative process at all, the Wall Street swindlers would have been allowed to fail and gone to prison for their gross negligence and criminal manipulations to the market, the Bush/Cheney cabal would be in prison for treason and war crimes, and Obama would be impeached for aiding and abetting war crimes and committing the high crime of violating the Constitution himself.
“That is what happens when government has power over us.”
No. That’s what happens when power is usurped from the people where in a democracy it rightfully rests. Steady deregulation of industry, ever expanding corporate personality, and perpetual corporate attacks on the integrity of the political and legislative processes of this country since the days of Nixon and Reagan have turned this country into something other than a democracy. It’s a corporatist oligarchy that is one slim step away from fascism. But it was done under the Constitutional interpretations of people like Rehnquist and Scalia and Thomas and Roberts and Alito. Conservative originalists. They are about as far from my interpretation of the Constitution as you can get.
“But I doubt you see the difference.”
I know the difference. But you don’t. Because you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to what government is and what it does in society.
“You argue to prove me wrong, why? You have spent hours to prove me wrong, why? You would spend hours trying to prove Monsr. Madaleine wrong and you spent hours trying to prove Kderosa and Stephen Grossman wrong, why?”
I don’t try. I do. Why do I do it? Because I can and I find it entertaining. Because I’m more interested in truth and justice for all than money and bullshit. Because your ideas play into corporate oligarchy and eventually into fascism while doing so under the guise of liberty. You clearly don’t understand what liberty is you are so blinded by your devotion to property. This brings up another fundamental misunderstanding on your part.
Property rights are a subset of your rights based in self-ownership, but they are not the entirety of your rights nor are property rights more important that those other intangible rights. Your right to property doesn’t trump other’s right to be free of tyranny (economic or otherwise). Or free speech. Or free exercise. Or most of the other rights commensurate to self-ownership. Property is alienable. It is the only alienable right. You can sell it, lease it out, lose it, have it stolen, destroy it through misadventure, etc. Your other rights are inalienable. You can limit your alienable rights by social compact (example: free speech and prohibitions on slander or inciting panic, a reasonable trade of a limitation for a protection) or they can be taken from you by oppression (the DHS instigated “free speech zones” at political events), but the right itself stays with you forever whether you can defend it or not. They are inalienable. Your property rights are not the sum total of your liberties and your net liberties are not based in your property rights. Self-ownership is much more than property rights and so is liberty. Your myopic preoccupation with money and materialism keeps you from realizing that and that property rights don’t get to interfere with the intangible inalienable rights of others simply because they are derived from the same source and that source has the word “ownership” in it. Your ownership of yourself is a distinctly different quality of ownership of your property. Your ownership of yourself is unlimited. Your ownership of your property – even when purchased with the fruits of your labor – is limited both by its nature as it is alienable and by social restrictions on what you can own and what you can do with it to keep you (and others) from interfering with the rights of others (and others from interfering with your rights).
But mainly I do it because I can.
Gene H:
thanks for the reply.
By the way, I know the definitions of all of those words, they arent exactly preternatural.
You nattering nabob of nascent noxious notations, you.
By the way interesting take on my personality. Most of the things I say, I am pretty sure of their veracity.
And I am well aware that there is more than one way to skin a cat, but all fish must eat [unless I am missing one which has some sort of larval stage like a mayfly and doesnt eat and only breeds on becoming an adult] so you can use bait in traps or nets. But you are right you can use nets or you can use traps or a spear or dynamite or hand grenades or poison or electricity or any number of other methods known and unknown.
So what is your point? My point is that if you want to catch fish with a rod and real you first have to accept that fish need to eat, as you so eloquently parroted. So what is your point? That fish dont eat or that you can catch them in some other manner?
My point is that you need to get down to first principles to catch fish and one of these principals is that they eat. Another principle is that they live in water and another is a good many fish are gregarious.
So what is your point? Do you even have one? You seem to always point out the obvious and you misdirect. Getting fish into the boat is a function of a number of different things and is a part of fishing but to have the opportunity to get fish into boat one must follow certain principles. There is a hierarchy:
Fishing
type of fishing
rod/reel; nets; traps; trot-line; branch and line; noodling
and then the various elements of each type of fishing
Part of fishing is getting fish into the boat and is dependent on the skill of the fisherman using a rod and reel and luck in the other instances. Getting fish into the boat can be done in many ways, pulling the fish out of the water, using a net, using a gaff, etc. The principle of fishing is to put food on the table in the most efficient and inexpensive manner [at least with people who are fishing to obtain [or procure in keeping with your p’s] food]. So why would you use a system that is inefficient and expensive to put fish on the table when you have an efficient system in place?
Now that is just not logical, Gene H.
A government does not have power over people. A government is for protection from people who defile a persons life, liberty or property. An individual who does no harm to others is no threat to society and government properly has no power over that individual. But government has a responsibility to protect that persons rights. In fact that is only reason government should be instituted, to protect individual rights. Government has no power and should not have power over individuals who respect others rights.
Our government as currently constituted has enormous power over us, it has stepped way beyond the limits of good governance. That is what your interpretation of the Constitution has given us, a soft tyranny which could become hard. That is what happens when government has power over us.
But I doubt you see the difference.
I dont care who agrees with me or doesnt, you have your view of the world and I have mine. You think you have the corner on the market on truth? That is what all of you think, you are no different than me. You make me laugh, you are so totally unself aware. You argue to prove me wrong, why? You have spent hours to prove me wrong, why? You would spend hours trying to prove Monsr. Madaleine wrong and you spent hours trying to prove Kderosa and Stephen Grossman wrong, why?
1) “‘All of government, no matter the form, is about power over others.’
No, good government is about protecting the life, liberty and property of individuals. Bad men give up these rights when they violate the rights of others. Society then takes care of these men and punishes them, the power comes from the people not the government.”
You don’t see that you’ve just contradicted yourself, do you? That you haven’t disproven anything I said? That the power in a democracy rests with the people is irrelevant to the fact that in all forms of government, government has power over others. The power in a monarchy rests with the king, but how does he exercise that power? Through the government. The power in a despotic state rests in the dictator, but how does he exercise that power? Through the government. The power in a democracy rests with the majority of people (in our case, as limited by the protections afforded minorities by the recognition of the enumerated rights found in the Bill of Rights and the rights recognized elsewhere), but how do we exercise it? Through the government.
2) No. I not only know all of those words, I know what they mean. Do you? I kind of doubt it.
3) Just because you don’t understand a logic doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. It just means you don’t understand. Just like you don’t understand the difference between a principle as the term is used in law or science and a model as illustrated by your comment. Your analogy is to fishing is false. What I said was different problems can require different solutions and different solutions can require different tools to implement. All fish eating is a principle – an underlying universal truth (which is what a lawyer or a scientist means when they say principle). The only way to catch fish is by exploiting this principle (a principle you create when you define the system “fishing” above; a rule to a self-referential system but not a universal truth). Some fish can only be caught on live bait. Some fish can only be caught with lures. Different tools for different jobs. However, by choosing your systemic rule for “fishing”, your “principle”, you ignore the whole scope of the problem: getting fish in the boat. Some fish aren’t practically susceptible to fishing them with a line whether you use live bait or a lure. Some fish can only be practically caught using nets or traps. Your use of “principle” – a rule within a system, even if based on a principle according to my use of “principle” – a rule independent of any system except the universe itself, falsely narrows your considered solutions to the entire scope of the problem.
That you argue as if you go through life wearing blinders is a common criticism of your postings here. You fail to see the scope of issues because you let your precept and prejudices (Objectivism and the belief that free markets solve every problem optimally) blind you to other solutions that may provide a better solution. You don’t have the ability to think laterally. If you can’t make a solution fit your preconceptions, then it either doesn’t exist or it’s wrong. Sorry. That’s binary thinking. That’s not how reality works. That’s not how problems get solved. There’s more than one way to catch a fish. That you’re incapable of seeing that is your limitation, not the limitation of others.
You lose arguments here for several reasons, Bron.
1) You simply suck at argumentation as formal exercise. That’s the brutal truth of the matter.
2) You’re not nearly as well informed as you think you are – most of your knowledge is half-knowledge at best.
3) You let your preconceptions define both your perception of the scope of problems and the nature of their solutions instead of letting the true and unbiased scope of a problem inform the nature of your solution. You build solutions to your tools, not solutions to problems with your tools.
4) You insist on filling gaps in your knowledge with made up terminology that conforms to your preconceptions instead of using words according to their actual meaning. That’s either intellectual dishonesty or intellectual laziness, possibly both. Either way, it’s ignorance and very few fallacies are as damning to an argument as argumentum ad ignorantiam.
5) You are an ego driven arguer. Your preconceptions can never ever be questioned because you are (as the Objectivist center of the universe) always right. You distort or cherry pick facts to fit your beliefs. I let facts inform my beliefs. The observations should always inform the hypothesis. I don’t win arguments because I’m always right, Bron. I win arguments because I know how to pick the winning side whether I personally like the argument or not and whether or not it caters to my preferences and personal biases. It’s what I’m trained to do.
6) You argue without purpose other than to appeal to your own confirmation bias. You don’t care about winning. You don’t care about winning converts to your ideals. You don’t care about anything other than agreement from somebody that selfishness is a virtue and that liberty depends on free markets. The problem with that is neither of those ideals withstand critical scrutiny so the only people you will ever get to agree with you (or have ever gotten to agree with you) are already true believers.
The bad news is all of that still makes you a pseudo-intellectual troll. The good news is that you can’t help it. You’re just built that way – either by choice or proclivity.
“I’ve already told you that free markets are fine for most things we humans sell to each other. They are not good for everything that we humans sell each other. Such absolutist thinking about economics and politics on your part is a sign of mental rigidity and points out the flaws with absolutist dogmatism.”
Is that geneologic? If something is good for most things that doesnt mean it is good for all things? Assuming most means just about everything. In this case what you are saying is that principles do not apply.
Let’s take fishing for example, to catch fish on rod and reel takes “live” bait [natural fish food dead or alive] or a replication of a live bait since fish do not eat wood, plastic, glass and steel except by accident, mistaking it for a live bait. So what you are saying is that live bait or lures work for most every kind of fish but a few. How is that possible? All fish must eat to sustain life, so you are saying that a couple of kinds of fish dont eat? Well if it is alive it must eat to survive. Of course certain insects have an adult stage without mouths and only live to mate for a day or so. So how does that work with fish and with markets?
That is like saying everywhere on earth a lead balls falls to the ground except in a couple of places on earth.
Like I have always said, you dont understand principles for shit. And it is the way you “win” arguments. You make shit up to follow your brand of “logic”.
“Go find the widower of a cancer victim denied treatment so a for-profit health care insurance executive can meet a budgetary quota and get a bonus and try to tell him otherwise.”
How often does that happen? Do you think government health care is going to be any better? Do you think there wont be restrictions on care? Do you think everyone is going to get the same level of care?
If you do, you are a fool.
“Proselytism? Propaganda? Provocation without purpose other than provocation? Your prurient, puerile, purple prose devoid of persuasion and proof provides the persistent pursuers of this polemic and place of penetrating, perceptive, perspicacious, and profound philosophies to perceive yours the actions of a perfidious peddler of parsimonious puffery. A pseudo-intellectual troll.”
That was really good. I love the P’s they are so expressive.
Did it take long for you to look those words up?
Gene H:
“All of government, no matter the form, is about power over others.”
No, good government is about protecting the life, liberty and property of individuals. Bad men give up these rights when they violate the rights of others. Society then takes care of these men and punishes them, the power comes from the people not the government.
In a state of nature you have a natural right to protect your life, liberty and property against those who would usurp those rights. You may do it by any means necessary, a man who would kill you or enslave you or otherwise take your property has given up any rights and may be destroyed by any means necessary for your protection. But since we are no longer in a state of nature we give that right to a supposedly objective system of laws. To act on our behalf in the protection of our rights.
Government is not about power others except in dictatorial and tyrannical forms. Government should be about the protection of individual rights, and that is why governments should be formed. The power should stem from the people not the government. And only that power as we see fit to give.
You cant help it, you just cant help yourself. Your power lust is incredible. You must be a real good boss and keep your people right in line, I imagine there isnt much of a collegial atmosphere in your department.
“‘The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.’
~William Hazlitt (British literary critic and essayist)
Mespo posted that on another thread, it fits you. And you dont even understand that socialism is about power over others. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
Said the Objectivist who demonstrably doesn’t even know what socialism actually means.
All of government, no matter the form, is about power over others. You sacrifice absolute freedom found in the state of nature for mutually derived benefit with includes using the power of law to prevent and punish self-predation. “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” James Madison said that. You want to whine about power? Go live in the hills like a hermit. Power over others will exist in any society with a government which is to say in every society of any substantive size. If power cannot be dispensed with, it is the duty of every citizen in a democracy to make sure it is not abused for the narrow self-interests of the few but instead for the wider interests and greater good of society as a whole. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. A profit motive is amoral. As a prime criteria, it cares nothing about society. One way to ensure resources are best utilized in promoting the general welfare is to take some market sectors critical to society and making their ownership and control both in common and distributed on a non-for-profit basis. Greed for profits invites abuses. Go find the widower of a cancer victim denied treatment so a for-profit health care insurance executive can meet a budgetary quota and get a bonus and try to tell him otherwise. Your zealous devotion to one tool and your inherently selfish belief system blinds you to the fact that their is more than one tool in the tool box. I’ve already told you that free markets are fine for most things we humans sell to each other. They are not good for everything that we humans sell each other. Such absolutist thinking about economics and politics on your part is a sign of mental rigidity and points out the flaws with absolutist dogmatism.
I see you brought you own shovel.
Get back to me when you can come close to winning an argument with anyone. You seem to be missing out on the salient feature here. You called me an intellectual fraud. I never claimed I was an intellectual. Participating in public debate about social sciences is by definition an intellectual pursuit though, so in that regard I am and so are all who do so. I then demonstrated that based on your past performance (lies, distortions, making up technical terminology and terms of art, fallacious logic, never winning an argument against anyone) that you are simply not very good at it. So poor is your past performance that it i makes you out to be, at best, in way over your head and, at worst, a pseudo-intellectual.
If I’m wrong? Prove it. You saying I’m wrong isn’t the same as you proving me wrong. PROVE me wrong. Don’t just bitch about it. Otherwise your opinions, but especially your opinions about me, are irrelevant. You have yet to prove me wrong about anything. Then again, when the subject of you 0-1,000,000 record was brought up previously, you yourself said you weren’t here to win arguments. Which brings up the question of why you’d frequent a debate/discussion forum if it wasn’t to win over people to your point of view.
Proselytism? Propaganda? Provocation without purpose other than provocation? Your prurient, puerile, purple prose devoid of persuasion and proof provides the persistent pursuers of this polemic and place of penetrating, perceptive, perspicacious, and profound philosophies to perceive yours the actions of a perfidious peddler of parsimonious puffery. A pseudo-intellectual troll.
What I do care about are proofs, logic, evidence and persuasion.
Get some.
You might win an argument sometime if you did.
Gene H:
As far as making words up, not so much. You just dont like that socialism/fascism and communism are variations on a theme and I am about 99% sure Dr. Woods would agree with me.
You also dont like that they are all about power for the sake of power, something you are definitely all about.
“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.”
~William Hazlitt (British literary critic and essayist)
Mespo posted that on another thread, it fits you. And you dont even understand that socialism is about power over others. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Gene H:
Being an intellectual is more than reading a few books and engaging in debate on an Internet blog. I really dont care what the dictionary says on this subject.
Here is the sense I mean:
“Traditionally, the scholarly and the intellectual classes were closely identified; however, while an intellectual need not necessarily be actively involved in scholarship, he or she may have an academic background and will typically have an association with a profession.”
Tom Woods is an intellectual, I am someone with opinions, his opinions hold more weight than mine or yours with the public simply because he is published and does what he does for a living. He is an intellectual.
I am not a scholar and yes, intellectuals are paid, not all but certainly the better ones, people actually care what they have to say and think it worth the money and the time it takes to read.
I dont know Gene, you seem to be wrong about everything from Islam to Global Warming, from cash for clunkers to the Gulf oil spill. Your rhetoric may be better than mine but you always lose in the end when you are proven wrong by reality. I would rather be lousy at rhetoric and good at epistemology.
As far as making words up, not so much. You just dont like that socialism/fascism and communism are variations on a theme and have little distinction when one looks at the underlying principles, something I might add you are incapable of accomplishing. Principles and their application are very hard for you as is evidenced by your many posts where you fall short in grasping the underlying principles involved. Your rhetoric is used to distort and distract from your failing.
But keep on thinking you are intellectual because you post on a blog as a participant and as a guest host, it is funny and sad at the same time.
“I am someone who dabbles in politics and economics. In that sense I am an intellectual but not in the sense of someone like a Tom Woods who makes his living being an intellectual.”
Professional? Notice that the actual definition of “intellectual” isn’t the one you’re making up.
intellectual \ˌin-tə-ˈlek-chə-wəl, -chəl, -shwəl, -chü(-ə)l\, adj.,
1a : of or relating to the intellect or its use
b : developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience : rational
c : requiring use of the intellect
2a : given to study, reflection, and speculation
b : engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect
For example, engaging in an intellectual activity such as publicly debating social sciences (which includes law, politics and economics), the arts or culture.
It’s not like this is the first time you’ve made up the meanings of words to suit yourself; something an intellectual would not do. To dabble, to work or involve oneself superficially or intermittently especially in a secondary activity or interest, doesn’t make you good at it any more than making your living in an intellectual pursuit is the defining criteria of intellectualism. Being an intellectual is not about what job you hold. It’s about who you are, your values and how you see the world. You aren’t a pseudo-intellectual because of your day job. You’re a pseudo-intellectual because you regularly make up the meanings to words in multiple fields of study, you have often facile logic when not outright fallacious, and you have demonstrably weak argumentation and rhetorical skills (as evidenced by you never winning an argument here with anyone). None of these are the hallmarks of a intellectual but rather one who would pose as an intellectual and/or are simply in over their head.
You seem to be digging this hole of pseudo-intellectualism for yourself quite well enough using only your mouth and keyboard, Bron.
Would you like a shovel?
Gene H:
here is whom I would call an intellectual:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2mOWR1g6Tc&feature=related
I am someone who dabbles in politics and economics. In that sense I am an intellectual but not in the sense of someone like a Tom Woods who makes his living being an intellectual. Which is what I was trying to put across.
My standards are quite a bit higher than yours. Is that what you tell the women? I am intellectual, I post on a blog. I used to live down there, maybe it does work. They dont call them coon asses for nothing.
You really need to unlearn all that you have learned, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
As far as being green with envy? You flatter yourself.