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lonestar2004 said:
As Surge Succeeds-- Iraq Coverage Declines 92% In One Year

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Terrapin78 said:

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lonestar2004 said:
As Surge Succeeds-- Iraq Coverage Declines 92% In One Year

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The media is controlled by the government and they want you to forget about them doing wrong in Iraq.

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zappaisgod said:
I agree with you that it is about philosophy, we just have different ones. I believe in the sanctity of contracts, life and freedom. I also believe in rewarding desirable behavior and punishing non-desirable behavior, lest it persist. I severely disagree with your threat assessment. As well as your assessment about what their quality of life impact will be. And brainwashing is what you are victim of, Pauline, not me. Nanny nanny poo poo.

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Minstrel said:

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zappaisgod said:
I agree with you that it is about philosophy, we just have different ones. I believe in the sanctity of contracts, life and freedom. I also believe in rewarding desirable behavior and punishing non-desirable behavior, lest it persist. I severely disagree with your threat assessment. As well as your assessment about what their quality of life impact will be. And brainwashing is what you are victim of, Pauline, not me. Nanny nanny poo poo.

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Brainwashing is what it takes to label things 'desirable or undesirable'. So YOU get to decide what is good and bad, and how to enforce it, because you hold some imaginary moral high ground?

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zappaisgod said:

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Minstrel said:

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zappaisgod said:
I agree with you that it is about philosophy, we just have different ones. I believe in the sanctity of contracts, life and freedom. I also believe in rewarding desirable behavior and punishing non-desirable behavior, lest it persist. I severely disagree with your threat assessment. As well as your assessment about what their quality of life impact will be. And brainwashing is what you are victim of, Pauline, not me. Nanny nanny poo poo.

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Brainwashing is what it takes to label things 'desirable or undesirable'. So YOU get to decide what is good and bad, and how to enforce it, because you hold some imaginary moral high ground?

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I get to decide what is good or bad for me. I do. All by myself. You can decide what is good or bad for you. All by yourself. Thinking otherwise, i.e. that someone else can determine what is in your interest, is brainwashing.

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The implication of this is that YOU get to decide who has a right to exist and how they aught to behave, and if they don't, they face violence. Life and freedom? That's some fantastic doublethink.

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I decide what is in my interests based on many factors. One of those factors is a cost benefit analysis of global conditions. I have determined that it is in my best interests to remove a murdering thug and reinforce the idea that a contract is a contract. You can decide to refill the pipe. I don't care.

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Coaster said:
ppl got sick and tired of stories like these

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zappaisgod said:
I agree with you that it is about philosophy, we just have different ones. I believe in the sanctity of contracts, life and freedom. I also believe in rewarding desirable behavior and punishing non-desirable behavior, lest it persist. I severely disagree with your threat assessment. As well as your assessment about what their quality of life impact will be. And brainwashing is what you are victim of, Pauline, not me. Nanny nanny poo poo.

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Iraqi Freedom Requires Individual Rights
Monday, April 21, 2003
By: Robert Tracinski

Only one minority needs representation in Iraq's new government: the individual.

Having been forced to recognize that our soldiers won a brilliant military victory in Iraq, media commentators are trying to minimize that achievement by loudly proclaiming how much more difficult it will be to "win the peace" by establishing a stable and benevolent new government in Iraq.

But the greatest threat to this goal is not the existing divisions and hatreds among different Iraqi factions. The problem is the advice these very same commentators are giving about how to deal with those divisions: that the key to the political reconstruction of Iraq is to ensure the right political balance of different ethnic and religious groups. The proper ratio of political jobs and positions of authority, we are told, must be handed out to Shiites, Christians, "Marsh Arabs," Kurds, and every other minority faction in the country. This is supposed to be the only way to keep Iraq from collapsing into chaos and falling under the sway of a new strong-arm leader.

But merely "balancing" tribal and religious pressure groups will not solve the problem. Indeed, an approach that focuses primarily on representation quotas for Iraq's minorities will merely encourage endless power struggles as each pressure group schemes for a bigger share of political patronage.

What Iraq needs is a much more radical reform: not the sharing of political power but the limiting of political power--a focus, not on the prerogatives of ethnic groups, but on the rights of the individual.

The greatest threat to good government in Iraq is precisely that each tribal and religious faction will demand special favors, that the Shiites in the south will want a Khomeini-style theocracy, or that the Kurds will make a grab for control of the northern oil fields. This kind of political gang warfare between opposing factions is inevitable--so long as the government has the power to dispense such privileges.

That is why it is crucial, for example, that the new Iraqi government enforce, not a balance of power between Sunnis and Shiites, but a separation of church and state. Religion must be made into a private matter, with Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, and secular Iraqis left free to follow their own individual judgment in spiritual matters. In the Middle East, where religious fanaticism is far more prevalent than in the West--and in Iraq, which has a history of conflict between Sunnis and Shiites--anything less than a complete separation of church and state is an invitation to civil war.

Just as Iraq must separate church and state, so it must also separate the state from economics. The most important step is to privatize Iraq's oil industry.

The Bush administration has stated repeatedly that Iraq's oil "belongs to the Iraqi people." Yet state ownership of oil reserves has had a profoundly evil effect on every country in the Middle East.

In a free society, wealth is generated by the productive activities of millions of private individuals running private businesses. In such a system, most individuals support themselves through their own endeavors--which makes them independent of the state and gives them less incentive to resort to pressure-group tactics to grab a share of government largesse. Yet when the state takes control of vast oil reserves, the structure of a society is turned upside-down. When the government controls the nation's largest source of wealth, individuals conclude that the road to prosperity is not through independent, private endeavor. Instead, they decide that the way to get ahead is to join together into political gangs to get their cut of the government's loot.

Privatizing Iraq's oil resources and production facilities would take that wealth out of the reach of a political spoils system and put it into the hands of individuals: the nation's most capable businessmen, its most qualified professionals, and its savviest investors.

Why are our commentators so focused, instead, on a balance of ethnic representation? The intellectual and political trend of the last century has been to elevate "group rights" over individual rights. Our intellectuals tell us that we are only free if our particular race, class, and gender group has clout in the government. This approach has been pushing America on a slippery slope toward balkanization. The same advice will push Iraq over a precipice.

Only one oppressed minority desperately needs representation in Iraq's new government: the individual. In the long run, it is only by protecting the liberty and independence of the individual--not by keeping Iraqis ganged together into warring clans--that "Operation Iraqi Freedom" can succeed.

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zappaisgod said:


I get to decide what is good or bad for me. I do. All by myself. You can decide what is good or bad for you. All by yourself. Thinking otherwise, i.e. that someone else can determine what is in your interest, is brainwashing.

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Daishi said:

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zappaisgod said:


I get to decide what is good or bad for me. I do. All by myself. You can decide what is good or bad for you. All by yourself. Thinking otherwise, i.e. that someone else can determine what is in your interest, is brainwashing.

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That is whim worship and it is what causes you to be in the place you are in this system. Yes you can make choices, but unless those choices you freely make are based on logic and reason--instead of vague, unexplained, inexplicable feelings then you will never succeed in your goals. Going by reason like an adult, instead of random feelings like a child is called living in reality.

Remember: "Automatic omniscience [is what] a whim-worshiper ascribes to his emotions."

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That is a general characteristic of the right.

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Daishi said:

Indeed I actually agree with this otherwise ignorant servant/laborer (same thing) on this matter.


As for Zappa's personal attacks- keep in mind he did fail as a psychologist and now must work as a carpenter. A rational, responsible person could have simply climbed the corporate ladder or started a small business by taking a loan. Only someone who is either mentally handicapped or severely prone to bad choices needs to resort to brute force, dead end labor. Remember laborers like Zappa are dependent on the thoughts, technology and inventions of the actual creators of wealth and builders of civilization. Zappa is just whining about the free system in which he fails and must resort to mocking his better educated superiors.

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Redstorm said:

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That is a general characteristic of the right.

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Tell that to the nutty moral majority crew.

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