radar is dead on.....as usual. hear him.

you give away your rights at your peril. i agree with limiting one's rights in order to get along in an equitable transactional relationship with the rest of society. but when you allow a government or a religion to dictate your rights.....you're already dead.

You just gave a very good one.

Oh, I'll answer, gentlemen, and in my own good time, thank you. There is none here capable of putting me on the defensive; I've read enough of you to know that.

I hide nothing from myself, UT. In that you are remarkably mistaken. Should you think you have reason to believe me wrong, try proving it. I can wait, too.

I suppose I should add that I only skimmed pierce's nice long posts, so there's only a skimmer of a response. A more thorough reply awaits a more thorough reading.

My goodness, dude, I don't even have to leave this message to see you hiding things from yourself. You express a beautiful madness right here.

You say "There is none here capable of putting me on the defensive." This is "conclusion first, argument second", and is not critical thinking.

You have positioned your argument as correct, even while noting (in other posts) that you've only skimmed the other statements and are preparing your retort. In your mind, there is no chance that PH has made a valid point. Now the game for you is merely to express your side well, with flowery language, and feel safe and secure that you have somehow "won".

True consideration of the others' points is not necessary, and in all your time here we have never seen you do it.


Now I can't "prove" to you that you are hiding things from yourself. All I can say is that I've seen a lot of people argue a lot of different things, using a lot of different techniques. Your approach is all insecure pseudo-intellectualism. You seem like a smart guy, but you don't write for communication, you write to make people think you're a smart guy. You construct the utterly passive "In that you are remarkably mistaken", avoiding the active and direct "You're wrong." It annoys your readers and waters down your points.

Now, I don't mean to drive you off -- really not my intent -- but if you aren't writing to communicate, and you believe that nobody here can offer you any fresh insight,... why are you here? You're not listening to anyone, and you're not speaking in a way that makes people listen to you. Do you not notice that this is a social website and that communication between us is the whole point of being here?

You haven't proven anything, just restated your assumptions. I don't necessarily disagree that they are good assumptions, or that they are a good basis for government, but they are nothing more than assumptions. There is no proof there.

And for good reason. Rights are ideals. They are not subject to proof.

I am here in part because I can offer you fresh insight. And why would there be refusal to accept it? Contemplate that.

And where would I get the idea I can offer fresh insight, you may ask? Well, just why wouldn't I?

There is a difference between "evading" and "taking my time. There are those who would loudly insist I'm doing the one, when I'm doing the other -- shame on you.

Are not those opposing my ideological points on ideological grounds speaking in service of a worthless ideology? Let's see: arms -- collective, without individual. What?! Foreign policy -- leave fascists and fascism/communism alone. To what end?! Offered an ideology of liberty, they cling the more to chains, as if there were virtue in shackles.

I mean, come on, people.

And why is your idea of madness, UT, so very strange? I'll put to you the question of what on Earth you're so sure I'm "hiding from myself." You post to allege I'm hiding... something. Something very unspecified.

Well, that's my filter: I require conversation, not lectures. Two-way honest communication, where two different collections of insights and perceptions are in play.

Because it seems obvious to me that there is more wisdom in the crowd than in any one person, even more wisdom in two smart people than in any one smart person. And the Internet is living, breathing proof of that concept.


And the more I think that I am communicating with someone who isn't a critical thinker, the less likely I am to accept their "insights" as up for heavy consideration.

And the less someone writes for communication, the less I am interested in what they have to say. Because not writing for communication is contempt for the reader.

Addendum. Since you have basically indicated that you are here to lecture, and that all of us are beneath your consideration, I wonder if there is anyone left who will take your opinion seriously.

Is there anyone reading this who'd like to speak up on UG's behalf?

i've often thought that UG was really just TW's sock puppet that he uses as a ridicule magnet for far right wackiness.

Tw wouldn't agree with that one, and for once he'd be right.

Make yourself worthy of consideration then. It's not impossible, just use all three digits of your IQ at once -- too many here just don't seem to do that, and it seems to have its root in regrettable unexamined assumptions. All I want is smart. I don't always get all I want.

And then you take a hard look at how people have behaved when in bunches, sometimes. The record is not one to give complete confidence. Even the smart, at best, make avoidable mistakes, and there's the further difficulty that smart does not necessarily mean good.

But rather than sing a paean to autocracy, I say this is a dilemma. Heinlein summed it up well in an interlude in Time Enough For Love that went something like this: Democracy is based on the assumption that many men are wiser than one man. How's that again? Dictatorship is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than many men. Um, what?

Are you really going to fully trust either way? Not me, mister.

I gotta call you on this one UG. Just simply answer the simple questions put forth by Pierce? What you have done is a classic, albiet unsuccessful, attempt at a diversion. You have now been gently guided back to the issue at hand. Post #166 is still waiting for your eloquent reply.

Yes, any country with a nuclear weapon will not get attacked by a conventional enemy. Iran notes this, that is why I even have doubts of them giving up their nuclear weapon program in 2003. The part about them bombing Israel or giving their future nuclear weapons away is a load of crap, it doesn't make sense, but I do believe nuclear weapons is on Iran's agenda.

We did learn about unalienable rights in public school, I just disagree with that idea.

If someone attacks me with a knife, I will defend myself whether it is a right or a privilege.

Either way, besides a minor few things all we are disagreeing on is semantics. When you say discovered I say created, when you say give up I say don't have the right. We get the same result either way, you just start at the top (unlimited rights) and come down (what we have now) while I start from the bottom (no right) and come up (what we have now).

I just believe that rights is an abstract concept, like morals, ethics, and freedom, because only humans can understand or use them and there is no way to test if they are actually there or not.

You did not read my post correctly Radar. I said since no one believes they don't have a right to life, no one can ethically decide if they have a right to life or not. Society can only mold people's beliefs of rights and enforce them. If Hitler believes the Jews don't have the right to life, that means he feels he doesn't need to justify killing them. If German society believes that a Jew has no right to life, that means a German growing up in that society will most likely believe that Jews don't have a right to life and that there would be no penalty for killing a Jew. A Jews can protect him or herself with the justification that he or she has the right to life. Rights, like ethics, are highly based on perspective.

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea of living with a few unalienable rights because it makes things much simpler and sets very ethical guidelines 99% of the time, I just don't believe they are real. "Do unto others as you would want them to do upon you" is a horrible idea in some situations, but it is a good generalization to live by 99% of the time. Like unalienable rights, I don't believe that quote is the correct way, but I will tell other people it is because it is simple to understand, easily avoids conflict, and would be the most moral decision, in my opinion at least, 99% of the time.

Another reason I don't believe in the idea of unalienable is because there is nothing to enforce those rights besides humans. If everyone in the world besides me believed that I don't have a right to live and all 6 billion people try to kill me, there is nothing the universe or nature is going to do to stop them. The only person that can stop them is myself. If nature says that everyone has a right to life, then it would make sense that nature would enforce it, but it doesn't, hence another reason why I believe rights are man-made. Humans are the only ones that can enforce rights, so it makes sense that humans created rights. Nature enforces the laws of gravity, hence why it makes sense that nature "created" gravity.

To further my point on my second last paragraph, I will put an example scenario in the Philosophy Forum.

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=16174