Bizud

I've already told you, I think it's sad in more or less the same way dying in a car accident is sad. It can be viewed as succumbing to depression, or just making a decision that one is entitled to make. For example, I think it's good that Sue Rodriguez was able to end her own life. We use "woman" and "man" when we want to be gender specific, otherwise we use gender neutral language, which "man" is not. And I think you're just being deliberately obtuse. Yeah, she's not sexist at all. ;) I can see why you wouldn't want to spend much time on it. I think Rand maybe had a couple of worthwhile ideas but her ideas about sex and gender and sexuality are just conservative and traditionalist, and frankly pretty ugly and indefensible. Check, check, and check. I admit I didn't, but I don't think it would make much of a difference and I know I didn't misinterpret it. "I would not vote for a woman president." How can you misinterpret that?

I agree, except with respect to the internet. It should never be regulated, and you don't need to regulate it to catch makers of child pornography.

scary scary scary real scary extremely fucking scary. The guy has a lot of positions I agree with, but if this guy were president the country would fall apart and there would probably be a civil war. In fact, because he's so dogmatic (I'm sorry, "principled"), he just might be the scariest of them all.

Well I'm going to do it anyway. Ayn Rand on why women shouldn't be president: "Humanity," "humans," "people" are all gender neutral and are not vestigial linguistic holdovers from a time when people writing about "man" (for example, "the rights of man") really did only mean men. Well what do you mean by "wrong"? I have had friends confide in me that they contemplate suicide and of course I don't want to see that happen, but that doesn't make it wrong. There are moral wrongs, i.e. injustices, and there are things that are just sad. Suicide is (usually) sad in the same way dying of cancer is sad. But it's not wrong. Everybody dies. Few are fortunate enough to choose how. And I have no desire to live forever.

For the record, I support an individual's right to die and don't consider suicide unethical. Some say it's wrong because it hurts those you leave behind, but they have no right to expect another person to continue living for their sake. Is it unethical to die? If so, does this mean that the dying are unethical, or are they exempt from ethics? Whatever Ayn Rand says, I think ethics only applies to interactions among people - anything I do that affects only myself has no moral dimension. Also, even if you don't intend it that way, the use of "man" is widely considered sexist language that excludes half the population. "Politically correct" language is important not just to avoid being insensitive, but also because the language we use shapes our thoughts (see Sapir-Whorf hypothesis). Of course Ayn Rand was a real sexist, so if you're taking cues from her...

Heyrabbit, are you by any chance an objectivist?

I want one of these and one of these and some of these and then maybe one or two of these

Yeah, few people are going to have a problem with the taser being used on someone who is armed or otherwise a clear and present danger. The problem is that the police are allowed to use it to assist in the subduing of any resistant subject - that has to change. You shouldn't be allowed to tase unless absolutely necessary.

The choking game is as old as humanity. Of course kids will look for ways to get high - after all, they're legally prohibited from getting intoxicated the way adults do. The thing is, getting high doesn't have to be self-destructive. So I'm thinking of slangin' buds to kids at the high school. I could undercut the rip-off artists who sell pre-rolled joints of shake at ludicrous prices to kids who don't know any better, make a quick buck, and do the community a favour. ;)

Don't forget the caesar!

The laws of physics are something we discover, through use of the scientific method (maybe you've heard of it). Ethical "laws" are something we invent. When your conception of your rights differs from everybody else's. If you bought, legally, the world's supply of fresh water, virtually nobody would support your "right" to your property. When feudalism was being abolished, lords lost their "rights" to their land and the land became overnight the property of the peasants that lived on it. When Europeans conquered this continent the people that were living here before lost virtually all their rights because Europeans didn't recognize their collective "stewardship" of the land as a form of ownership. People lose rights and gain other rights all the time.

Reasonable people will draw a distinction between ownership of different things, like, for example, the product of one's labour (different from a wage), land, the means of production, a basket of apples, a copyright, or the entire world's supply of oil. Ownership of all these things is and would be viewed differently. You're just being silly, and ethics is still not a science, it is philosophy. Are you going to call philosophy science??

Ethics is not a science! Sciences use the scientific method, maybe you've heard of it? Ethics is philosophy. And in philosophy, as Socrates said, "all I know is that I know nothing." If ethics were some absolute truth waiting for us to discover or understand it perfectly, there would not be ethical dilemmas. It's an unequal relationship and is therefore coercive. That's what the socialist movement and the trade union movement are all about - fighting for workers' rights, which are at odds with employers' property rights. You sidestepped the question completely. The point is that the institution of the family - traditionally an oppressive one, to be sure - demonstrates the collective nature of human existence and the myth of independence.

Yeah, pretty much. I've only been hassled once for mine.

I remember reading about soldiers who came back from the war, expecting to receive a hero's welcome, but instead returned to unemployment and poverty, essentially shit on by the government, while the government glorified the deaths of those who weren't fortunate enough to return. Some of them refused to wear the poppy and thought the idea of "national remembrance" was absurd and cheapened their personal remembrance. I'll leave the remembrance to those who lost friends and family. The other thing about the white poppy is that it signifies remembrance of all the victims of war, not just the soldiers on our side. To tell the truth the nationalist aspect of the remembrance makes me as uncomfortable as the militarist aspect. I'll not associate with either national flags or military uniforms. When I wore a red poppy in the past it was because of pressure and orthodoxy ("just wear the fucking poppy"), and that's a bad reason to do anything. It has never felt right to me. And you'd think it would also cheapen the meaning of the symbol for those who actually do care if people are wearing it "just because."

We do trust people to make their own decisions about dangerous "mind-altering" drugs. Alcohol is legal, but by any definition is a "hard drug," and much more dangerous to the user than pot, mushrooms or LSD (all soft drugs and nonaddictive). I think it makes no sense not to weigh personal experience, because value is an entirely subjective thing in all cases. You can't weigh the benefits versus drawbacks of something objectively. And you're right that people can become addicted to drugs and commit robbery to get them - but if we had a legal, affordable supply, we could treat addicts more effectively (because they wouldn't have to conceal their addiction and could seek treatment at the same time as seeking a fix). And I've done coke, and I'm not an addict, and if I ever do it again I obviously won't be letting the laws stop me. We need to understand that prohibition doesn't work - doesn't accomplish the thing that it is supposed to accomplish - and it empowers organized crime (who are best positioned to provide the supply), and therefore contributes more to social problems than drugs themselves do.

Except that guns kill people. In my hands, they're a threat to others, not just myself. Cigarettes, second hand smoke aside, affect only the smoker, and second hand smoke is the reason most places don't let you smoke indoors anymore. And the same goes for heroin, cocaine, and obviously marijuana. Legalize it all. Who are you to say a substance has no benefits, only negative consequences? Does the subjective experience of the user matter to you? Ever had sex on coke? E? I've derived tremendous benefits from the drugs I've used. Especially mushrooms...sweet, sweet mushrooms.

Maybe not, but at this point the evidence is just overwhelming - prohibition simply doesn't work, and empowers those who supply the black market. There's not even any reason to believe that letting kids smoke would result in an increase in kids smoking, since for the most part kids who want to smoke can and do get smokes. I mean, I know a lot of 18 year old smokers. Harm reduction simply makes more sense. I guess if you don't care about the health of drug users...but then why criminalize any drugs at all, if not for the health of those who would use? Wouldn't it be better to legalize other drugs so that other drug users don't have to worry about suspicious illegal drugs?

From the University of Alberta student paper. The site seems to be down, this is from the google cache.

Okay then, you shouldn't have any problem with kids smoking at all if you don't care how fast they kill themselves.

I get what you're saying, but rights exist insofar as humans agree to behave they exist. They exist in our minds and behaviour. They're artificial, not natural. The concept that a person has the right to the product of their labour, or the right to health care, or the right not to be assaulted, are absolutely created by humans and human language. But where is it written that people are not responsible for each other? You say that humans either use their brains to acquire the means of survival, or die. But at no point in human history have the vast majority of humans done this alone; they've done it in groups, because we are social animals, not solitary animals. So if you're going to use appeals to human nature, you should recognize that humans are individuals who live in collectives and there simply isn't any way of getting around it. Capitalists want people to be economic individuals, but, for example, you're a clerk at some workplace - that workplace is a collective and it has a power structure and the fact that some people do more empowering work and/or get higher pay has to do with their place in the collective's power structure. You might think of yourself as earning a living as an individual because industrialism/capitalism has created an arbitrary division between work and nonwork, and you might not strongly identify with your work, but that is an illusion - and what you do is a part of who you are.

As for Paul Bernardo, he's still a citizen of this country and a member of the human species, and therefore a member of our community, and our community should leave no one behind - therefore we should treat him with respect and humanity and give him the opportunity to contribute to society, even if he may need to be isolated from society because he has been judged dangerous. A criminal conviction, even of the most heinous crime, does not mean loss of citizenship - it does not mean a severing of ties to the community, and it does not mean our obligation to love and support our fellow human being is diminished. I'm not a Christian, but it's pretty clear to me that that was Jesus Christ's essential message, and in that respect he was right. Love thy neighbour.

Property rights are always being redesigned. At one point you could own people; now you can't. At one point a wife was considered the property of her husband and children the property of their father - that's slavery as well. In the last ten years legal decisions have created the right to own the patent for a genetically modified lifeform, so you can own a species - that's brand new. And conversely, the right to control intellectual property in the form of music recordings (and others) is under attack by people like us who share files - file sharing is absolutely an attack on a form of property rights. And if you had enough money and purchased all the fresh water on the planet, legally, I'm pretty sure nobody would support your right to that property. And labour unions and workers rights are an attack on employers' property rights vis a vis their business. Ownership itself is a creation of societies, so it is right and proper for societies to decide what can and cannot be owned. It is a central injustice of capitalism that an ideology of "self-reliance" and independence is forced on people, most of whom are perfectly capable of producing things collectively with others, and in fact that is still how almost all things are produced. Property rights, generally speaking, benefit the powerful at the expense of the weak. Look at the difference between a democratic workplace, like many co-ops are, and the average totalitarian workplace. In the latter, people are not rewarded for their effort and sacrifice (I agree that a just economy would reward effort and sacrifice!), but for their bargaining power within the power structure. If anyone can do your job and you're easily replaceable, you can be paid much less than the value of your work. And if you're essential to your company you can be paid much more than your effort and sacrifice would merit. I don't follow your logic. Canada has the wealth to ensure a good standard of living for everyone without impoverishing anyone. It's not a sacrifice if I help someone in need. To see others in pain causes me pain. When others are harmed, we are all diminished. When we help others, we enrich ourselves. Right, because, as I've said, "define your morality" isn't a legitimate request. It's practically a non-sequitur. It does not make sense. I mean, morality is that which promotes love, peace, and happiness, but that doesn't tell you much.

We have no way of asking a dog.