Then, as another already stated, don't open a door you cannot close.  And don't refer to your oppositions' arguments as "silly" sans a counter-argument.

Limiting the freedoms of the rare few as a direct consequence of their own actions is entirely a different topic than limiting the freedoms of the majority because of what could be done by the rare few.

It's not impossible, it's just not ideal.  It's like the old argument of the Soviets to the masses when they complained about want.  "When we reach a perfect communism, then we will all have enough".  But it is the process to the prefect that is the issue.  I've pointed this out to you repeatedly before.


It's a silly argument for an entirely different reason.  A child cannot consent, thus sex with children is sex slavery.  Your attempt at equating the argument for freedom for it's own sake with the wish of a predator to force his will upon another human being is not only an epic fail, it's also dishonest.  And trollish.  If we were to stoop to that level, it would be trivial to compare your desires to enforce IP laws for your own gains to taking the food out of a child's mouth because his father couldn't pay the fee you demand for his 'hunting license'.  Do you believe that a government has the right to require permission for subsistance hunting?  After all, if they don't then there is a risk that there won't be any game left for the wealthy hunters who can pay for the game warden's salary.  What if instead of food, it was a generic medicine that said child required to live.  What right do you have, as the patent holder, to deny the child the medicine even if it's made by your competitor in a nation that doesn't honor your pantents?  You try to make the argument that movies wouldn't be made without IP laws, an assertion that I find rediculous, and you never even make an argument as to why this would be the case beyond "some people would get a movie for free, therefore all people would get their movies free".  It doesn't follow.  Regardless, the business model of the entertainment industries is not a valid argument for the injustice of IP laws.  Even if it didn't exist as we now know it, something else would exist.  And even if it didn't, it's entertainment.  Why do you hate the children?

I'm more or less on the fence, but I can guess as to what he is refering to.  Most people here are libertarian leaning, to some degree or another.  Such a political ideology, whether we agree with their greviences or not, doesn't tend to view groupthink, mob action, or popular group identity politics with much respect.

Can you support the statement in bold?  Do you have any evidence that it is so?

You should have responded like this...

"If we agree with the generally accepted definition of self-evident truths – those which do not require hard evidence in order to evince acceptance – we run into two problems. The first is that at some time there surely must have been some evidence that caused universal acceptance of these truths; as in, it is self-evident that the Sun rises in the east every morning because the ancients and we have seen it there; as in, every human being has material needs to stay alive because the ancients and we have gotten hungry and cold and awkward at nakedness; as in, all things are subject to the laws of cause and effect, except for the uncaused cause, whom believers call God and our secular colleagues call Nature. These observations of the Sun and realizations of our own self-needs are, in fact, evidence for their universal acceptance. But the universality of these "truisms" (another way of saying self-evident truths) allows us to dispense with the need to provide scientific evidence in support of them whenever we articulate them. Stated differently, no rational person can seriously challenge truisms when we use them as building blocks for our arguments."

-Judge Neopolitano

But as soon as you had, I would have been inclined to point out that this is one truism, and economics is a set of same.  A set of natural laws that cannot be denied without a "cost" in some other aspect of the economy.  So just as no one gets out of life alive, nor do you get to ignore economics without a cost to yourself, whether you are aware of the loss or not.

Seriously, you kids are slow.

You're going to have to be more specific.  Regardless, you must not spend much time on the Internet.

Did you really write this?  Are you being serious?


Be wary of what you read.  I won't argue that artillery can kill more people, particularly in a war of attritian.  They are a force advantage, but you still require a target.  It's hard to target the enemy discriminately, when they are a minority mixed into the general population.  As for your courts in mortal conflict example, it depends.  If those civilians outnumber the trained professional force by any significant margin, and half or more of those civilians are either former military themselves, or graduates of 'Appleseed' your mercs are going to have much to consider concerning their loyalties after contact with the enemy.  Don't expect that books, even history textbooks that focus on military history, are going to make up for your lack of direct experience in this field.  I served 8 years in the USMC.  There is nothing more frightening than a civilian with a rifle who doesn't have anything left to lose.


What puzzles me is why you keep assuming that when I state the obvious, that you jump to the conclusion that I find that reality preferable.  This side-track was all started when you tried to claim that a group of men with guns was just a lawless rabble, and I pointed out that is exactly what government boils down to.  Regardless of how fair, or "democratic" or otherwise justifiable you (or I) might consider any particular goverment structure to be; governments always boils down to the set of rought men willing to do violence against others on the command of a perceived superior.  Government IS force.  There is no way around this.  Likewise, there is no way around the fact that IP laws are specific applications of said force (and threat of force) against one group of citizens to the benefit of another group of citizens.

The great irony of this statement is that we understand this far greater than you do, and despite knowing this is true, you regard the defense of freedom for it's own sake to be a "silly argument".

Tanks, artillery and aircraft are weapons of war that are effective against other weapons of war, such as other tanks, artillery and aircraft.  They are not particularly useful for subduing a rebellion.  Your statements make it obvious that you never served in the military.  The basic unit of a military is the single person with a rifle.  This hasn't changed despite hundreds of years of technical advancements in the field.  The most demoralizing and dangerous opponent to go up against is a talented sniper.  During WWII, the Soviets invaded Finland in what they called the "Winter War", and the Soviets would carpet bomb entire sections of the Finish countryside to kill one farmer turned sniper who had become known as the "White Ghost" and the "White Death" to the Soviet troops.  He was the most successful single sniper in recorded history, and very likely was a significant factor in the Finns successful defense of country.  The proliferation of the privately owned rifle was a major factor in the Soviets never actually invading the US.  After the Soviet Union broke apart, and we gained access to old Soviet military documents, there was a case study done on the feasibility of a military invasion of the US.  They focused upon Chicago, and despite the level of gun control in that city, the Soviet military planners estimated that it would take at least a full battalion to capture and occupy just this one city.

Unless your goal is the absolute destruction of a population, 300 tanks are of small value against 10,000 armed and upset adults, particularly if they are not organized into a collective unit.  4th Generation warfare, look it up.

Another term for such an organized group is a government.

From what I can find on the internet, it looks to me that the media is focusing on particular groups within the protests, intentionally or otherwise.  It doesn't look like there is any single group, but some groups make more news than others.

Unless your employment contract is of a defined term, then it's ongoing and can be voided by either party at will.  This is why you can quit McDonalds without being sued and they can fire you so long as they still pay you for the time that you were there.  No matter how you try to spin it, yes it is fair enough in the standard conditions that I have presented.  However, if you signed a term contract, you can't change the terms of the employment until the term of the contract is complete.  So unions have no vector for organizing the US military, as an example.

BTW, no one can prove that "no one makes it out of life alive" because, although it's pretty obvious that it's close enough to be true, you can't prove a negative absolute. 

Almost all human history that we in the modern age consider to be factual is based upon independent documented references.  The New Testament references itself, which is not trustworthy, but there are literally dozens of independent documents that claim that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person who was executed by a Roman official.  There is more evidence that Jesus was not a work of fiction than there is that Homer was more than a pseudonym or that, excluding his own written texts, that Plato was a real person and not a pseudonym for a collection of students of Socrates.  Yet I have encountered many who doubt that Jesus lived at all who wouldn't question that Plato was a real and singular person.  Do you really think that you get to exclude the perspectives of those who disagree with you, based primarily on your personal assessments of the quality of references?  Do you think that, because you have a particular belief, that those who do not share your belief are to be discounted or derided?  If you make a statement, you have the obligation to support the statement. 

And yet, he didn't assert any such emprical evidence.  He stated it as a given, but didn't mention that it was a given on his part, and used it as a comparision of his correctness.  You can't make such an argument if there are dissenters, and at least all Catholics would dissent from the claim that "no one has gotten out of life alive, yet" would they not?  


Which is which?  I certainly made no claims at all, simply highlighted an example of a document that portends to dispute his position.  Since your the one who claimed that Hitler's head was alive, I assume that your's were the outrageous claims that you refer to?

I really don't think that you understand what's going on here, and I find it rather depressing to imagine that you could be an educated adult.


Both of you, as far as I am concerned.  Again, he presented no evidence at all, and neither did you.  I've made no claims to support, I expect the author to support his position, not the reader.


Of course I know that you were attempting to mock me, and that is part of what makes your statements both sad and amusing.  You assumed that my referencing a document that contradicts his (and your's, presumedly) premise means that I was trying to argue that either position was correct.  I was not.  I was highlighting that there exists a large percentage of people who would disagree with his assertion, and that he left said assertion unsupported as if everyone would naturally agree that he was correct.

Please tell me you are still in high school.


That's just it, 100% of historical sources do not confirm any such theory.  There are many historical documents besides the one that I referenced that have referred to such things.  Myths or not, not all sources support such a theorm.  You don't get to just dismiss those documents as myth, that's not your call.  It's also an intellectual cop-out.

I wonder if the unions and fellow travelers who are trying to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street realize that they already are in the midst of the Tea Party?

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/2011/10/05/oath-keepers-and-the-wayseers-to-occupy-the-occupation/

No idea, but there was no clean solution.  Oftentimes that grantee didn't even take possession of the property.


Yes, and that is why the heirs actually got to keep a clean title to the portion of the property that they were granted in the will, so long as all of their siblings got roughly the same.  The property just couldn't be transfered to a single heir.  If there was only one heir, or if there was only one heir that the grantee actually liked, a portion of it could be donated to an intitution.  I'm not positive, but I believe that MIT got it's land grant like that; Yale, maybe.


Because the grantee didn't own the property, because the king of England didn't own the property.  The king of England never had the right to grant a deed to begin with.  It was unowned property, as far as the young US was concerned.  Again, it was a compromise in a situation that couldn't be resolved within the normal case law or British Common Law in any clean manner.  They literally did the best that they could.


Not at all, but the giver must honestly own the gift.  You can't steal a pie from your neighbor and then give half to your girlfriend, it's still theft of a whole pie.  The argument that this land was stolen/claimed by the king, and taken from illiterate American Indian tribes was never presented in that time, but it's true enough even though most of those tribes were long gone or long dead by the time that it was an issue for the young republic.  Do you understand that the heirs actually did get to keep the property?