Why was this topic closed, "Should we go to war? "

Status
Not open for further replies.

WhiteAsSnow

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Oct 2, 2002
Messages
60
Why does someone get to decide to close a topic when a discussion is taking place? As long as it's not dirty, there shouldn't be any problem. Topics were never ment to be closed. They were ment to be locked down only in EXTREME cases. Just MHO.
bluesigh.gif
 

Klaus

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Sep 6, 2001
Messages
1,998
Location
Germany
Hmmh,

I didn´t closed it or was involved - but this is how it ends:

The starter of the thread wrote:

Originally posted by FC-Fire/Rescue:
And curtain falls....

(Hint)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moderator Sasha comes in:

Ok, ok, ok....

G'night Gracie....

I don´t see any wrong with that - if you don´t agree with the starter of the thread closing it down why not just start a new thread on the topic if you want.

Just my 2 cents

Oh and in the old thread I missed to post that:

Not all germans are as stupid and brainwashed as that poster I might have just thrown off the board coming in flaming away as he did.

The "No War" decision of the german Kanzler Schroeder was a desparate move to win the german elections last year - as the german public is as other people afraid of war and the pre-election data showed him to be in big doo-doo they made up this scenario of re-electing him would be NO WAR while not electing him IS WAR - this is and was as stupid as a lot of other lies, damn lies and outrageous lies Schroeder and his government do and have been doing - sometimes not proud of being a german
confused.gif


And yes - the french are against US basically in principle I think - they still believe they are the only country deserving to rule the world, the only language worth being spoken, yadayada, oh - did I mentioned I do love france and speak french
grin.gif


Klaus
 

NightStorm

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Jun 16, 2002
Messages
1,090
Location
Between a rock & a hard place.
Klaus,

Right now, the French have a multi-billion dollar oil deal with Iraq in the offing, it should be finalized by mid February. Russia signed a similar deal with them a week ago, tomorrow. China would prefer to not to get involved for various reasons. This leaves only the U.S. and Great Britain, out of the five members of the U.N. security consul with veto powers, that are in favor of military action at this time.

Dan

Oh, check out my solution here: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=22;t=001270
 

Silviron

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Jun 24, 2001
Messages
2,477
Location
New Mexico, USA
I fully agree with "... brainwashing government funded public schools have done to the majority of the population turning them into sheep for slaughter."

I didn't accuse you of being an anarchist, I asked if you considered yourself one. (I was kind of an anarchist myself for a while until I realized that most people are too ignorant, too greedy and lack any self control to govern themselves.)

It is just that you seemed to me (just from your posts on that war thread) to despise ANY sort of government; You are obviously not a communist, a socialist or a fascist. By your sig you are obviously not a supporter of democracy, and by your words in general on that thread you don't like our Representative form of democracy.

I haven't noticed that you are overtly into any sort of Theocracy, so what remains besides Anarchism???

Well, I guess I did call you an Anarchist, just by the process of elimination. If you can tell me what sort of system you would rather have us all live under, I'll stand corrected.

You know, I pretty much agreed with about half of what you said on that other thread, but it seemed to me that the other half of what you said was mutually exclusive.

There will NEVER be such a thing as "Unanimous Consent" overall in a "free country" unless you are using the term in some way with which I am not conversant. You may get it on a few individual issues, but certainly not enough to govern a nation.

And if you are talking about L. Neil Smith's treatise (and I rather imagine you are) and trying to apply it in any nation of a million or more (unlikely even among ten thousand people who actually have to make a living and dwell within ten miles of their nearest neighbor), I only have three words: unattainable pipe dream.

I'd like to live under such a system myself (or more accurately non-system), but there is no way it would work with "normal human beings".

P.S.: I'm going to try to not get any more involved in this topic, although I'll answer any direct and specific questions anyone may ask.
 

NightStorm

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Jun 16, 2002
Messages
1,090
Location
Between a rock & a hard place.
I like Gun Nut's sig, it makes me chuckle. It pretty much describes how majority rule works. To paraphrase it; the majority with one agenda overrules the minority's agenda. The use of the wolves and the individual sheep is what makes it so droll.
I've been thinking of a new sig line myself. How's this one?

"Irony is....a Scotsman cloning a sheep."
grin.gif


Later,
Dan
 

Silviron

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Jun 24, 2001
Messages
2,477
Location
New Mexico, USA
I agree with his sig too:

And that is precisely why we have a REPUBLIC, (a Representative Democracy) instead of a pure democracy.

Yeah, it is a lousy system of government, but it works better than any others ever have.....

Oh, Darn it, I didn't mean to get involved in this discussion any more
mad.gif
 

patg

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Oct 29, 2001
Messages
61
Location
Garland, TX
I just love reading articulate post's in the Cafe (esp like Gun Nut's and Silviron's). This is a great forum for intellectual expression that I don't usually find. Thanks for your viewpoints!
 

Monsters_Inc

Banned
Joined
Oct 8, 2002
Messages
654
Location
Monstropolis
I'm with patg, but sometimes (thru no fault of the posters) I'm not in the mood for intellectual reading, and I feel their posts are wasted at least on me, as I tend to skip over them.
 

Anarchocap

Enlightened
Joined
Dec 23, 2002
Messages
452
Location
Arizona, USA
Silviron,

Anarchy has so many negative connotations surrounding it because it is misconstrued and attacked by government so regularly. After all, it is the only actual competition to government.

I would say I have Anarchist, but better yet, Autarkist tendencies.

Since you are already at least somewhat educated in Neil's views, I won't bother to debate you on them. But yes, I have derived some of my ideas on Government (or the lack their of) on Neil. I converse with him at regular intervals. We kick back some ideas every so often. We manage to cross paths less than that, and every once in a while I get to read his books before they are published and see the circle of friends I keep get mentioned in them.

We'll just leave it at the fact that I disagree with your views on the issue. In the interest of not degrading the thread any further, I will just say that I don't think you are correct that Neil's views are pipe dreams. They are no more a pipe dream then the government that now exists as opposed to the one that was created with the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.

All it takes is a vision of how things would work and a way to educate others on that vision. What was done to this country as of the Civil War was a calculated, if somewhat disorganized plan to make people the "too ignorant, too greedy," and unresponsible sheep that they are. If the Southern States wanted to remove themselves from the Union, they should have been allowed to do such! Is not a union by force, slavery? Disenfranchisement and ceding were the very reasons for the foundation of the country, and are written as a right in our founding documents as Consent of the Governed. If that weren't the case, we'd still be ruled by the English Monarchy.

Also, greed is good. It makes the world go around. Profit motive is nothing to be ashamed of, and it is the last thing that government needs to rid us of before its circle of lies is complete.

If we lose our lust for money and property ownership, we turn into countries like the former Soviet Union, where peoples' labor produces poop because they don't own any of it. They pretty much just hung around the factory having sex with each other and getting drunk off their butts on cheap vodka.

In my honest opinion, the only way to preserve Liberty is unanimous consent. If you want to force me to do something, that ain't Liberty. And as long as I am not using force on you or your property, there is no reason for you to use force on me. If that covenant is breached, then neutral third parties step in to mediate. Its really not unlike what happens now, but there would be a free market solution instead of a monopoly government solution. It happens right now with mediation and arbitration specifically. If you step outside the government's brainwashing, its not such a huge leap of faith.

Anything less than that is coercion and slavery.

That is pretty much the antithesis of government as we know it. But I am more concerned about Liberty. So I guess we'll have to just agree to disagree.

I find it quite amusing that people have all these nasty things to say about something that most people know nothing about except based on what a monopolistic, self-serving group of slave owners has told them.

For what its worth, Jefferson and others like him didn't think we had the perfect solution here. They readily admitted that government has huge flaws and their overall view was that we would lose our Liberty within 100 - 200 years. Ironically, when Jefferson was in France encouraging the peasants to lop off the heads of the Monarchy there, and he heard about the dupe that occured when the revision of the Articles of Confederation turned into a call for a Constition, he stated our Liberty wouldn't last for more than ten years.

The founding fathers had never done this before. The ideas they had never saw the light of day until 1776 and the DOI. They figured they'd try something new in their search for Liberty. Well, that Liberty has been gone ever since Lincoln preserved the union at all costs. Its high time for all those interested in preserving Liberty to again try something new.

Of course you are going to hear nasty things about self-government! If we decided to try it, you'd put all these self-righteous buffoons so full of hot air out of jobs and they'd actually have to join the ranks of the productive class! They'd actually have to earn their money and not steal it from you and me under threat of duress. I'd imagine a large lot of them would (hopefully) just up and die at the prospect of it all.

I think I've gone into enough detail here that anything more will be counter productive. If you or others wish to continue, it might be best just to e-mail me and we can do so that way without having to destroy CPF's bandwidth and gentile tone.
 

Anarchocap

Enlightened
Joined
Dec 23, 2002
Messages
452
Location
Arizona, USA
Actually I think the thread was closed because someone started to accuse me of being an Anarchist.

Sasha knew I was going to reply, and I am sure she was afraid of the riot that would have broken out due to my dissertation on the Principals of Liberty, Unanimous Consent, Freedom from Coercion, and all the brainwashing government funded public schools have done to the majority of the population turning them into sheep for slaughter.

It certainly would have been the end of mankind, and Sasha was doing her motherly duty to protect all of your virgin brains from my evil thoughts.
grin.gif
 

WhiteAsSnow

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Oct 2, 2002
Messages
60
Not that I care, but I honestly didn't start this post with any intentions of restarting the old topic.
Originally posted by Klaus:
Hmmh,

I didn´t closed it or was involved - but this is how it ends:

The starter of the thread wrote:

Originally posted by FC-Fire/Rescue:
And curtain falls....

(Hint)
Klaus
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Klaus: I goofed. For some reason I thought FC was NOT the one who started the topic. My mistake.

SW
 

Harrkev

Enlightened
Joined
Aug 30, 2001
Messages
443
Location
Colorado Springs, CO
Originally posted by Gun Nut:
[QB]Silviron,
All it takes is a vision of how things would work and a way to educate others on that vision.[QB]
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Actually, the basic idea of communism isn't all that bad -- all people working for a common good, and all people are equal (this is NOT the way that is has ever been practiced, though). The problem that communist Russia faced (as you point out) was that they were lazy. This should have been able to be overcome by a "vision of how things would work" -- everybody working for the common good.

Instead, greed and laziness took over. The reason that most russians had noting is because some people decided that they could get rich by controlling "the party" at the expense of the people. Communist Russia was nothing at all like what Marx intended.

If *ALL* people were good and altruistic, then laws would have never been needed -- yet here we are. EVERY society has laws. Even a small 12-man tribal village has unwritten laws. The fact that every society has laws means that they must be needed.

To summarize: all people have a selfish nature. This nature even includes improving your situation at the expense of other people. Note that not all people do this -- you can overcome your nature, but not all do (the Bible has much to say on this subject). This means that ANY society which requires people to always do the right thing will fail. People will bend/break the rules if they can get away with it and if it benefits them. Communism tried to ignore human nature, and it failed. Capitalism harnesses the power of human nature and uses it, but capitalism needs to have laws to keep it in check (think Standard Oil).
 

Anarchocap

Enlightened
Joined
Dec 23, 2002
Messages
452
Location
Arizona, USA
Harrkev,

As I was trying to state previously, the common misperception about "Anarchy" is that it is lawless. Over many years of government brainwashing, of course that is what you would think.

If you would read the works of Robert Heinlein, like "The Moon is a Harsh Mistriss," he uses the term "Rational Anarchy."

Lysander Spooner is another great author that does very well at describing the kind of society I would like to live in, and since he wrote most of his stuff during and after the Civil War, he includes historical references that the Founding Fathers used to create this country.

A great contemporary historian/lecturer/author is George H. Smith. He has a series of tapes called "An Overview of American History." They are also filled with historical references.

One of my favorite web sites is Lewrockwell.com, with Anti-State.com and Anarchism.net following close behind.

There are tons of ways to educate yourself about self government. But you have to be willing to go beyond the standard scare you into submission government brainwashing about it.

Using some of the tools I just provided, you would learn that societal norms don't break down just because we don't have an all powerful central authority to codify and enforce them. That was documented in the 1700s (The Levolers?)and was used by the Jefferson in his vision for this country. George Smith goes into specifics and provides references in his lectures.

Essentially, by following principals behind Unanimous Consent, and Non-Aggression those are pretty much the only codification you need. The free-market takes care of the rest.

What people never seem to grasp is that whether we want it to or not, the free-market always works. You can't get rid of it. Trying to screw with it only creates inefficiencies that makes it cost more for you and me to live. Government is an extreme inefficiency in our lives. It has a huge cost, but very little return. It actually creates poverty and instability, then as a ruse to try and keep its monopoly power, fosters dependency on it to solve problems that can never be solved.

You go into issues of "Corporations Gone Bad," and use that as an excuse for the reason we need government. But the whole irony in your reasoning is that those evil corporations were created because of government laws and the direct interference with the free-market. Corporations as we know them were created as a tax and liability shelter. How can you expect "entities" to not be evil when you create those conditions of irresponsibility to begin with? The whole concept is nuts if you really look at it, a legal entity in which humans run it but are not held responsible for its actions.

Also, suppose I agree with you that it is human nature to be greedy and self-serving. Let me now ask how is it that you are so willing to abdicate your liberties and gifts you have via the way of being born a human being? You regularly voluntarily place your life and the lives of your family in the hands of a super-minority of greedy, self-serving power elite via a process of which a whole lot more greedy, self-serving people use mob violence, to which 50.1% of who actually vote for the same greedy, self-serving person get to decide for the rest of the population, voting and non alike, how their lives will be run? It smacks of such hypocracy that it is illogical, irrational, unethical, and just downright absurd!

That is the ultimate dupe! The government creates the very issues we say we need protection from, then steps in demanding that it be the only one with the solutions to the problems it itself created. Its akin to letting the Fox control the Hen house.

See! I told you Sasha was protecting your virgin minds from me!
grin.gif
 

Silviron

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Jun 24, 2001
Messages
2,477
Location
New Mexico, USA
Once again, I completely agree with half of what you say- and of the other half that I disagree with, half of that I WISH were true.

You and I and a lot of other people (Especially CPFers
wink.gif
)ARE capable of governing ourselves, living in harmony and prospering without harming anyone else, but most people are not.

Yes, it is worse today than it was a hundred years ago (or even 30) and you can blame a lot of it on our public education system. But it is still a pipe-dream.

Like Harrkev said about communism one thing keeps that as well as your system from working: human nature. and no one is ever going to be able to change that enough to make either system work without destroying what it means to be human. (That could have been said better, but I can't think of how right now.)

I understand the point that greed makes the "world go round", although I'd modify it a bit, Greed is the extreme point in that spectrum and it is the point where self-interest becomes counterproductive. Self-interest and the profit motive is "what makes the world go round", but greed takes it a step too far and people start getting hurt, and in the long run, the greedy are worse off than they would have been if they sopped at mere self interest. (again, I wasn't able to say that as well as I wanted).

But even if you were able to take greed out of the equation, neither the "unanimous consent system" nor communism are going to work, ever. There will always be power-hungry people who may be "benevolent dictators" but will still try to force their ideas on the rest of the community.

Take a small community that one would think would live in harmony: an exclusive real-estate development with a "home-owners association" that lays out every single rule of the community before you can purchase the property; You would think that that system would work because it is a group of like-minded people voluntarily setting their own rules and regulations.

No way, Jose; I have NEVER seen one of these (and I've seen a lot of them) things that wasn't full of strife . Say you go along with them happily for years, then suddenly you get an interest in ham-radio. Well, you are out of luck, because ham radio antennas are forbidden.

Ok, you can live with that, maybe you are rich enough to build a ham shack out in the sticks to satisfy your new hobby. Then something horrible happens; your 37 year old child and his spouse suddenly leave you two orphaned grandchildren to care for. Nope, not here, because minors are not allowed to be in the development for more than 48 hours.

Nope, as much as I'd like it to, your system is never going to be possible here on earth. It has failed every time it has been tried, just like communism. Even the attemps to do it by buying an island or building a floating city in international waters by people who have signed the "Smith pledge" (or something similar) have fallen apart due to internal squabbling.

I hope this is my last word on the subject.....
 

Greta

Flashaholic
Joined
Apr 8, 2002
Messages
15,999
Location
Arizona
Originally posted by darell:
The reason that last thread was closed is because Sasha said (effectively) - Darell is right!

There just wasn't much more to be said after that.
smile.gif
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">What Darell said...
grin.gif
 

Anarchocap

Enlightened
Joined
Dec 23, 2002
Messages
452
Location
Arizona, USA
Originally posted by darell:
The reason that last thread was closed is because Sasha said (effectively) - Darell is right!

There just wasn't much more to be said after that.
smile.gif
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Oh yeah! Now I remember! How selfish and narcissistic of me!
shocked.gif
icon14.gif
grin.gif


Originally posted by Silviron:
Like Harrkev said about communism one thing keeps that as well as your system from working: human nature. and no one is ever going to be able to change that enough to make either system work without destroying what it means to be human. (That could have been said better, but I can't think of how right now.)
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Silviron,
Like I said before, this is the point where we'll just have to agree to disagree. The very reasons you think self-government won't work are exactly why I think it will.

In my honest opinion society would have to respect consent, or society itself wouldn't exist. The force of one you can defend against in many ways, but with the legalized mob violence of Democracy and government in general, it is impossible. That is the alternative we have now, and it is very much slavery. In the end, this is a much different example than communism. In communism, the state had ownership of you and your property. If you mess up yourself, or messed with someone else, the state would swoop in and come to the rescue. It all was for the greater good, which no one really cared about because they had no private ownership. You're right, people are greedy and selfish, but I tend to call that individuality. Because it is human nature, that is the exact reason these things failed.

The Communist and Socialist ideals are exactly what is promoted in our country today. Don't worry about succeeding, because if you fail, the government will come to your rescue. We know what is best for you, so there is no reason to figure it out on your own. The Government is the expert, not its citizens, because they can't be trusted to become such.

When you live in a self-governing society, there is no government safety-net. You must learn the tools to survive, or you don't. Sure, you'll be able to commit fraud and force on people, just like what happens now in our society. But it will be akin to comitting suicide because the government won't be protecting you from the free market.

In my opinion the natural human state of being is Liberty and the Free Market. It is only because we keep screwing with the laws of nature, that we keep trying to take away individualism by force, for the "greater good of society," that we end up dooming ourselves to failures of slavery we have today.
 

Saaby

Flashaholic
Joined
Jun 17, 2002
Messages
7,447
Location
Utah
Ok...I'm onto your plot of opening the thread right back up here. Topic closed
wink.gif
(J/K)
 

Rothrandir

Flashaholic
Joined
Aug 17, 2002
Messages
7,795
Location
US
all of these problems would be solved if i were supreme ruler of the planet...seriously.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top