J. D. Stembal

I disagree with Yagami's premise. I don't think FDR is necessarily the best vehicle for promoting a free and peaceful society. Nor is Stefan necessarily the most articulate or effective. The shows are compelling, to be sure, but who are we to say, "This is the most effective means to achieve our goal, therefore, we must donate to it or we are useless freeloaders?" That's a little too authoritarian for comfort. Stefan has often said that there are many other ways to promote voluntarism or the message of non-aggression. I would argue that one child being raised peacefully is worth more than thousands of dollars in contributions to the show, so if you are a peaceful parent, don't worry about donations to the show. If you want to donate, that fine, but those resources are probably much better off remaining the hands of the peaceful family. FDR may not always be the best venue for promoting a peaceful society. What happens if and when FDR closes up shop? Who will pick up the mantle of philosophy and continue to spread it? The answer is everyone. Spreading your own virtue is more effective (and fulfilling) in the long run than monetary donations. Also, donations have to come from a desire to do good as shirgall said, "Value for value." You can't wheedle and guilt people into action. That's not the nature of voluntarism. To allude to a recent podcast, we shouldn't strive to be like the nagging feminists who are so unattractive that they have to resort to emotional bullying to get the attention they want. I agree the show is valuable but it is just one step on the way toward a brighter future.

I never have enough plus reps left for dsayers! I'll get you next time. You are extremely courageous and honest. I deeply appreciate it. I want to relate a personal story for Xtort that he might find useful. My dad remarried an Asian woman, so I have a brother and a sister from his second marriage. My brother is your son's age. I went for a visit this spring where I witnessed his wife belting my brother for not going to bed by a certain time. I intervened and she left the room. I didn't know what to say so I hugged them and let them go to sleep. I told my dad what I saw, and I told him it had to stop or else I was calling child services. It's so appropriate that ultimatums are the chosen language of the abused and abusive. He made all sorts of excuses for his wife, invoking cultural relativism and minimizing it. Fast forward some months, supposedly she has stopped hitting or belting. However, she is yelling a lot more, bullying, and still physically dominating her children (dragging them around when they won't go somewhere). Does this sound familiar? She also threatened to leave the country to take my six year old sister back to Thailand. My father is still making excuses for her. The current excuse is, "She's completely crazy," as if that was an plausible answer for her actions - or his! The bottom line is that you should feel horrible. That is an honest emotion. You need to be angry at yourself, angry at your wife, and angry at your parental judgement. It will be humbling for sure, but you can make progress

I do believe the myelin sheath on my neurons is melting. Did you just say that god is a manifestation of man's desire for self-fulfillment? It's setting my sophist alarm bells off right now, but otherwise I find what you wrote truly poetic. We will have to break this one down later when I have some sleep behind me. To Pepin, here's a little outline I posted in the Tom Woods thread that may be of some use here.

I'm sorry. I'm not sure what the question is. I hope that you can connect with the eight other people who have suffered from sexual abuse. Instead of appealing to the mainstream media, perhaps you could organize a support group for the victims to talk in a safe environment?

Nice analysis, engarde. Woods was talking circles around my brain, and I couldn't make out his reasoning so I just thought - SOPHIST. Pelafina, The biblical definition of "God" cannot not logically exist because the very definition is self-detonating in every respect. God is described as a consciousness that is omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, and ethereal. The universe is made up of matter, which has mass and volume, so God cannot be ethereal if we are to prove that he exists empirically. He can never be detected. If God existed before the universe began (LET THERE BE STUFF!), he cannot be part of the universe, by definition. He existed before anything could possibly exist. See point one. Putting point one and two aside, if we assume God really does exist in the universe with all the stuff, we have to deal with the paradox of omnipotence. Can an all-powerful deity create an impossible task, like creating a mountain that he cannot erode? If so, then he's not really omnipotent. If not, then again, he's not infinitely powerful. Omniscience, or all-knowing, is also a self-detonating concept and cannot be applied to any consciousness. For example, if God knew everything, he would also be aware of ignorance. To be aware of ignorance, you have to admit there are limits to your knowledge. Therefore, God cannot know everything and is not omniscient. In summary, if you can't apply logic, physics, or any rational definition to God, he is synonymous with non-existence. Therefore, no one can ever objectively prove God exists. No possibility of God is the default position. I hope this helps!

MMX, you have me reading another RT article. Just when I thought I was out... I need clarification. If a woman believes in safety and security and that she currently has it, why would she demand more resources in response? Then, when the future of her resources is in jeopardy, she would again demand more resources by seeking another provider? It seems more logical to me that a woman would desire more resources when security is tenuous, and less resources when security is nearly guaranteed, a wealthy husband with a tremendous life insurance policy, for example. We could boil it down to another question, assuming that the above statement is logical. Do women tend to follow the logical necessities of their biology? PS: I find it interesting that RT writes about game and he's married with children. I figured incorrectly that the guys that blog about game sought to remain bachelors. I wish Rollo had gone one step further and riffed about why the female inability to empathize for men has evolved into total misandry - #KillAllMen, etc. Personally, I don't believe that women's lack of empathy for the suffering of male mates is necessarily a biologically determined fact. I put it back on parenting, and the curious absence of fathers in the lives of their children. Rollo is too quick to blame nature, and does not even consider the relevance of fatherlessness.

Yeah...this sounds like a rough situation. I am sorry. You've probably lost attraction to your spouse because of the conflicts. It is very likely she is feeling badly as well. Perhaps she is also posting about you on Girl Power forums. If you are not sexually attracted to her, you should be honest about it. If you withdrew sexual attention without offering an explanation, she is likely tormented about it. I'm seconding the suggestion of a couple's call and/or therapy. Read Real Time Relationships or Non-Violent Communication or other self-help type books. I would also talk to your kids about how they are feeling about this situation. You mentioned the movie, American Beauty. Like Kevin Spacey's character, are you also fantasizing about another (younger) woman? If so, why?

I'm calling bull-smack. Was it filmed all in the same day or over a whole month? We are led to believe that she was the recipient of a comment every five minutes. I've never been to NYC but that seems like a lot of street conversation for one day. Also, by completely ignoring almost all interactions, she only provoked attention. If it was me that said hello, my curiosity would be piqued thinking that she was deaf, mute or perhaps lost.

You may be in the wrong forum to school people on the inflationary nature of fiat currency. Most of us have at least audited Austian Econ 101, so to speak. By the way, hording (or saving) doesn't cause debt. The artificially low interest rates via central banking stimulate debt. Yesterday, the Fed announced an end to the bond buying program euphemistically known a Quantitative Easing. We've got some bumpy road ahead to navigate as the deflationary boomerang comes home to roost. The next twelve to twenty-four months should be interesting to say the least!

You are correct. None of my anecdote was intended as an argument, but rather an expression of my emotional reaction to Ferssitar's comment. Thank you for your sympathies. I accept that I shouldn't have put myself in a position like that. However, you haven't expressed a logical or philisophical argument about the topic at hand, either - and neither did Ferssitar. Do you think a student should feel lucky to have sex with two teachers, assuming it is voluntary? Is it rape? Why or why not?

MEN R DYNOSAWRS LETZ XTINCT THEM! Is this the same feminist blogger who wrote that "All PIV (penis inserted in vagina) is rape?" I think it is. We are all alive because of rape and female oppression! Well, Magnus, the problem is we can't be sure if this anonymous blogger is a bigoted MRA disguised as radical feminist to erode the progress towards universal equality for everyone but rich, privileged, white men. This is why we can't speak out against it. It's a ruse! Duh... Edit: I couldn't finish it. It's too much to stomach. I agree with her on making schooling autonomous (from the state). It's true that you can find a gem hidden in a pile of dung.

Privatize the military. Problem solved. Three quarters of active duty probably couldn't fight their way out of a bag of doughnuts.

(Kevin Beal beats me to the punch every time.) I'd say that you are not being sensitive to the victims of sexual crimes, and you are trivializing it by thinking that sleeping with two females at the same is every straight man's masturbatory fantasy. Unless you have a rare condition, known as diphallia, sex with two women at once is a waste of time (and condoms). Once upon a time, I was solicited into a menage-e-trois by two women. They were my peers, and not in any position of authority over me. However, afterward, one of the women began making the kinds of comments most women would find reprehensible if directed at them. She was slut shaming me, sexually harassing me. She would say, "We used you up like a piece of meat," or "Don't think you're a man; you're a dog." Just as you claimed in your post, I was feeling a little high and mighty about the sexual encounter and relished the thought of doing it again. After the derogatory comments. however, I lost the desire, and eventually felt bitter about the encounter even though I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time. I'm not claiming that I was the victim of a sex crime three way. I clearly consented to it, and I was a legal adult, but looking back on that time, I have a severe case of buyer's remorse. The emotional cost was way too high to sell myself short like that, especially to a vile person who would rub my face in it. I hope this helps give you some of my personal perspective. Feel lucky that this hasn't happened to you even outside of the monopoly of public school violence.

Naer, you've inspired me to cook up a meme pic. Enjoy!

I wish you strength healing yourself and mending your relationship.

We do actually hear about molestation in the mainstream media, but everyone justifies it with some form of nonsense. Take the example of the 16 year old male student in Louisiana who was molested by two female teachers at the same time (a rape gang bang). Look at the varied responses to the article in this thread: https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/42030-louisiana-male-teen-double-teamed-by-two-female-teachers/, and the HuffPo comments. ST434U tries to justify it by saying it can't be rape if the victim was bragging, and then covers by saying age and sexual consent is a complicated issue. LovePrevails makes a joke of it by asking if the two female teachers turned rapists are hot. See where I'm going with this? Any instances of adults using their authority to sexually abuse children who are there involuntarily are written off as justifiable actions. If spanking is there to teach kids lessons about authority and dominance, rape and molestation are there for the purpose of sexual grooming. Attempting to raise social awareness won't help because the abusers will have already normalized this behavior if it was perpetrated unto them, and they will teach it to their kids in turn. We already know all this as a society. Why do you think no one lets their kids out of sight unless they are in their beds, church, school, or daycare? They don't want strange people creeping in and exploiting their children, only approved abusers. The parents reserve the right to choose themselves the manner in which they inflict abuse on the children. In a twisted way, they think they are protecting them from future harm. My next door neighbor was brutally beaten and raped by her father and his friends for years. She had a mother, and two older siblings. Who protected her? No one. Everyone was silent about it, including me.

Thomas Aquinas was a priest and theologian of 13th century Italy, so I believe he had some self-interest in talking about god. Since this was before the Protestant Reformation, both Woods and Aquinas are Catholics. (Technically, Aquinas was a Dominican priest.) This probably explains why Woods prefers citing Aquinas to explain theology.

Your guess is as good as mine. There are several podcasts and shows that have either been taken off of Youtube or never published there. It's available in the Podcast section of the FDR website, though.

It's the show from June 18th, 2014 and it's called 50 Shades of Bravery: Living Life as a Slave (FDR2727).

Don't forget mailman. It appears all the state-funded professions were targeted specifically. Could it be that this was a result of political feminism? What you describe libertarians as doing is the opposite of deconstructionism. They are taking politically obfuscated words and making them true and useful again. Unfortunately, there's still the desire to call hitting your child spanking, though. It certainly appears to be the case. From PhilosophyBasics.com: Talking about such topics is like fencing with a ghost to put it bluntly. A quote from PBS.org invokes the victim card: A term tied very closely to postmodernism, deconstructionism is a challenge to the attempt to establish any ultimate or secure meaning in a text. Basing itself in language analysis, it seeks to "deconstruct" the ideological biases (gender, racial, economic, political, cultural) and traditional assumptions that infect all histories, as well as philosophical and religious "truths." Deconstructionism is based on the premise that much of human history, in trying to understand, and then define, reality has led to various forms of domination - of nature, of people of color, of the poor, of homosexuals, etc. Like postmodernism, deconstructionism finds concrete experience more valid than abstract ideas and, therefore, refutes any attempts to produce a history, or a truth. In other words, the multiplicities and contingencies of human experience necessarily bring knowledge down to the local and specific level, and challenge the tendency to centralize power through the claims of an ultimate truth which must be accepted or obeyed by all. By the very action of defining the reality of history, you run the risk of dominating the victim classes. Sheesh.

I'm still trying to figure out what my fear of the dark was all about.I also have had a lot of those creepy feelings while alone like someone is watching or stalking me. The bit about your mom believing in ghosts gave me a hint. I wonder if my terror of being in the dark alone as a child had something to do with radical attachment disorder. The lack of attachment I had with my parents led to me being susceptible to these fears. I thought there was a monster that slept with me under my bed. That's a common fear, isn't it? I could not sleep without a light turned on, probably until five or six. I had a series of nightmares throughout my childhood where I was chased by an invisible force that would remotely restrain me. Then, when it caught me, I would wake up in a start. The dream, I find interesting. Why is it that I would have this dream so often? Was I restrained as an infant in a device when no adult could watch me?

He thinks the Flying Spaghettii Monster is a serious criticism of the existence of a deity. It's more of a parody on organized religion. You are not a dummy for believing in the FSM! Woods says that god is outside time and space, so his own arguments are self-detonating. If god is outside time and space, then the white bearded and robed guy from the big book must not be god.

Telling us that anarchism is contradictory is not an argument against anarchism. I read all of your essay back in September. My memory of it is a bit fuzzy, but I have the PDF saved. Most of the essay is offering straw man arguments that are supposedly pro-anarchy, and attempting to refute them. One page fourteen, from Anarchist Political Tactics:

I wanted to link this article from Yahoo, not for the article, because it doesn't really have anything relevant to mention aside from some shocking statistics in the first few paragraphs, but the conversation in the comments section is engaging. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/college-students-striken-by-poverty-and-homelessness-fight-rising-college-tuition-costs-172400767.html There are a lot of student run protests against tuition hikes going on around the country. Very few observers are asking the question that if students can't afford college, why are they going?

I'm crashing the comments section. Who's with me? Edit: Boo hiss, it's closed. I was going to write that polling 179 teenagers about school, happiness and life optimism is like surveying a handful of Jews about what they're going to do when they get out of the concentration camp and calling it spanking research.