tiepolo

Shaming words, ostracism and smear tactics are not the weapons of philosophers but of manipulative, pseudo-intellectual bullies. The aim should be to persuade through logic and reason. You could call me a 'statist' (as though that were something unsavoury) until the cows come home, but until you can tell me how to maintain an army, a criminal justice system and the roads without a state (and show me an example of that working) then I'm not going to be overly upset by it.

'Hate' seems to be a critical, condemnatory term that is bandied about without much thought. What is hate? Hate is a natural emotion, nothing intrinsically immoral. Some forms of hatred are justified. It is rational, healthy and proper for one to hate things that are opposed or damaging towards the things one loves. Some people are excessively hate-filled, perhaps. Hatefulness doesn't correlate to 'racism', however. Volker van der Graaf (who murdered Pim Fortuyn for being a critic of multiculturalism) is more hate-filled than John Derbyshire, who wrote a controversial 'talk' article, it seems to me! It is also disingenuous to pretend that no other characteristics go along with immediately observable racial traits. (No one gets overly offended by 'White Men Can't Jump' as a film title, for example, though 'Black People Can't Ski' might ruffle a few PC feathers!).

I may, on occasion be guilty of this sort of thing, although I quite frequently have political and vaguely philosophical arguments with my parents, too. This cartoon is pretty well on the money, as regards online debating... There may be an element of compensating for real-world timidity...

No, Churchill did not dehumanise the Muslims, he accurately portrayed them as victims of a brainwashing, deranging, mentally and physically enslaving ideology. He described the ill-effects of the ideology and its associated culture on otherwise admirable peoples. He expressed a particular concern for the females oppressed under Islamic systems, if you actually read what he said. If you want to see dehumanising of enemies, you should read what the Quran says about 'unbelievers' some time.

Of course an embryo is reliant on sustenance from its mother, but a newborn is also dependant. So do you justify infanticide on that basis?

1. You may find people to echo those sentiments in Alberta, but you won't in Mexico! Members of la Raza obviously have no problem with expressing ethnic solidarity! Peoples have a right to prefer their own kind, all else being equal. (Gasp! Controversial- but only among well-heeled white 'liberals' who don't mind shafting the white working class!) 2. Lower-cost immigrant workers won't necessarily make goods and services cheaper for consumers, as the bosses will probably just pocket the difference and continue to charge the customer as much as before. Meanwhile there will be less money in the economy as a whole, as the immigrants will take or send money back to their own countries whereas native workers will be deprived of an income. Taxes may have to be raised to pay them welfare. So much for you getting richer!

In my view the word is too vague to have any descriptive meaning, let alone philosophical value. As Ray Honeyford pointed out, some decades ago: Any honest person would not use such a vague yet moral-judgement loaded catch-all term. They would be more clear about what they are talking about- be it racial abuse, racial pride, racial hatred, racial violence, racial discrimination, racial aesthetic preference, etc. Even 'racial prejudice' is a tricky one, since it seems to cast moral judgement on a mere ability to notice patterns. Is it 'breed prejudice' to expect a retriever to be less yappy than a terrier, or a greyhound to be faster than a corgi? By all accounts, incidentally, the word 'racism' was invented or popularised by Leon Trotsky, who as a mass-murdering Bolshevik was not someone I would care to take my moral cues from. And much of the time these days the word is used by Leftists to intimidate white people and to undermine their ability to defend their interests. These 'anti-racists' are often quite schizophrenic, claiming both to value 'diversity' and to not recognise racial differences. They are generally positive about mixed-race relationships, despite the fact that such mixing is ultimately destructive of their supposedly cherished 'diversity'. They might profess to believe that race is a social construct, but can easily enough identify neighbourhoods and schools that are 'too white', and they know who to accuse of supposedly possessing 'white privilege'.

Are you actually condemning imperialism and defending Islam? Wow, that is advanced level double-think!

This is another reason why I tend to prefer dogs to people...

Sperm on their own and eggs on their own will never develop into anything, whereas an embryo will. The potential right exists only from the point of fertilisation. Preventing fertilisation is not depriving anyone or anything of anything. Only an existing entity with an actual capacity to develop into something sentient has the potential right to progress to that stage.

And in particular Winston Churchill's opinions about Islam, (expressed in his early writings) which constitute 'incitement to racial hatred', how, apparently, what with Islam being a race, and all... The full Churchillian quote, from 'The River Wars', 1899 edition, is as follows: It is given on Wikipedia, so presumably they are also guilty of inciting thought/feel-crimes against the Muslim race... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_River_War *I believe this is a misquote and it should be 'soldiers of the Queen' (as in Victoria).

I am a proponent of the idea of potential rights. A five year old does not have the right to smoke or vote or to take a driving test, for example, but they have a right to do these things when they are older. The right is there in potential. I make a case against abortion based on the same principle. An unborn has all the rights of the adult said unborn would become if not interfered with. Potential rights would therefore seem to exist from the moment of conception. I came up with this idea independently, as far as I am aware, but a google reveals I'm not the first person to use the phrase and to express the concept in this context... http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/child/potential.shtml I find some of arguments against potential rights smack of sophistry. Indeed a potential thing is not the same as a thing, but it would still be an injustice to tell a healthy five year old of normal intelligence that he will never be permitted to take a driving test. This would be a real enough violation of rights. So it surely follows that an action that robs a conceived human entity of all rights that are associated with life is a violation of rights that are at once existing and potential. A conceived embryo, moreover, is an actual being, not a potential being. It is an actual being that holds rights in potential, just as a child holds adult entitlements in potential.

The idea of collective property seems always to have been accepted. We always had village commons, companies owned by shareholders, joint bank-accounts for married couples, and time shares on cottages by the sea. It's arbitrary to insist that property all of a sudden means just one owner. (I suspect it is a notion encouraged by the big businesses who support mass immigration at the expense of established populations, and who seek to deprive people of an ideological basis on which to oppose such influxes, and to assert their right, as natural born citizens, to retain their country as a homeland for the benefit of themselves and their posterity.) The obvious libertarian argument for restrictions would be to defend a free society from being swamped by people who would make it less free, by dint of having habits and ideologies of their own that are inimical to liberty.

Well, theoretically it might be possible for a sex addict with poor self control to still be someone who values fidelity. This would cause said hypothetical person mental disturbance - shame, regret and all that, as said person would constantly be failing to live up to their own values. Persons from whom free agency has been removed might also be compelled to do things that go against their values. So the abstract value is distinct from action. In material terms the value may indeed be meaningless.

The criteria for joint ownership of a car is not whether all its owners can drive it at once. Joint ownership often involves coming to an arrangement, but it doesn't undermine the fact that the thing in question is jointly owned by its co-owners, and not owned at all by anyone else in the world. Jointly owned property cannot be disposed of without the consent of its co-owners, but that doesn't mean it is not property. So it is with sovereign nations. Britain is collectively owned by the British, no Briton has a claim to any ownership of France, despite it being parked right next to it. France belongs to the French. It should be run for the benefit of the French. (Such is a reasonable expectation on the part of the French). A territorial nation facilitates the lives and livelihoods of its citizens. That is its primary purpose, rather as any other jointly owned commodity (be it a house or a car or a boat) might exist for the mutual benefit of its joint owners. Liberty is not absolute. You can't justify intruding in someone else's home because 'liberty'. That is a violation of their freedom to be left alone in their own space. If you are against restrictions, by what principle would you oppose, say, Germans invading Poland?

A value, a value you might hold, is not the same thing as value as in the value or price of an object. Personal values are moral principles, the things you hold as ideals. They are not defined by actions. If your actions match your values then you are a person of integrity, but it is possible to fail to live up to your own values. One feels shame for an action that goes against one's core values.

There is a Catholic belief that Mary the mother of Jesus was conceived without sin (lust) but not that she herself was born of a virgin. Two of the gospels mention that Jesus was born of a virgin, and the context belies the idea that it was a mistranslation. Matthew 1:25 says that Joseph did not 'know' Mary until after she had brought forth her firstborn son. This implies that he had sex with her afterwards and that there were other sons, contradicting the Catholic doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity. (Jesus' brothers are mentioned elsewhere in the gospels, but that is also explained away by those who seem to feel the need to do so).

You have to be alive and sentient to be moral. If no one had children then there would be no conscious morality. Hence it would seem the case that having children is a moral, since without children morality itself will be no more. There is also no preference in a state of non-existence or extinction, so the promotion of UPB also depends on keeping the species going!

I think a libertarian argument against 'open borders' (aka the undercutting of indigenous workers) would centre on the idea of collective property, and the idea that the citizens of a nation collectively inherit a right to possess their land (and for the land to be run and governed in their interests). If my father left a car to my sister and I, then that would be our joint property. We would both have a right to drive it. We would not be violating anyone else's rights by not letting them drive it or ride in it. The same principle applies with nation states, which are the hereditary, collective property of their established or native people. Your nationality may be an accident of birth, but so, sometimes, are other forms of property, since you might happen to be born to someone who has something to leave you. Inherited property arrives by a similar flue of birth, but it is still valid property.