humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 27, 10:25 am, Agent Cooper wrote:
> On Mar 27, 4:35 am, Charles Bell wrote:
>
> > Actually, the amount is more than ten times ($1 trillion / year)
> > versus ($500 billion/ 5 years).  Anyone who talks about the "waste of
> > money" of a war, that has predictable outcomes and a certain end,
>
> So I take it you'll be totally on board for our upcoming war in Dafur?

A war possible only if Obama were to be elected. He's on-board with
altruist wars that could not possibly be in American interests.


> I mean, it's a war, it has a predictable outcome and a certain end.
> (That's a tease, but *obviously* the Iraq war's fiscal impact has to
> be weighed in relation to its strategic impact, right?


Sure, it is bound to have cost more than the impact of 9/11;
therefore, by cost-benefit analysis, it and the War in Afghanistan are
mistakes. We could withstand 9/11 attacks every so often and never
have to expend a dime on any war. Besides, such attacks are not
invasions, so we can safely ignore them as having any Constitutional
significance. Sound good to you?


> There's no line
> from "wars are legitimate government activities and cannot be assessed
> by purely economic criteria alone" to "every war is a good idea." Use
> every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? So let's
> whip everyone? No. Don't need to, can't afford it.)
>
> > while dismissing, as a mere Utopian, other-worldly concern,  the
> > senseless, immoral and endless waste of money on social welfare
> > programs is not a genuine libertarian,
>
> Well, thank God that's not me. But I did make clear that whatever my
> assessment of the *desire* to do various things politically,

Evidently "squandering of resources" on social welfare programs is not
something on your political mind very often or at all. Perhaps you can
progress onto pseudo-libertarian leftist, having exposed any hidden
feature of your libertarianism as completely false. Like Obama,
perhaps you think all that Reagan-esque negative talk about welfare is
just an attempt by The Man to keep the black folk down.


> I have to
> also factor in the likely *consequences* of giving power to someone
> with certain desires.


What are you talking about? I am talking about taking from some
people by taxation for the sole purpose of benefiting others
(excluding FICA) to the tune at the federal level of $1 trillion
dollars a year.


> Now I emphatically agree with you that as a rule
> the best way to figure out what someone *will* do is by ascertaining
> what they *want* to do. So far so good. The problem with politics,
> especially national politics, is that the menu always consists of a
> massive, and massively complex, package deal, in a very complicated,
> highly constraining environment.

If you are saying we Americans as a nation have crossed that bridge
and burnt it behind us, perhaps. So let's hire a bridge burner like
Obama to keep the fire to any replacement bridge! He can hold hands
with our socialist allies in Europe and sing Give Peace a Chance under
the banner of Burn, Baby, Burn.