sigmtnman

So, I reckon whichever regular looks to have disappeared after a few days was the culprit.

Yes indeed. I'd include Dagger if they still made canoes.

Thanks! Those are most excellent quotes.

I'll play. 1. Esquif canoes 2. Gaia paddle sport gear (athens tn based) 3. Dan Wesson 4. Asolo boots 5. Seatle's Best coffee

Hi Robert, Did you have time to watch any of the videos?

Another point is that never once do I purport that the man with liberty to pursue his goals does things which helps society for altruistic reasons. The definition of altruism implies that things are done with selflessness. Try to name one instance where there is not a benefit to be had by the person who believes they are acting altruistically. The man who sacrifices himself to save his child does it so that his child can survive and therefore he has a vested interest. The person who gives to help the needy receives a feeling of helping, the satisfaction of knowing they have done something and generally providing a better environment in which to live for himself.

That's the ticket. Used to be, I had to travel to Tampa quarterly to the office and I would ride my fat boy.

To add... You say it yourself right here that laws do not and cannot hinder the immoral man. If that is the case, then what are the restrictive laws purposes and who is the person to decide what is to be and what is not to be restricted? If the gun haters are left to decide decide, then guns are restricted and you can't use the 2A as evidence since it's funky wording is often left open to interpretation by the do gooders who don't agree with it. The same can be said for the 9th and 10th which are left open to interpretation by do gooders who want to impose their will and restrictions on others regardless of a violation of property rights. Property rights are the basis to individual freedoms since at the core, your person is your property.

No, your apparent cynicism is evident from your second paragraph above. The idea of individual freedom proposes that a person is not allowed to impose on a second or third parties freedoms. Rights end where other's noses begin. It appears that you continue to take everything to the anarchist extreme, which is a fallacy. Laws against murder and rape are obvious as they protect property rights, specifically that of the murdered or raped person. Where do I accuse you of being a do gooder? It would appear as though you are attributing it to yourself, since you picked it out of a sentence that was not in reference to you. The comment about do gooders is in reference to people who want laws passed to pro-actively keep bad things from happening, such as mandatory seat belt laws, helmet laws, gun restrictions, licensing, etc.

Dude, I understand. My refusal to fly costs me big time. It's pretty much impossible to do consulting when you wont fly.

Just wait till you have to take off your shoes or better yet, it could be a new market for the full body scanners.

He really "schools" them college kids. Watch out. It's a rat hole with no end!

He is a very interesting fellow indeed who put most if not all of his ideas out in the open, for better or worse. I too agree with him on many things, but I treat him like a buffet where I can pick and choose what I want and leave the rest. Never came across as a big-gov guy to me, but I've also not read his books or seen all of his interviews and lectures, so it's quite possible I've just missed those points. There was one interview where he wanted to do away with 10 of 14 cabinets though, IIRC. He was also in favor of doing away with most if not all regulations and relying on personal liability and tort to self regulate the marketplace and personal behavior. One thing I don't necessarily agree on was his view on foreign relations using defense. His fear of authoritarian governments spreading was the source of a bit of cognitive dissonance with regards to having a proactive defense against their spread, which would seem to go against his anti coercion views. Although this is still foggy in my mind and as with most things open for debate. Yeah, I'm not sure about the negative income tax thing, but it seems to be one of the ideas he was kicking around in order to wean folks off of big-gov. I'm not sold on it, but equally unsure of how to do away with welfare without cold turkey shock. Here is a good vid with Buckley about it. Thanks for posting those vids. I've seen them before and watched them again and my take away is a bit different. Him being an academic, it's my opinion that most of the time he was assuming the operation of most of his ideas in concert with a different overall foundation in place. It's funny about the Bernank. Alan Greenspan was a student, so to speak, of Ayn Rand but he went on to act in direct opposition to many of her philosophies. Friedman's concepts on monetary policy were based on a much smaller government that did not perform bailouts of failed industries. It was my perspective that he also did not agree with the unrestricted expansion of dollars for fear of inflation. What he was saying about the Federal Reserve seems to be true, in that during the depression the Fed did not distribute as many dollars as it should have, which caused banks to not have enough dollars to pay out, leading to the overall lack of trust in the system and the subsequent deflation.

Most libertarians believe that individual interest helps society unintentionally as a man works to attain his goals. The idea that individualism sacrifices the good of society is quite cynical and assumes that most men are basically bad people without self control or morals. Bad people will exist regardless of the amount of individualism allowed by the government. The restrictions imposed by "do gooders" will only hinder the moral and good man, while the immoral will continue to be immoral while working around the restrictions. The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith

If I've not bored folks, this is an excellent segment from a horrible talk show everyone remembers. It gets to the heart of whether the government should be in the business of protecting folks from themselves.

They could'nt beat the demons out of yall?

The federal, state and local governments absolutely have a role to play. Anarcho capatalism would be the form of libertarianism that has no role for government.

With the latest few versions, all of the installs and updates are run from the gui. It has an update daemon (service) that will pop a window when updates are available and you just click through the update install, no need to use the console if you don't want to. Any operating system can be hacked, but with linux, firefox and no script, you will be pretty secure. The nice thing is everything is free, so all you need is the hardware. Load it up with openoffice, gimp and whatever else you need and you're all set.

Are you talking about a dedicated browsing physical machine? Not sure what version of ubuntu you tried, but the latest few have come a long way and the updates and everything else is real simple. I run kubuntu because I like kde better than gnome. Oracle's virtual box is great for VMs if you need to do windows stuff.

WARNING. NSFW!

Dunno the real story. I do recall the first time I ever heard them though. A buddy at miss state had some old 3rd or 4th generation copies and we'd sit around drinking and laughing our asses off no matter how many times we listened to them. http://www.drwebman.com/leroymercer/ beware of the crappy website design.

Anyone sure the fellow is not LeRoy Mercer?

You must bear in mind that many of Dr. Paul's supporters are not Republicans but were drawn to the party by his voting record, and his consistent views on policy. If we are going to compare this affair to a game, would we expect participants to play if the rules of the game which they thought they would be playing by were changed and the referee had a totally different view of how the game should be played?

In many of the discussions here we see that our country's descent into socialism or communism is of great concern, as it should be. We can look throughout history and recognize that countries in which the government imposes rigid structure over the behaviors of men are the ones that have the worst conditions for the majority of the inhabitants/citizens. People scoff at libertarianism as a bunch of baseless crazy ideas, but these same ideas are the antithesis of socialism/communism/collectivism and indeed the foundation for a free market capitalism and a life of self determination. I'm a bit of a Milton Friedman fan and hopefully this video will be of interest to folks who would like a better understanding of classical liberalism (Libertarianism).

That's a good one right there. If AIG had not been bailed out JPMorgan would have been toast.