| | Robert, I took from Jeff's reference to Rand's "political views" the belief that talking to other people about political issues is important. You can have politics in an anarchy. We have it in the office. It's one way that people get along (or not), to investigate, discuss and understand the social consequences of individual actions. Perhaps, "sociology" is a better word than "politics."
Jeff, was I right or wrong on my understand of your statement above?
Jeff, one reason that I seem to contradict myself is that I can look at something from different angles. I understood this a long time ago when I read a Zane Grey, The First Fast Gun. The hero is challenged by a bully. He says to the reader that he is not very smart, but he can turn a thing over in his mind and look at it from different sides while staring into the campfire. Obviously, it made an impression on me. I can hold different views of the same thing at the same time. A is A: the thing is what it is; but what it is can best be determined by looking at it more than one way, otherwise, you might jump to a false conclusion.
One problem I had with the interview -- and thanks to Steve for bringing up the legality of abortion -- was that Ron Paul did not mention abortion in the intro (vid 1). I went back and watched the episodes and John Stossel never asked him, either. Stossel was not doing an investigative report. He was shilling, feeding Ron Paul easy questions to which he knew the answer.
That was also my disappointment with Ed Thomson for his hyperbole. Ed knows better, but he was being enthusiastic.
Did Ron Paul say anything you did not know he would say?
In the Solo Parenting topics, Luke Setzer asked about Parental Licensing. Luke is known to be a committed mainstream Objectivist. It is a good question: if the government has a compelling interesting in the safety of all of its citizens, when does it gain the right to protect a child? Answering that leads back to Luke's question: should parents be licensed? No one replied (except me). Was the answer so obvious that it was embarrassing? Or was the question so penetrating that it is intractable? Is no one interested in that right now? Or is everyone threatened by the issues it raises?
When asked about gun control, Ayn Rand said that since the purpose of a handgun is to kill another person, it might be that only the police should have them, but she was not prepared to give a definitive answer at that time. The question has come up here. The answer that you always have a right to self-defense contradicts the assertion that the government holds a monopoly on retaliatory force. Perhaps, it is just (ahem) "ambiguous."
Back to abortion: argued as it has been here and everywhere else, it is not resolved to a consensus. I believe that life begins at conception. I also believe that a mother has the right to protect her own life. I believe further that your mother maintains a lifelong right to kill you. If not, when did she lose that right? At 12 weeks gestation? 13.53 weeks gestation? When the cord was cut? When you turned 8 or 18? Maybe mothers should issue a "right to life" permit granting you your life from that point forward: "Good-bye, kid, have a nice life."
But John Stossel did not ask Ron Paul about anything at all like that, about the philosophical dilemmas, conundrums, challenges, non-sequiturs, contradictions or ambiguities involved in abortion (and infanticide and euthanasia). They avoided the issue in order to give Ron Paul the best exposure to the most rightwingers who expected to agree with him and did.
Working on this post -- when I should be working on a real deadline -- I googled Ron Paul Euthanasia and I found these:
Terri Schiavo's Ordeal http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul243.html
Death of Pope John Paul II http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul244.html
Most people here, or at least the most vocal of them, think that Lew Rockwell is the devil's concubine. However, Ron Paul wrote for that blog and did so deeply, addressing at length two multifaceted problems. Dr. Paul has my respect for what he wrote there. I disagree with certain points, but I truly understand that he made those statements after ponderous consideration. It is too bad that public politicking reduces to predictable sound-bites. Dr. Ronald E. Paul could make money as a philosopher.
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