I don't know Paris Hilton, so I can't legitimately pass judgement on her one way or another. From what little I have seen of her, in my opinion, she is a skanky, anorexic, unattractive, stupid whore, who needs to get a real job actually producing a valuable product that helps people. Granted, that is only my opinion, which counts for less than jack squat in this country. Fortunately we don't have the same libel laws here in the U.S. as I have heard about in England, so what I just wrote shouldn't get me into any trouble.

As far as George W. Bush is concerned, I don't believe the inheritance tax would apply to him, as George H. W. Bush is still alive, unless you've heard something I haven't.

Is the deck stacked against those people who start off with no capital? Yes, of course it is. But we do try to avoid using the power of the government to make it even harder for people to change their station. I know almost nothing of British Society today, but I have read that there is much more concern with class there, and the "Upper Class" in Britain will still look down on successful people if they don't have the right pedigree. I.e., they won't ever get invited to all the right parties, meet all the right people to further help others, etc. I hope that statement is wrong, because it seems like such a waste of human potential.

I would prefer that people earn what they have, simply because it forces them to understand that the best way to create and obtain wealth is by helping others, instead of filling out the right forms of some bureaucracy that couldn't care less if you're alive or dead, generous or selfish, helpful or harmful. People who get their money through the government never really see the people whose money they are confiscating, and therefore feel no obligation to value said money.

I once asked my dad why we was a republican. He said that he used to be a democrat, but once he made enough money to have nice things, he became a republican because he didn't want the state to take them away. In other words, he grew up. He realized that a liberal fiscal policy helps those haven't earned it and punishes those who have.

So presumably, since libertarians want everyone to earn what they have, they should be against the inheritance of wealth? In fact, they should favour 100% inheritance tax, to be consistant with this principle. How do they justify Paris Hilton, for instance (or the US President, for that matter)?

Problem, because viable foetuses with brains are being aborted, day in, day out.
And this should stop. And people who believe that it should stop should say that it should stop. As I think these include Adam, I would suggest that his pargraph on abortion, laudable though the sentiments expressed in it are, lacks balance.

Looking at the three politics threads, I see an issue that is problematic, involving certain rights arguments. I touched upon this issue in politics thread one, but the same problem exists in all three threads. I contend that many of the scenarios involving rights put forward in these discussion have been inconsistent in application. One example is the often mentioned issue of real property rights, with the claim that a person has the right to do whatever he/she wants with a property, as long as another person's rights are not infringed on. It is somehow forgotten that the very appropriation of a property infringes on the rights of others to use that property.

Consider for example that Unbeliever never contracted with me before he appropriated the piece of land on which he lives. As Unbeliever previously stated "There are only voluntary contracts between people. A contract which you are forced to abide by but never agreed to isn't a contract." So how can Unbeliever's infringement of my rights, not to mention the rights of others on this board, and even kids and future generations who have not contracted with him, be addressed? Compensation for the rights infringement would be one way. Compensation could be in the form of regulation or taxation. Note that a consistent application of rights also debunks the claim that tax and regulation are equal to theft.

Also by full acknowledgement of rights, one can avoid some of the more reprehensible scenarios put forward in these threads due to inconsistent rights application. Issue of land use, starving certain people etc, can be addressed with a rights argument - although there are also other arguments against these. The point is if one is to make a person rights argument, I would suggest applying these rights to real people, and then applying them consistently.

First, life-saving drugs. Is it fair for a drug company to raise prices just because someone will die without it? No, of course not. I would not work for such a company.

Okay, I'm glad to hear that. But then what do you do? In the hypothetical scenario I described, if people were dying because they could not afford the exorbitant price charged by a company for life-saving drugs, would you stand by and tut-tut that company but chalk the outcome up to the price we pay for a free market? Are you saying that a company's right to charge whatever it wants for its products trumps the individual's right to life itself? I think that is a seriously misguided set of priorities, if so.

If I think it's unfair that you have a big screen tv while I have an old black-and-white set, can I take your TV? Or can I take the money necessary to even us out?

Of course not. No one has the right to own a big-screen TV. But as I have stated before, people do have the right to medical care, to a place to live, and the other basic necessities of human life, and I stand by that.

Socialism is the desire not to see equal opportunity, but equal outcomes.

I do not desire equal outcomes. As I have said, wealth honestly earned is a good incentive to work hard and succeed. But I do believe there are some things that are too important to be left to the vagaries of the market. That the free market is good at fostering innovation and increasing efficiency and productivity, there can be no doubt. That we can trust it with our lives and our freedom - well, suffice it to say I'm considerably more skeptical of that.

I'm not saying that everyone in a difficult situation got there becase they did something wrong, but taking from one to give to another is stealing no matter how good the intentions are.

I must say, I do not agree with that premise. I deny that redistribution of wealth, if it occurs in a democratic society with the consent of the majority, is stealing, for the same reason that I deny that force used by police officers to subdue criminals constitutes assault. Again, this does not mean I believe that all people retain their property only at the sufferance of the state; for example, as I have said, I strongly oppose the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private party to another. There is a middle path between the extremes of communism and libertarianism, and in my view it consists of ensuring all people access to the basic needs of life, and no more, and letting them work to earn whatever extra luxuries they desire for themselves.

As for sweatshops, yes, people voluntarily walk in and ask for employment. We can say that that they have no choice, but isn' life just a series of choices, often difficult? ...If I am in a terrible accident through no fault of my own, and lose both kidneys, I may have to choose between painful and difficult dialysis or death.

Yes, but that is a situation that no person brought about. Of course we do not expect natural phenomena to understand our desire for fairness, but what bearing does that have on the way we treat others? Tornadoes are not intelligent agents capable of moral reasoning; it would be foolish to expect them to act fairly. But sweatshop owners do have that capability, and it is not wrong to expect - or, if necessary, to demand - that they use it.

Poor people stay poor because they don't try to improve their lives and have made bad decisions. If you are struggling to pay your rent and you have 5 kids, do the math. You made a bad decision. If you dropped out of high school and now make minimum wage, again, do the math. Far too many people have gone from rags to riches. It can be done, but only if you are willing to put forth the effort.

I'm sorry to be blunt, but this is a wildly oversimplified view. Only in Horatio Alger novels is becoming successful as easy as you suggest. For one thing, poverty begets poverty, and for people who live in an area that is depressed in general, it can be virtually impossible to escape.

Let's say you live in such an area and are willing to exert whatever effort is necessary. How can you get an education if all the funding is being drained from your local public school to pay for vouchers to subsidize wealthy people sending their children to expensive private schools? (Voucher programs are the worst of both worlds in that respect - they take away much-needed resources from the public schools and harm people who depend on them, while at the same time still do not provide enough so that poor people who actually want to send their children to private school could afford it.) Even if you do graduate, coming from an underfunded and failing school, being admitted to college is an uphill battle, and virtually no high-paying, skilled jobs are available to anyone with just a high school diploma. How can you improve your lot in life if there is no requirement that jobs pay a living wage so that you can purchase the necessities and still accumulate savings? How can you hope to do better if you are unable to pay for health insurance and an illness or injury forces you to deplete whatever savings you do have?

People can escape poverty and break the cycle, but it hardly ever happens by individual effort alone. It takes help, and it takes people working together. I cannot accept arguments that we leave this all up to the generosity of private parties and hope it works out for the best.

Now then, on Iraq...

There were some recent news articles about documents found relating to ties between Saddam and the terrorist group, but I haven't been able to track one down. Here is an older article, but it still details that there was a connection.

I have to say, you don't think this connection might be a little thin if it's based solely on an eight-year-old document discussing the possibility of setting up a meeting? (Let us not forget that similar documents offered in the past, such as the infamous yellowcake one, turned out to be clumsy forgeries.) There are countries with far more direct ties to bin Laden and al-Qaeda - Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to name two - that we never even considered attacking.

Now, Bin Laden did have ties with and material support from Afghanistan and the Taliban, which is why I supported that war and still do. But this mind-bogglingly expensive and wasteful Iraq blunder has drained so much of our effort and manpower that Afghanistan has devolved back into an anarchy of squabbling warlords where terrorists roam freely, the drug trade flourishes and the Taliban are regrouping. We overcommitted ourselves, stretched our resources too thin, and are in danger of failing both missions because of this.

I agree that desire is not the same as ability, but one will often lead to the other. We didn't invade Iraq because Saddam hated us, we did so because he was a threat to us. He had a weapons program and ties to terrorists. Why wait until he does something that results in the deaths of Americans?

Because there was no reason to believe he had any serious ability to do so. Again, prior to the war Iraq was not a threat, had no weapons of mass destruction, and there were many people saying so. (Scott Ritter, for one. Note the publication date of that article.) But their counsel, which in retrospect turned out to be absolutely correct, was ignored in the mad dash to war. In a tragic irony, Iraq is now becoming exactly what we had feared originally - a threat to America - as our invasion becomes a worldwide symbol of American arrogance and militarism, and a rallying call to jihad among the vast pool of angry, disaffected Muslims around the planet. Instead of winning their hearts and minds, we have squandered that opportunity, and in so doing have put ourselves in more danger than we ever were from a single tinpot dictator with delusions of grandeur.
(And don't you think worrying about "something that results in the deaths of Americans" is a little insulting? What about the 2,000+ Americans that have died there as a direct result of our invasion?)

Under Saddam, people were routinely rounded up and tortured, raped, and murdered. Why? Because Saddam wanted it. Today, people are still suffering, but they are doing so in the fight for freedom. How can you not see the obvious difference between these two?

Again, I do not mean to be glib, but are you saying that people being blown up, tortured, abducted and murdered is more acceptable if it is not happening as a matter of official government policy?

Make no mistake, I am not defending Saddam. He was a cruel, murderous tyrant who committed war crimes against his own people. But I am saying that it is not axiomatic that conditions have improved in Iraq just because he is gone. If anything, Iraq is even more lawless, more violent, and more chaotic than it was. And to make things even worse, there is now a real possibility that the new Iraq will become a fanatical religious theocracy based on sharia law, or worse, a failed state consumed by sectarian and tribal civil war. Either way, it may well become a breeding ground for terrorism, something it was not before.

As a sign of how bad things are becoming, here is a story about a growing trend of Iraqis changing their names so as not to reflect a particular religious affiliation. People are changing their names out of fear. Does that betoken a stable and free society? Is that a hopeful sign of progress?

Although some rich people do get rich without much contribution from others, like misers and big-selling authors, others depend on the labors of others to get rich, like business leaders. Where would they be without their employees? Especially those that work "hard" but don't get much money from their labors.

There are also rich people who inherit their wealth -- they live off of a big handout from their parents.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
*Thanks to Unbeliever; his blog led me to a page with this quote on it, one I have read before but not seen for a long time*

Let me try and respond to your arguments in the order you presented them.

First, life-saving drugs. Is it fair for a drug company to raise prices just because someone will die without it? No, of course not. I would not work for such a company. But do we only allow the ownership of property when it it used fairly? And who gets to define fair in each situation? If I think it's unfair that you have a big screen tv while I have an old black-and-white set, can I take your TV? Or can I take the money necessary to even us out?

Socialism is the desire not to see equal opportunity, but equal outcomes. If I am rich and you are poor, then there must be problem, right? Maybe I worked my ass off and made good decisions while you blew your money on booze, drugs, and lottery tickets. What then?

I'm not saying that everyone in a difficult situation got there becase they did something wrong, but taking from one to give to another is stealing no matter how good the intentions are.

As for sweatshops, yes, people voluntarily walk in and ask for employment. We can say that that they have no choice, but isn' life just a series of choices, often difficult? I can work at a job I hate or I can starve. These are two unpleasent choices, but they are still choices. If I am in a terrible accident through no fault of my own, and lose both kidneys, I may have to choose between painful and difficult dialysis or death. But my only two difficult choices would not justify my taking one of your kidneys against your will. If my house blows away in a tornado, I cannot force my way into your house just because I have no where to stay.

Voluntary charity is our society's safety net. Forced donations by the government is tyranny.

And you are completely wrong that "people who are wealthy were only able to accumulate that wealth because of our prosperous society and the efforts and cooperation of others." Like most liberals, you seem to have forgotten that hard work and smart decisions are the primary cause of wealth. Poor people stay poor because they don't try to improve their lives and have made bad decisions. If you are struggling to pay your rent and you have 5 kids, do the math. You made a bad decision. If you dropped out of high school and now make minimum wage, again, do the math. Far too many people have gone from rags to riches. It can be done, but only if you are willing to put forth the effort. If you don't want to, then you cannot take my money to make up for your lack of ambition.

Ties between Saddam and Al Queda: There were some recent news articles about documents found relating to ties between Saddam and the terrorist group, but I haven't been able to track one down. Here is an older article, but it still details that there was a connection.

I agree that desire is not the same as ability, but one will often lead to the other. We didn't invade Iraq because Saddam hated us, we did so because he was a threat to us. He had a weapons program and ties to terrorists. Why wait until he does something that results in the deaths of Americans?

I have to say, that your flippant attitude about the elections in Iraq ("Anyone can turn out to dip their fingers into a jar of purple ink") is insulting to those who risked their lives to vote. People were murdered for going to the polls. Can you really say that they don't want democracy when they are risking their lives for it? Can they all get together and agree on a government? We shall see. But they deserve the chance.

Under Saddam, people were routinely rounded up and tortured, raped, and murdered. Why? Because Saddam wanted it. Today, people are still suffering, but they are doing so in the fight for freedom. How can you not see the obvious difference between these two? If today's media were around during our own revolutionary war, I wonder how similar it would sound. I doubt it could have succeeded with today's media.

Yes, the only purpose of government is to protect it's citizens. And our givernment invaded Iraq to protect us from the threat of Saddam, his WMD programs, and his ties to terrorism. But an Iraq that is freed from Saddam but not helped to find democracy is still a threat. That is why Iraq must be allowed to become a free nation.

You state, "Yes, but there's an important difference: the people who want theocracy are wrong. Their beliefs are false and their goals will not produce the most happiness for everyone.." And, yet I could say the same thing about you. You want to impose your ideas of right and wrong on others. It is wrong for someone to be poor, so we must take that guy's money to fix it. I'm saying, let everyone decide for themselves. If you want to help, do so. If you don't, then no one will force it upon you. Why is this concept of freedom so terrible?

You also say, "Freedom is not such an easily defined thing as you may think." Of course it is easily defined. Freedom is being able to do what you want. Now there must be limits on freedom, such as you can't kill or harm people unnecessarily and you can't take what isn't yours. But you don't want freedom of action, you want equality of outcomes. According to you someone isn't free if someone has something while they have nothing. Wrong! That person has the freedom to go out and get what they want. And a state that guarantees equality under the law, but not equality of outcomes, will foster those opportunities. Voluntary charity will help those who are incapable of helping themselves. Everyone else fends for themselves. We all have the equal chance to succeed to fail, based on our efforts.

If someone is charging more than I want to pay for something, I don't have to buy it. That is the basis of the free market. Notice the word "free" in there.

That is a good idea in theory; but see how it works in practice. Let's say I have some disease that is inevitably fatal if left untreated, and there is only one company that makes a drug that can save me. Let's say that I go to that company, and they inform me that in return for saving my life, they expect me to pay an amount equal to my entire net worth. To obtain this drug, I would have to sign over my house, my car, all my belongings, and my annual salary for the rest of my life to them. (There are already cases, admittedly not as extreme as the example I just made up, where pharmaceutical companies are explicitly justifying raising drug prices not because the cost of production demands it, but because sick people need them to live and have no choice but to pay.) Would you still be against predatory-pricing laws in that instance? After all, if I don't want to pay for that drug, I can just die, right?

I dislike minimum wage laws. Let the employer decide how much the position is worth... If I choose to work for a sweatshop, then who are you to tell me that I can't?

You would have a point if people freely chose to work for sweatshops, but that is not the case. Let's be realistic: no one works in a sweatshop because they want to. (Take a not uncommon example: What if you're a subsistence farmer in a Third World nation and your crop fails, and you are forced to work in a sweatshop because it's the only job around and you need money to feed yourself?) Economic necessity can easily produce circumstances that are indistinguishable from coercion in all important aspects. That is why I maintain liberalism actually increases a person's freedom, because it gives them the options and the ability to make genuinely meaningful choices. Minimum-wage laws and social assistance programs are one part of this. Libertarians place a high priority on personal freedom, and that is a laudable goal, but how can you even begin to take control of your own destiny if you can't find a job that pays you a wage sufficient for the basic necessities of life?

The overall flavor of the market section was one where it is assumed that success must be the result of wrong behavior. We must punish those who have a lot of money. You should not be allowed to have a lot of money while others are poor.

I don't recall making any statement to the effect that success is inevitably the result of misbehavior or that it should be punished. If you disagree, feel free to provide a quote. What I did say, and what I will stand by, is that, first, it is selfish and immoral to enjoy extreme luxury while others lack even the basic needs of life; and second, that people who are wealthy were only able to accumulate that wealth because of our prosperous society and the efforts and cooperation of others, and so they have a duty to give something back to the society that made it possible for them to enjoy their success.

I agree completely with the war in Iraq. I agree with it because Saddam was a threat to the US because of his contacts with Al Queda (which have been proven, the 9/11 commision's report notwithstanding)...

What is your evidence for this?

...and his clear desire to build WMDs. Remember, he had already used WMDs on his own people. Does anyone really think that he wouldn't gladly furnish them to someone prepared to use them on the US, his hated enemy?

Desire is not the same as ability, and when last I checked, we did not invade nations for the crime of hating us. As hard as it is for some people to believe, the UN sanctions and weapons inspections worked. Regardless of his desire to create weapons of mass destruction, Saddam simply did not have the technical capability to do so; he was contained and was no threat to either his neighbors or America. (If he had WMDs, why wouldn't he have used them on the American invaders?)

I agree that trying to impose democracy on those who don't want it is doomed to failure, but is that really the case here? I would submit that the high voter turn-out in all elections thus far would tell us that the people of Iraq want democracy.

Anyone can turn out to dip their fingers into a jar of purple ink. The real issue is whether the various interest groups within Iraq are willing to engage in the sort of compromise that is the essence of democracy and that creates a viable state. I submit that, so far, that willingness has been conspicuously lacking.

As for the invasion of Iraq being a failure, let's see how it fairs to an unbaised appraisal. The media only reports the bad. How many schools have been built in Iraq? How many hospitals? How many new, Iraqi-owned businesses? And how many people have been raped, tortued, or murdered by the Iraqi government? I'm guessing none of these questions will get answered on CNN.

Forgive me if this sounds flippant, but when dozens of people are being kidnapped, tortured, shot, blown up and decapitated in Iraq every single day, perhaps we should not praise ourselves too highly for putting a new coat of paint on an elementary school. When the violence is quelled, when armed sectarian militias no longer openly rule the streets, when prominent terrorists do not move freely in the country, when Iraq has a stable government that does not have to be propped up by overwhelming American military power, then perhaps we can consider the smaller triumphs to be genuine successes.

If we want to talk about all the good our invasion has done, I recommend we start by discussing basic utilities, which still have not been repaired almost three years after this war. Even in Baghdad, the heart of American presence in Iraq, Iraqi families are limited to a few hours of electricity per day, if that; water is often shut off for days at a time; and in one of the world's largest oil-producing countries, the price of gasoline has skyrocketed and lines to refill a car's gas tank can be ten hours long or more. If you want to talk about progress, let's start by getting the Iraqis back up to an ordinary standard of civilized living, like the one they had before the war.

Is the struggle to bring freedom to the Iraqis going to be bloodless? No, of course not. But, then, if memory serves, neither was our own fight for freedom. Innocent Iraqis are killed almost everyday by those who want to thwart freedom. And yet, knowing this, Iraqis show up at the polls anyway. They want freedom and continue to try to live their lives as they see fit. Should we just tell them it is not worth the lives lost. That their freedom costs too much. Yeah, let me know how they take that.

I am not saying that freedom for Iraq costs too much, but rather that it is not our duty to provide it if the Iraqis do not rise up and demand it themselves. Weren't you the one who was just arguing against a "right to take"? In fact, you said just below that:

At the end of the day, the only purpose of government is to protect the rights os it's citizens.

When last I checked, the Iraqis were not American citizens. By your reasoning, it therefore seems that we have no business interfering in their affairs.

Using the power of state to do good things may have noble intentions, but isn't that exactly the reasons given by those who want a theocracy? They have their opinions of what is best for everyone, and want to use the power of government to enforce these ideas.

Yes, but there's an important difference: the people who want theocracy are wrong. Their beliefs are false and their goals will not produce the most happiness for everyone. Just because one group whose goals are bad thinks they are doing what is best for everyone, it does not follow that every group who thinks the same also has bad goals. (And for that matter, how are libertarians different? Do they not also want to enforce their opinions on what is best for everyone through government? The whole point of politics is people competing to promote their ideas about the best vision for society. There is nothing intrinsically bad about that.)

Instead, why not let everyone decide for themselves? Let maximum freedom be the goal.

Freedom is not such an easily defined thing as you may think. As I have argued, it is a liberal, not a libertarian, state that actually provides maximum freedom - if by that you mean the maximum number of meaningful choices open to the individual, and I can't see what else you would mean by that.