a defense of drag show/drag queens..

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[seeds]

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For the life of me I cannot fathom why it is so difficult for the defenders of the rights of drag queens to understand that most of us couldn't care less if grown men want to dress up as women and put on shows.

However, the problem arises when the "queens" (for whatever reason) want to involve children in their strange fetish.

And for those who ridicule the idea of some of us wanting to "protect the children," then I must ask that considering the sketchy sexual pathology of these guys...



...are you really that confident in the belief that none of those "dudes" are being sexually aroused (getting erections) by having those little girls cuddle up on their laps?

Good grief, if these "roving strangers" were simply normal heterosexual males coming into libraries and schools to read stories to children, then I suggest that having little girls (or little boys) cuddle up on their laps...

(with their little rumps seemingly pressing against the drag queen's phallus - as is suspiciously evident with that dude in the middle)

...then it would still be highly inappropriate and worthy of outrage and condemnation.

Not meaning to over-dramatize the point, but what father (in his right mind) would allow any male, let alone a complete stranger, to basically "dry hump" his little girl (even if the subtle humping is only taking place in the stranger's imagination)?

Now of course I realize that there is no way of truly knowing what's going on in the drag queen's imagination, but why take the risk for such a trivial social experiment?

I mean, what in the world is so wrong with "erring on the side of caution" when it comes to protecting children from the "possibility" of coming into contact with a sexual predator?

And, yes, that also includes protecting them from the potential sexual predators in the top half of the photo that Skepdick uploaded...


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[henry quirk]

Okay, how is it not applicable to you then?

Becuz I know the answer to my question.

>If all the particles in the universe, including those that make up the brain and body, possess no consciousness, no understanding, no comprehension of meaning, no freedom, then how can those particles give birth to understanding and freedom?

>They don't. They can't.

you have no way in which to actually demonstrate it.

If I smell smoke, I can surmise there's a fire. I can't say what's burning or how it started, but I can confidently say there's a fire.

You bring it all back to a God that you have absolutely no capacity whatsoever to demonstrate the actual existence of

As I say: I can't say what's burning or how it started, but I can confidently say there's a fire.

The evidence is there, available to anyone willing to put aside their promissory materialism.

in the absence of, you would not believe in Deism at all. Instead, you might be a Christian or a Muslim or an atheist.

Oh, if I were a meat machine I imagine I'd be a vessel for just about anyone to pour anything into. If I were just a computation I could be edited, revised, or erased.

But, unfortunately for the commoditizers: I'm not just meat.

what is your own take on how the Benjamin Button Syndrome

If Daisy had paid attention, looked both ways before crossing, all those causal chains culminating in her gettin' car-smacked wouldn't have meant diddly.

many of IC's Christians are quick to point out that you are on the road to eternal damnation in Hell

I know.

what all of us share in common is the fact that none of us are able to actually demonstrate any of what we believe

In context: it's quite obvious a man cannot turn into a woman. He can pretend he's a she, may actually believe he's a she, but: he's not. One doesn't even have to abandon promissory materialism to see this.

How about definitely

Not at all actually. Neuroscientists are no closer to explaining how mind is created by brain today than they were 50 years ago. They cling to that promissory materialism and ignore anything that even hints the material just might not be all there is. They deny the possibility of fire despite an ever thickening cloud of smoke.

Only nothing in the way of a definitive consensus yet

Oh, there's a consensus, that being: matter is all there, mind is the product of brain, and never mind that we can't tell you how mind is the product of brain...we'll explain it all one day...we promise.

Do you or do you not believe that your views regarding drag queens reflects the most rational manner in which to think about them given your capacity [re God] to "follow the dictates of Reason and Nature"?

I do not.

Have you ever engaged in an exchange with someone regarding these things in which you acknowledged that their own frame of mind was more reasonable?

No. (EDIT: Actually, yes.)

are you willing to agree that given a new experience and relationship or given access to new information and knowledge you may well change your mind?

Sure.

How are your current views regarding drag queens not deemed by you to be the equivalent of One True Path to common sense and rationality?

That's like askin': how are your current views regarding fire being hot not deemed by you to be the blah, blah, blah?

Okay, okay. As far as our exchange goes, it is your contention that drag queens are dis-eased and mentally ill. But that homosexuals and transgender folks may well not be at all?

As I say: I'm talkin' about that continuum of dis-eased folks startin' with a guy who secretly wears sports bras under his three-piece clear on to, and endn' with, the fella who surgically mutilates himself, having bits lopped off leavin' an open wound (he calls his vagina). Which, to me, is entirely in keeping with the thread, a defense of drag show/drag queens

That's for another thread?

Obviously.

In community after community after community in regard to sexuality and guns and abortions there is nothing but strife regarding how to translate "life, liberty and property" into actual rules of behavior.

Even a casual review of the conversations, debates, and arguments in the public sphere shows no one is talkin' about natural rights, as theory or applied. If such conversations, debates, and arguments were in the public sphere, folks would be forced into sayin' one of two things...

A person has a right to his, and no other's, life, liberty, and property (full stop)

...or...

A person does not have a right to his, and no other's life, liberty, and property (full stop)

Such declarations, either way, would highlight that which TPTB (any iteration) desperately don't want highlighted.

So: we get a constant barrage about public safety and diversity/inclusion/equity and the virtues of one ism over another.

The whole point is creating strife.

Of course, no state and no government and there is always the possibility that, in regard to "life, liberty and property", "might makes right" prevails.

The State (any iteration) does nuthin' to safeguard or preserve natural rights. The absence of it can literally be no worse for the individual than things are right now with it (in any iteration). But, the absence of the State would make things markedly worse for all those who rely on it...

*to steal for them.

*to wield the big stick in their favor.

As with natural rights, there are no public sphere conversations, debates, or arguments about alternatives to the State (there's only a scripted back & forth about which version of the State is better).

in regard to nations that embrace one or another rendition of democracy and the rule of law...

...there is what we have now: the State.

So let them?

When my kid was six, he thought it would be fine idea to jump off the roof. I didn't let him.

you readily admit that he might be right and you wrong here

Nope.

Piss on his rug [civilly or not[ and you are gone.

By definition: pissin' on the host's rug is incivil.

as far as I know, lots and lots and lots of those folks you mention firmly believe in their own rendition of them

Name some. Seriously, toss out a few names of democrats or republicans or conservatives or progressives or Libertarians or etc. who publicly recognize the other guy has the same natural, inalienable right to his life as he, the democrat or republican, or conservative or progressive or Libertarian, or etc., has to his.

Not to them it's not.

As I say: a great many readily acknowledge sumthin' is wrong with them. They are told the problem can be corrected by altering their bodies. They may balk at the placeholder lunacy, but very few are celebratory about their condition, before or after (cuz they realize after that these radical mutilations of their bodies haven't corrected the problem [which, of course, isn't about the body bein' misaligned with the mind, but is about the mind bein' misaligned with the body]).

In fact to go that far it must be very, very important to them.

Sounds like a fetish to me.

What actual hard evidence do you have to demonstrate it such that all rational men and women -- scientists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists etc., -- are obligated to believe the same?

I've offered none and will offer none.

nature [given free will] allows men and women to choose the gender that they feel most in sync with

Nope.

we still don't know the extent to which this might all be derived genetically by way of biological imperatives

The same can be said of schizophrenia.

It is if you are attacked by those who think you are mentally ill and should not be tolerated in a rational, civilized community.

That anyone knows of this conflagration is becuz we're told about it. I doubt anyone in-forum, for example, has any first hand experience of the great war between trans and non-trans. The conflagration is reality television (which isn't real at all).

how can they be all up and down the political spectrum as well?

Not a one of us is perfect.

That given the historical and cultural and experiential contexts in which you are indoctrinated as a child and given in turn your own uniquely personal experiences as adults you are more likely to choose one set of behaviors over another.

A person is not just meat. There is sumthin' about him that predates experience. He isn't an empty vessel. Experience influences, it does not determine.

[phyllo]

To what degree is the GOP and/or MAGA conservative?

It’s a good question to ask and, when pursued, it would open up into all sorts of interesting areas. Of great advantage to those of socio-political / philosophical orientation, but less advantage to political activists and those carrying political flags and torches. What I mean is something like the sense in the French expression "Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner" ("To understand will lead one to forgive" would be how I'd translate it in this case).

Put in the most simple terms (and keep in mind that I am ad libbing here even though I have spent a lot of time investigating the roots of conservatism, the American Right, and also the Extreme Right factions), the MAGA movement is one that deal in the notion and sentiment of ownership. That is, that the huge constituency of people (about half the country, right?) have the sense that what is their rightful possession -- their country, their heritage, even themselves at an ethnic and biological (somatic) level -- is being/or has been taken from them. I think that one must begin from defining first a sentiment and then move to the arena of defining ideas about this loss.

The reason being that, and perhaps this is true for the larger majority? they are far less involved in ideas, discussion and conversation that could result in clear self-consciousness and clear articulation, and substantially in a sort of intellectual darkness or what I might call a shadow-realm where little is clear. But this does not mean that there are not now nor have there not been clear and direct thinkers.

So to illustrate an idea-set that supports my contention here I will quote Wilmot Robertson in The Dispossessed Majority (1972):

Is it not incredible that the largest American population group, the group with the deepest roots, the most orderly and most technically proficient group, the nuclear population group of American culture and of the American gene pool, should have lost its preeminence to weaker, less established, less numerous, culturally heterogeneous, and often mutually hostile minorities?

With all due allowance for minority dynamism ... this miraculous shift of power could never have taken place without a Majority "split in the ranks" - without the active assistance and participation of Majority members themselves. It has already been pointed out that race consciousness is one of mankind's greatest binding forces. From this it follows that when the racial gravitational pull slackens people tend to spin off from the group nucleus. Some drift aimlessly through life as human isolates. Others look for a substitute nucleus in an intensified religious or political life, or in an expanded class consciousness. Still others, out of idealism, romanticism, inertia, or perversity, attach themselves to another race in an attempt to find the solidarity they miss in their own.

This book, though it had a limited circulation, was very influential among those groups of people in America working *against the grain of the times*, as it were, to cobble together an intellectually-based reactive position.

However, if I were to include a more up-to-date list of titles that are influential among those of the reactive/political Right and also the more militant and extreme Right, I would start with this list:

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life [1994],
The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy [1995],
The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements [1998],
Our Culture, What's Left Of It: The Mandarins And The Masses [2005],
Not with a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline [2008],
The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture [2011],
Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism [2011],
Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution [2018], and
Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class [2020].

It must be said: The thinking, the structure of ideas, that Robertson and all those titles that I have just listed, are ideas that are now forbidden. They are so contentious that they are simply not allowed into the public sphere as bona fide topics of thought and conversation. So I will suggest here that the question Why is this so? can be and should be asked. The answer to it is in no way simple.

This is why I say that to understand our present we must begin from the basic assertion that we are in the midst of an Idea War. If this assertion is true then one is in a better position to examine the mechanisms of ideological control. And if one recognizes that ideological control is a paramount activity, then one can understand why it is imperative to exclude entire ranges of ideas that are made to seem, and indeed to be labeled as, unthinkable thought. An irony here is that I got the term unthinkable thought from Noam Chomsky! (Manufacturing Consent, etc.)

It could well and fairly be said that hovering around the MAGA movement are certain conservative opinionators and even scholars -- for example Victor Davis Hanson. However, I think that to understand American Conservatism and indeed the movement that brought about a *return* to the Evangelical and the Catholic fold among demographic groups that, in the post-Sixties had fallen away, one must refer to Richard Weaver.

Weaver was a dyed-in-the-wool Platonist and did not deal on Christian themes. But he did put forth the concept of 'metaphysical dream of the world'. That is, a vision, a sense, something foundational and perhaps intuited, that our lives are moulded and ruled by our metaphysical conceptions. (Even an anti-metaphysics is, I think, a metaphysics -- if you think about it). This is why, in my own case, I can propose transcending any specific religious persuasion or conviction. And 'picture'. One must understand that what one is really dealing in iare metaphysical concepts that *stand behind* any concretized religious form and mythology.

And by considering the ideas of Richard Weaver one will, as I was, be led to reexamine the American Civil War (the War Between the States is the *politically correct* way to put it) and the intensely politicized and ideological framing of this seminal conflict by the northern political power-structure. That framing, which is part-and-parcel of America's civil religion, is in my view where the so-called Culture Wars are truly to be located. Again I'd say: that it revolves around the issue, the question & the problem, of ownership, control and power.

And without going into details here I will simply float the notion that presently, in the country, the core battles have to do with control and definition of *what America is*, who owns it, who has a right to own it and direct it, and to what ends. These are huge questions and conflictuous ones.

I have often posted the link to this illustrative and I think illuminating bit of discourse (edited from a longer talk and given a soundtrack!) by Jonathan Bowden. My sense of it, and again I focus as a starting point on 'sentiment' that is also part-and-parcel of idea structure, is that it expresses something that, in vague ways, is shared by the MAGA constituencies. But then I would double-back to my assertion that it is, ultimately, bound up with the sentiment of dispossession.

I'm not sure that looking at it in terms of ownership makes sense. How can anyone or any group own tradition, culture, heritage ... ?

Sure, one guides it to a certain extent or tries to.

But I think the problem that has been presented to conservatives is that this stuff you have (or own) is a turd.

IOW this tradition, culture, heritage is just plain bad, destructive and oppressive. We/you ought not be trying to maintain and preserve it.

And I think that conservatives are buying into it or at least not countering it vigorously.

The GOP and MAGA are, in fact, undermining things that they ought to be preserving. Consider the "stolen" 2020 election. This could have shown the strength of the democratic system and US institutions. But instead by giving credence to an election fraud, the institutions and democracy have been weakened by both GOP and MAGA. The value has been diminished.

So what conservative need to do is to state what is good about tradition, culture, heritage ... and why it is good. Because people don't know any more.

[promethean75]

This

7hshly.jpg

Is not sexy

[Dontaskme]

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Ah yes, who can deny the obvious parallel between a tradition that is thought to have begun 133 years ago (1890) where parents line up to have their kids sit on Santa's lap to tell him what they want for Christmas,...

...and that of the warm and beautiful new tradition which began 8 years ago (2015) where parents line up to have their kids dry-humped by drag queens.

If only Norman Rockwell was alive to capture the moment on canvas.

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[iambiguous]

"Somehow" matter came into existence. "Somehow" lifeless matter became biological matter on planet Earth. "Somehow" brainless biological matter evolved in to us.

Okay, how is it not applicable to you then? Like all the rest of us, you don't know how these things happened. You just shrug and say "God". [/b]

Becuz I know the answer to my question.

>If all the particles in the universe, including those that make up the brain and body, possess no consciousness, no understanding, no comprehension of meaning, no freedom, then how can those particles give birth to understanding and freedom?

>They don't. They can't.

Again, in my view, that's ridiculous. You have no capacity to grasp how and why particles of matter came into existence at all. You just -- presto! -- take a leap of faith to the matter that becomes the human brain and -- presto! -- just assert that human consciousness encompasses autonomous understanding and meaning. Why? Because you believe that it does!!

Thus...

you have no way in which to actually demonstrate it.

If I smell smoke, I can surmise there's a fire. I can't say what's burning or how it started, but I can confidently say there's a fire.

Smoke and fire are composed of the sort of matter that comprises everything else. Only with smoke and fire, there's the possibility that the fire was started by John burning down his business for the insurance money. And as a result, the fire burned down other buildings and that resulted in the deaths of 10 human beings including 4 children. So, how is the matter in the fire necessarily and inherently different from the matter in John's brain? How did matter evolve into human consciousness? And how, when it happened, did we acquire autonomy? And how, in the absence of that autonomy, can John be held morally responsible for those deaths?

You'll say the Deist God started it all and that's just how He created us. Right?

Sans your God, however, and you're just like all the rest of us. Forced to "think up" something "in your head" to explain how the matter from the Big Bang evolved into matter in the fire evolved into the matter in our brains. And that "somehow" it just did result in free will.

And what intrigues me most about beliefs of this sort is not what you believe but pinning down the experience or relationship you had that, in the absence of, you would not believe in Deism at all. Instead, you might be a Christian or a Muslim or an atheist.

Oh, if I were a meat machine I imagine I'd be a vessel for just about anyone to pour anything into. If I were just a computation I could be edited, revised, or erased.

But, unfortunately for the commoditizers: I'm not just meat.

Ironically, from my frame of mind, it is the objectivists who manage to turn themselves into meat machines. Rather then acknowledging all of the complex variables in their lives that predispose them to Deism or Christianity or Hinduism or atheism or liberal or conservative dogmas, -- many of which are beyond their full understanding of and control over -- they assume that, God or No God, they were able to "think up" the most rational manner in which to grasp moral and political conflagrations. Thus allowing themselves to believe in turn that they are among the righteous and the rational few rather than among the irrational and immoral many.

what is your own take on how the Benjamin Button Syndrome

If Daisy had paid attention, looked both ways before crossing, all those causal chains culminating in her gettin' car-smacked wouldn't have meant diddly.

Note to others:

He really is able to convince himself of this!!! He has to. Otherwise he couldn't convince himself that everything that was ever involved in his own interactions with the events in his life were entirely grasped and understood by him such that they could never have unfolded other than in how his own brilliant mind intended them to.

According to IC, the Christian God is the explanation.

Yep.

Only along with free will and designating homosexuality as a sin, many of IC's Christians are quick to point out that you are on the road to eternal damnation in Hell. Or, as IC himself might put it if asked about it: "Yep".

I know.

Okay, at least keep us updated regarding which of you is able to convince the other regarding who the "real deal" God is. You know, unless of course it turns out to be one of theirs...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

...instead.

Again, though, what all of us share in common is the fact that none of us are able to actually demonstrate any of what we believe about either God or drag queens much beyond our own subjective assumptions/prejudices rooted existentially in the lives we've lived.

In context: it's quite obvious a man cannot turn into a woman. He can pretend he's a she, may actually believe he's a she, but: he's not. One doesn't even have to abandon promissory materialism to see this.

Again, however, what can you possibly know regarding what they themselves are thinking, feeling and experiencing as drag queens, transvestites, transgender individuals? You just "think yourself" into believing it's just a dis-eased/diseased mental illness. And that makes it true.

Supposedly? How about definitely: https://www.google.com/search?q=neurosc ... s-wiz-serp

Not at all actually. Neuroscientists are no closer to explaining how mind is created by brain today than they were 50 years ago. They cling to that promissory materialism and ignore anything that even hints the material just might not be all there is. They deny the possibility of fire despite an ever thickening cloud of smoke.

That's my point! Only most of them are not able to fall back on "because the Deist God created us the way we are, that's why!!". As for Popper's "promissory materialism", sure, there will always be future discoveries that may well turn present scientific "facts" into fiction. But what's that got to do with pinning down your own conclusions here as in fact the optimal frame of mind. Again, other than that "in your head" you believe they are.

Only nothing in the way of a definitive consensus yet. Though, unlike most of us here, they are not just sitting around at home "thinking up" ways to understand it.

Oh, there's a consensus, that being: matter is all there, mind is the product of brain, and never mind that we can't tell you how mind is the product of brain...we'll explain it all one day...we promise.

Okay, sure, but using the scientific method, right? And not skipping all that empirical stuff and just attributing us to a God, the God, your God. And, besides, there's still the fact that, in using the scientific method there is no definitive consensus one way or the other: free will/no free will.

Do you or do you not believe that your views regarding drag queens reflects the most rational manner in which to think about them given your capacity [re God] to "follow the dictates of Reason and Nature"?

I do not.

Okay, that's important. Your belief in the Deist God then is just a subjective, rooted existentially in dasein "leap of faith". And you recognize that given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge, you may well be in here concluding just the opposite of what you believe now. Same as me. Same as others.

Have you ever engaged in an exchange with someone regarding these things in which you acknowledged that their own frame of mind was more reasonable? Most objectivist will say no. Why? Because once they admit that they were wrong about something pertaining to the morality of human sexuality in the past they are acknowledging that they may well be wrong about something now.

How about it then? Are you acknowledging that your frame of mind here and now regarding these things may well not be the most rational assessment of them? And are you willing to agree that given a new experience and relationship or given access to new information and knowledge you may well change your mind?

Sure.

Okay, again, note a few examples of how this was in fact the cases in the past. Your own rendition of my own rendition of this here:

And there have been any number of situations in my past where my thinking and my emotions were shifting dramatically and thus up to a point out of sync. When I first became a devout Christian. When I became a Marxist and an atheist. When I flirted with the Unitarian Church and with Objectivism. When I shifted from Lenin to Trotsky. When I abandoned Marxism and became a Democratic Socialist and then a Social Democrat. When I discovered existentialism and deconstruction and semiotics and abandoned objectivism altogether. When I became moral nihilist. When I began to crumble into an increasingly more fragmented "I" in the is/ought world.

But one by one, just like you, God or No God, they will all insist that their own assessment of drag queens and homosexuals is, in fact, objectively, the "real deal". The One True Path.

Citation, please. I've never said dddly about The One True Path.[/b]

How are your current views regarding drag queens not deemed by you to be the equivalent of One True Path to common sense and rationality?

That's like askin': how are your current views regarding fire being hot not deemed by you to be the blah, blah, blah?

Again, given my own personal opinion here, that is ridiculous. Who here does not believe that fire is hot? How is fire being hot not deemed by mere mortals to be the One Truth Path in grasping this inherent component of fire? Other than for those of us who are, say, paralyzed?

But the One True Path, common sense, rational thinking and morality regarding drag queens?

Come on, henry, drag queens and transgenders and homosexuals are often all lumped together in the minds of those able to convince themselves that they are all "perverts".

If such conflaters wanna join the conversation, they can defend themselves. I'm not their spokesman. I won't defend them.

Okay, okay. As far as our exchange goes, it is your contention that drag queens are dis-eased and mentally ill. But that homosexuals and transgender folks may well not be at all?

As I say: I'm talkin' about that continuum of dis-eased folks startin' with a guy who secretly wears sports bras under his three-piece clear on to, and endn' with, the fella who surgically mutilates himself, having bits lopped off leavin' an open wound (he calls his vagina). Which, to me, is entirely in keeping with the thread, a defense of drag show/drag queens

That's for another thread?

Obviously.

Okay, fair enough. We'll need to start a new thread in order to explore your thinking about homosexuals and disease/mental illness. Would you like me to?

Come on, henry, get real. In community after community after community in regard to sexuality and guns and abortions there is nothing but strife regarding how to translate "life, liberty and property" into actual rules of behavior. The drag queen's right to live his life freely vs. the right of others to live in a community where dis-eased, mentally ill people are either "cured" or locked up in mental institutions..

Even a casual review of the conversations, debates, and arguments in the public sphere shows no one is talkin' about natural rights, as theory or applied.

That's simply not true, in my view. In any number of God and No God communities the objectivists will insist that certain human behaviors are in fact natural and that others are not. And that rights -- rules of behavior -- ought to revolve around behaviors that are natural. Then those who argue that in regard to human sexuality itself, so-called "deviant behavior" is not deviant at all. It's just that some of us come into the world hard-wired genetically to think about gender in different ways.

Same with all other conflicting goods that generate strife revolving around "life, liberty and property". Who gets to say what a person has a right to in regard to them when others insist that they don't. The right own a gun, the right to live in a community where there are no guns. Then all the pro and con arguments. The right of the unborn to live or the right to force a woman to give birth. Then all the pro and con arguments. The right to be a drag queen. The right to keep mentally ill people out of a community. Then all the pro and con arguments.

Then those like you who come into places like this and argue as though anyone one doesn't share their own rendition of what is naturally right is naturally wrong.

Of course, no state and no government and there is always the possibility that, in regard to "life, liberty and property", "might makes right" prevails. Or the state and the government itself embodies "right makes might".

The State (any iteration) does nuthin' to safeguard or preserve natural rights. The absence of it can literally be no worse for the individual than things are right now with it (in any iteration). But, the absence of the State would make things markedly worse for all those who rely on it...

Come on henry, even you know damn well that that if those with all the power decide to confiscate all guns from all citizens, you yourself would want a government around to check that. And as long as the local, state, and federal government are squarely behind bazookas, and guns galore, you won't be bitching much. Or if the government is squarely behind your own right makes might rendition of gun policy, that's good government.

Ever and always it comes down to agreeing with or not agreeing with how you think about something. Well, at least until a new experience, a new relationship and access to new information and knowledge changes your mind about guns. And "sure" you note that might happen.

As for kids: they have natural rights too. They're persons.

Indeed, and nature itself has seen fit to turn them on sexually as young as age 8 for girls and 9 for boys. So let them?

When my kid was six, he thought it would be fine idea to jump off the roof. I didn't let him.

Right, right. And that's exactly the same thing. As though there is a raging controversy regarding parents letting kids jump off a roof. Or drive a car. Or become a mercenary.

No need. I'm aware of his views. It's been awhile, but I'm sure he has some dim recollection of mine. There's been no rancor between us, even where we part company. That good will probably extends out from the idea of not pissin' on your host's rug when in his home. Civility. Like what I'm offerin' in this conversation.

Besides, you readily admit that he might be right and you wrong here. Given that a new experience in your life might bring you around to his way of thinking. Right? Whereas one suspects that this could never be the case with him. Or with the Nazis among us. Not with the fulminating fanatic objectivists. Drag queens are never, ever to be tolerated in their own best of all possible communities. Let alone homosexuals.

Nope.

What, now you are saying that you can't encounter a new experience, a new relationships or have access to new information that brings you over to his point of view? Which is it, henry? You either might or you can't.

Piss on his rug [civilly or not[ and you are gone.

By definition: pissin' on the host's rug is incivil.

Yeah, but there you are "disappeared" from the discussions. Not here. Here one can do what you once did to me: "foe me". "Disappear" me from inside your head. But then change your mind.

Now, something [existential] must have happened to prompt you to foe and then to unfoe me. Or objectively did you do so because it was the only rational thing to do?

Insofar as I know: no nazi (or democrat, or republican, or conservative, or progressive, or Libertarian, or etc.) gives a rat's dirty rear end about natural rights 'cept as lip service.

See, there you go. You talk about "natural rights" as though only you get to say what they are in regard to sex and guns and abortions. And, as far as I know, lots and lots and lots of those folks you mention firmly believe in their own rendition of them

Name some. Seriously, toss out a few names of democrats or republicans or conservatives or progressives or Libertarians or etc. who recognize the other guy has the same natural, inalienable right to his life as he, the democrat or republican, or conservative or progressive or Libertarian, or etc., has to his.

But my point is that they don't argue that. Instead, they argue that those who are not "one of them" [the good guys, the smart guys] are wrong about what is natural -- rational, moral -- behavior. They don't just pay "lip-service" to their own convictions. They can even be fiercely fanatic about them.

It's just common sense. A man, to feel less alien in his own skin, lops off body parts and then pretends he's a she. A woman, to feel less alien in her own skin, lops off body parts then pretends she's a he. It's lunacy.

Not to them it's not.

As I say: a great many readily acknowledge sumthin' is wrong with them. They are told the problem can be corrected by altering their bodies. They may balk at the placeholder lunacy, but very few are celebratory about it, before or after (cuz they realize after that these radical mutilations of their bodies haven't corrected the problem [which, of course, isn't about the body bein' misaligned with the mind, but is about the mind bein' misaligned with the body]).

There you go speaking for them yourself. That many see being a drag queen or having an operation as the solution to what nags at them doesn't count because it's not what you think they should be thinking. And, besides, even if some don't think like you do, they are, after all, mentally ill.

In fact to go that far it must be very, very important to them. Regarding how they think and feel about themselves. Only they are lunatics because you say so. Their own bodies may be their property to do with as they please, but that doesn't make them any less mentally ill. And they must be because you believe that they are.

Sounds like a fetish to me.

Even if that's all it is, they still feel like doing it. It doesn't make them mentally ill...unless of course you have demonstrable evidence that can convince the psychological professionals that they are.

Thus...

Dis-eased: not at ease. Diseased: sick. The fella who secretly wears sports bras under his three-piece (to support an anatomical feature he doesn't have) is dis-eased. The guy who willingly has himself surgically mutilated to (for the most) unsuccessfully affect the appearance, demeanor, persona of a woman is diseased.

What actual hard evidence do you have to demonstrate it such that all rational men and women -- scientists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists etc., -- are obligated to believe the same?

your emphasis

I've offered none and will offer none.

Okay, in that case maybe I am right. Your current attitudes about them merely reflect the fact that existentially, your own life unfolded such that you came to be predisposed subjectively to embrace one set of conservative political prejudices rather than liberal political prejudices. But that given new experiences, etc., you might change your mind.

Cancer is natural: no one suggests accepting it.

Disease, and disease processes, physical and non-physical, are utterly natural, but they aren't biologically or psychologically normal.

Few choose to have cancer. But nature [given free will] allows men and women to choose the gender that they feel most in sync with. And since millions and millions have chosen to become drag queens or transvestites or have sex change operations how "unnatural" can it be.

Nope.

Again, in my view, that's simply preposterous. Millions and millions of men and women already have chosen to take their own at birth biological gender in another direction, You might claim they are mentally ill lunatics for doing so, but [given free will] they still did it. While thinking it was the most mentally sane decision they have ever made.

Then back to the part where we still don't know the extent to which this might all be derived genetically by way of biological imperatives. The normal biologically and psychologically does not entail that behaviors chosen that are not normal are unnatural. Let alone a sign of mental illness. That's just your own "common sense" political prejudices which you refuse to acknowledge may well be rooted in dasein.

The same can be said of schizophrenia.

Yes, and lots of other mental afflictions. The brain biologically goes in all sorts of directions. But schizophrenia and other such brain dysfunctions really do involve chemical and neurological conditions "beyond the control" of particular individuals. For drag queens, the behaviors are freely opted for given human autonomy.

On the other hand, what of those Deists out there who are themselves drag queens?

What of them?

Well, as with Kantians and their deontological agenda, doesn't it strike some as odd that all Kantians are not on the same page regarding moral issues. They predicate good and bad on rationality, don't they? So how come they can't all agree on the optimal moral agenda. Same with Deists. Their God installed in them a Divine capacity to "follow the dictates of Reason and Nature". And, as it turns out, common sense. So how can they be all up and down the political spectrum as well? Even within your own ranks things like common sense seem considerably more subjective than one might anticipate. Derived more perhaps existentially from dasein than essentially from God.

Not a one of us is perfect.

Or, "not all of us are mentally ill"? And perfection given the manner in which I construe value judgments existentially as rooted in dasein or perfection as embraced by the "my way or the highway"/"one of us" objectivists?

Sure. We all have our prejudices, our idiosyncrasies. Ir's not a given, though, such things determine behavior.

Not in the manner in which cause and effect works in the either/or world. I prefer to use the world "predisposed". That given the historical and cultural and experiential contexts in which you are indoctrinated as a child and given in turn your own uniquely personal experiences as adults you are more likely to choose one set of behaviors over another.

A person is not just meat. There is sumthin' about him that predates experience. He isn't an empty vessel. Experience influences, it does not determine.

Right. As though my point is not aimed precisely at rebutting the objectivists contention that unless others are inclined to be meat-minds and think exactly as they do, they must be mentally ill.

From my perspective, the objectivists among us come closest to being "meat-minds". Meat minds like Ayn Rand or Satyr who insist there really is only one "natural" or "metaphysically rational" manner in which to think about drag queens...exactly as they do.

[henry quirk]

You just...assert that human consciousness encompasses autonomous understanding and meaning. Why? Because you believe that it does!!

Nope. I know it does.

how is the matter in the fire necessarily and inherently different from the matter in John's brain?

It's fundamentally not.

How did matter evolve into human consciousness?

It didn't.

can John be held morally responsible for those deaths?

John is a free will. He's morally responsible.

God started it all

Yep.

Sans...God...

...there'd be no Reality and no us.

He really is able to convince himself of this!!!

It's obvious. If Daisey had looked both ways, all those other causal chains wouldn't have mattered. She, a free will, let her guard down and she got car-smacked becuz of it.

at least keep us updated regarding which of you is able to convince the other regarding who the "real deal" God is

There is, and will be, nuthin' to report.

what can you possibly know regarding what they themselves are thinking, feeling and experiencing as drag queens, transvestites, transgender individuals?

Nuthin' beyond the fact that if any of these men actually believe themselves to be women: they're loons.

most of them are not able to fall back on "because the Deist God created us the way we are, that's why!!".

So they shelter in promissory materialism instead.

what's that got to do with pinning down your own conclusions here as in fact the optimal frame of mind(?)

My frame of mind (optimal or not) has nuthin' to do with the reality men cannot turn into women, women cannot turn into men, and anyone who thinks they can is deluded.

but using the scientific method, right?

Yes, like Wilder Pennfield and John Eccles and Michael Egnor and others.

Your belief in...God then is just a subjective, rooted existentially in dasein "leap of faith".

Nope.

you recognize that given...new information and knowledge, you may well be in here concluding just the opposite of what you believe now.

Yep.

they will all insist that their own assessment of drag queens and homosexuals is, in fact, objectively, the "real deal". The One True Path.

Citation, please.

How is fire being hot not deemed by mere mortals to be the One Truth Path in grasping this inherent component of fire?

Recognizing fire is hot is not part of a subjective experience or a One Truth Path. Fire is hot. In the same way: recognizing men cannot turn into women and women cannot turn into men is not a subjective experience or a One Truth Path.

Would you like me to?

I don't care.

That's simply not true

No one in the public sphere is talkin' about natural rights, as theory or applied. It's simply not happening.

you know damn well that that if those with all the power...

...the State.

...decide to confiscate all guns from all citizens, you yourself would want a government around to check that.

I want the State to protect me from the State?

that's exactly the same thing

Yep. A parent has an obligation to safeguard and preserve his child till adulthood. A child jumping off a roof; having his penis removed: no parent worthy of the title would allow such things.

What, now you are saying that you can't encounter a new experience, a new relationships or have access to new information that brings you over to his point of view?

What I posted...

you readily admit that he might be right and you wrong here

Nope.

did you do so because it was the only rational thing to do?

I set the captives free in celebration of my return to the forum.

they don't argue that

Exactly. As I say: there are no conversations, debates, or arguments about natural rights in the public sphere.

There you go speaking for them yourself.

Nope.

they still feel like doing it. It doesn't make them mentally ill

Yeah, it does.

Your current attitudes about them merely reflect the fact that existentially, your own life unfolded such that you came to be predisposed subjectively to embrace one set of conservative political prejudices rather than liberal political prejudices.

Nope.

Millions and millions of men and women already have chosen to take their own at birth biological gender in another direction,

Surgical mutilation and wearing dress does not make a man into a woman.

For drag queens, the behaviors are freely opted for given human autonomy.

They are not of sound mind.

And perfection given the manner in which I construe value judgments existentially as rooted in dasein or perfection as embraced by the "my way or the highway"/"one of us" objectivists?

Nope.

[iambiguous]

Come on, henry, what kind of a bullshit exchange is this turning into? I respond to you in whole paragraphs and you come back to me with these one sentence/one word "rebuttals". Really, how much thought are you actually putting into the points I make? The points you make?

So, okay, I'll respond one more time given this Pedro/The Corner "format". But from now on if you are not willing or able to respond in an exchange more suited to Philosophy Now, I'll be moving on.

If only because "if I do say so myself" I am making a fool out of you and making fools out of objectivists is no longer all that entertaining to me. I'm really more intent on exploring these things more substantively with those like iwannaplato here. Only he is more inclined to become a Stooge with me. And my ILP persona is winding down.

Or AJ. Only he simply refuses to take his considerably more substantive "wall of words" rejoinders down out of the pedantic clouds...his "world of words" abstractions. Apparently, ideas are his thing.

You have no capacity to grasp how and why particles of matter came into existence at all. You just -- presto! -- take a leap of faith to the matter that becomes the human brain and -- presto! -- just assert that human consciousness encompasses autonomous understanding and meaning. Why? Because you believe that it does!!

Nope. I know it does.

Right, I forgot. All that is necessary to make something true is that you just know that it is.

Smoke and fire are composed of the sort of matter that comprises everything else. Only with smoke and fire, there's the possibility that the fire was started by John burning down his business for the insurance money. And as a result, the fire burned down other buildings and that resulted in the deaths of 10 human beings including 4 children. So, how is the matter in the fire necessarily and inherently different from the matter in John's brain?

It's fundamentally not.

Let me guess: you just know that it's fundamentally not?

How did matter evolve into human consciousness? And how, when it happened, did we acquire autonomy?

It didn't.

Sorry, I keep forgetting that your Deist God created matter. And that when He created human brain matter He gave it free will. And this is true as well because you know it is.

can John be held morally responsible for those deaths?

John is a free will. He's morally responsible.

Then [of course] back to this:

]God started it all

Yep.

And then all the "yeps" from these folks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions

He really is able to convince himself of this!!! He has to. Otherwise he couldn't convince himself that everything that was ever involved in his own interactions with the events in his life were entirely grasped and understood by him such that they could never have unfolded other than in how his own brilliant mind intended them to.He really is able to convince himself of this!!!

It's obvious. If Daisey had looked both ways, all those other causal chains wouldn't have mattered. She, a free will, let her guard down and she got car-smacked becuz of it.

Okay, suppose she did look both ways. After all, in the clip she sees the taxi but the driver was "momentarily distracted" and hit her anyway. And we all know how that works. It could be anything that distracts us. Something completely beyond our control. Sure, sometimes these things unfold because of us, but other times they involve a series of interactions that we are powerless to prevent. Like when the next "big one" -- earthquake, volcano, tornado, tsunami -- wipes out tens of thousands. What, it's their fault for choosing to live where these things created by God can happen? Practically anywhere on Earth.

at least keep us updated regarding which of you is able to convince the other regarding who the "real deal" God is

There is, and will be, nuthin' to report.

Fine. But what doesn't change of course is this: if it's his God you burn in Hell for all of eternity. If it's your God...?

And if it's No God? Then all of our lives are essentially meaningless and purposeless; and we all tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

In context: it's quite obvious a man cannot turn into a woman. He can pretend he's a she, may actually believe he's a she, but: he's not. One doesn't even have to abandon promissory materialism to see this.

what can you possibly know regarding what they themselves are thinking, feeling and experiencing as drag queens, transvestites, transgender individuals?

Nuthin' beyond the fact that if any of these men actually believe themselves to be women: they're loons.

Oh, I see. When you claim to know something about them then that in and of itself makes it true. But when they claim to know something about themselves and it doesn't fit seamlessly into your own "in my head" reality, they are simply "loons".

The perfect philosophy. Like Maia's "spiritual Self" and MagsJ's "intrinsic Self" and gib's "emotional Self" over at ILP, all one need do is to think something and that makes it true. Deep down inside you "just know" it is what you believe it is.

And since no one else is you, what can they possibly know about it?

Only what happens when your own deep down inside you Self comes into conflict with another's deep down inside them Self in regard to abortion and guns and drag queens?

Well, one of three things:

1] those with most power prevail...might makes right
2] those able to convince everyone else that their own "right makes might" agenda should prevail
3] those willing to embrace moderation, negotiation and compromise in a democracy

Neuroscientists are no closer to explaining how mind is created by brain today than they were 50 years ago. They cling to that promissory materialism and ignore anything that even hints the material just might not be all there is. They deny the possibility of fire despite an ever thickening cloud of smoke.

That's my point! Only most of them are not able to fall back on "because the Deist God created us the way we are, that's why!!". As for Popper's "promissory materialism", sure, there will always be future discoveries that may well turn present scientific "facts" into fiction. But what's that got to do with pinning down your own conclusions here as in fact the optimal frame of mind. Again, other than that "in your head" you believe they are.

So they shelter in promissory materialism instead.

I addressed that above.

My frame of mind (optimal or not) has nuthin' to do with the reality men cannot turn into women, women cannot turn into men, and anyone who thinks they can is deluded.

Right. Like those who from time to time become drag queens actually do believe that they are women. Instead, as drag queens [for whatever personal reasons] they acquire a feeling about themselves that [for whatever personal reason] fulfils them. Some need to go further of course but what can you possibly grasp about what unfolds inside their heads? Instead, you just insist that they are mentally ill.

On the other hand, some might argue that those who come into places like this and argue as though only their own value judgments reflect the optimal or the only possible rational truth are the mentally ill ones. After all, given all the objectivists out there -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies -- one would have to be somewhat off their rocker to actually imagine that they and they alone are on the One True Path. Philosophically, morally, politically or otherwise.

Oh, there's a consensus, that being: matter is all there, mind is the product of brain, and never mind that we can't tell you how mind is the product of brain...we'll explain it all one day...we promise.

Okay, sure, but using the scientific method, right? And not skipping all that empirical stuff and just attributing us to a God, the God, your God. And, besides, there's still the fact that, in using the scientific method there is no definitive consensus one way or the other: free will/no free will.

Yes, like Wilder Pennfield and John Eccles and Michael Egnor and others.

So, are they all Deists, as well? After all, since you insisted above that it was a God, the God, your God that brought about the human condition as it is, don't they have to start there as well?

And, of course, those on the other end of the political spectrum never ever have their own authors that they refer us to. Only your authors count.

Do you or do you not believe that your views regarding drag queens reflects the most rational manner in which to think about them given your capacity [re God] to "follow the dictates of Reason and Nature"?

I do not.

Your belief in...God then is just a subjective, rooted existentially in dasein "leap of faith".

Nope.

Okay, then how do you explain your belief then? IC also insisted that his belief in the Christian God was not just a "leap of faith". He insisted that he knows that He does exist and resides in Heaven. Yet every time I attempt to yank some actual proof of this out of him, he quotes the Christian Bible and notes 16 youtube videos that prove it.

How about you? No Bible right? So, if it's not just an existential leap of faith what is your belief predicated on?

And, seriously, let's explore the very first time you became aware of the Deist God. What was the context? What variables had to fall into place to make it possible? And how did the Benjamin Button Syndrome not factor into it?

you recognize that given...new information and knowledge, you may well be in here concluding just the opposite of what you believe now.

Yep.

Okay, let's get this straight. There's how you think about God. There's how you think about drag queens. There's how you think about life, liberty and property.

But that's just "here and now".

You admit that given a new experience, a new relationship and access to new information and knowledge, you could, in fact, come in here and embrace the opposite of what you think you know now about these things.

But you're not a fractured and fragmented moral nihilist like me because you "just know" that through your God you possess the capacity to "follow the dictates of Reason and Nature" to the objective truth. It may be for or against abortion, guns and drag queens but it must be either one or the other?

they will all insist that their own assessment of drag queens and homosexuals is, in fact, objectively, the "real deal". The One True Path.

Citation, please.

Just go to the websites of all the "ism" folks and note for yourself how in regard to moral and political value judgments they regard themselves [and not you] as being on the One True Path.

That's like askin': how are your current views regarding fire being hot not deemed by you to be the blah, blah, blah?

Again, given my own personal opinion here, that is ridiculous. Who here does not believe that fire is hot? How is fire being hot not deemed by mere mortals to be the One Truth Path in grasping this inherent component of fire? Other than for those of us who are, say, paralyzed?

But the One True Path, common sense, rational thinking and morality regarding drag queens?

Recognizing fire is hot is not part of a subjective experience or a One Truth Path. Fire is hot. In the same way: recognizing men cannot turn into women and women cannot turn into men is not a subjective experience or a One Truth Path.

Again, only regarding those who, when they dress up as drag queens, actually do believe this makes them women. Sure, for those who think this, they are clearly a few cans short of a six-pack. But if, while in drag, it brings them closer "in their head" to how they think about their own gender, that's another think altogether.

Come on, henry, get real. In community after community after community in regard to sexuality and guns and abortions there is nothing but strife regarding how to translate "life, liberty and property" into actual rules of behavior. The drag queen's right to live his life freely vs. the right of others to live in a community where dis-eased, mentally ill people are either "cured" or locked up in mental institutions.

Even a casual review of the conversations, debates, and arguments in the public sphere shows no one is talkin' about natural rights, as theory or applied.

That's simply not true, in my view. In any number of God and No God communities the objectivists will insist that certain human behaviors are in fact natural and that others are not. And that rights -- rules of behavior -- ought to revolve around behaviors that are natural. Then those who argue that in regard to human sexuality itself, so-called "deviant behavior" is not deviant at all. It's just that some of us come into the world hard-wired genetically to think about gender in different ways.

Same with all other conflicting goods that generate strife revolving around "life, liberty and property". Who gets to say what a person has a right to in regard to them when others insist that they don't. The right own a gun, the right to live in a community where there are no guns. Then all the pro and con arguments. The right of the unborn to live or the right to force a woman to give birth. Then all the pro and con arguments. The right to be a drag queen. The right to keep mentally ill people out of a community. Then all the pro and con arguments.

Then those like you who come into places like this and argue as though anyone one doesn't share their own rendition of what is naturally right is naturally wrong.

No one in the public sphere is talkin' about natural rights, as theory or applied. It's simply not happening.

Note to others:

Please explain what his point here has to do with mine above. Instead, in my view, he simple ignores all of my points and posts things like this.

Of course, no state and no government and there is always the possibility that, in regard to "life, liberty and property", "might makes right" prevails. Or the state and the government itself embodies "right makes might".

The State (any iteration) does nuthin' to safeguard or preserve natural rights. The absence of it can literally be no worse for the individual than things are right now with it (in any iteration). But, the absence of the State would make things markedly worse for all those who rely on it...

Come on henry, even you know damn well that that if those with all the power decide to confiscate all guns from all citizens, you yourself would want a government around to check that. And as long as the local, state, and federal government are squarely behind bazookas, and guns galore, you won't be bitching much. Or if the government is squarely behind your own right makes might rendition of gun policy, that's good government.

Ever and always it comes down to agreeing with or not agreeing with how you think about something. Well, at least until a new experience, a new relationship and access to new information and knowledge changes your mind about guns. And "sure" you note that might happen.

When my kid was six, he thought it would be fine idea to jump off the roof. I didn't let him.

Right, right. And that's exactly the same thing. As though there is a raging controversy regarding parents letting kids jump off a roof. Or drive a car. Or become a mercenary.

Yep. A parent has an obligation to safeguard and preserve his child till adulthood. A child jumping off a roof; having his penis removed: no parent worthy of the title would allow such things.

Well, I myself believe that here there has to be a chronological cut-off age -- 16? 18? -- when children should be permitted to decide for themselves about these things. Like laws revolving around getting a drivers license or buying booze or purchasing cigarettes. Yeah, if a parent consents to their 11 year old son having a sex change operation then subjectively as an individual here and now I would be opposed to that. I just don't have a God or an ideology or a deontological assessment to fall back on such that I can argue that such things are necessarily irrational or immoral.

...you readily admit that he might be right and you wrong here. Given that a new experience in your life might bring you around to his way of thinking. Right? Whereas one suspects that this could never be the case with him. Or with the Nazis among us. Not with the fulminating fanatic objectivists. Drag queens are never, ever to be tolerated in their own best of all possible communities. Let alone homosexuals.

Nope.

What, now you are saying that you can't encounter a new experience, a new relationships or have access to new information that brings you over to his point of view? Which is it, henry? You either might or you can't.

As I say: there are no conversations, debates, or arguments about natural rights in the public sphere.

Note to others:

Again, a little help here.

No conversations about natural rights? There are countless such conversations regarding countless conflicts in countless communities around the globe.

And my point goes back to how we acquire value judgments subjectively given the existential trajectory of our lives. And even henry admitted above that given new experiences, relationships, information etc. he might well be in here embracing the opposite of what he believes now.

Name some. Seriously, toss out a few names of democrats or republicans or conservatives or progressives or Libertarians or etc. who recognize the other guy has the same natural, inalienable right to his life as he, the democrat or republican, or conservative or progressive or Libertarian, or etc., has to his.

But my point is that they don't argue that. Instead, they argue that those who are not "one of them" [the good guys, the smart guys] are wrong about what is natural -- rational, moral -- behavior. They don't just pay "lip-service" to their own convictions. They can even be fiercely fanatic about them.

As I say: a great many readily acknowledge sumthin' is wrong with them. They are told the problem can be corrected by altering their bodies. They may balk at the placeholder lunacy, but very few are celebratory about it, before or after (cuz they realize after that these radical mutilations of their bodies haven't corrected the problem [which, of course, isn't about the body bein' misaligned with the mind, but is about the mind bein' misaligned with the body]).

There you go speaking for them yourself. That many see being a drag queen or having an operation as the solution to what nags at them doesn't count because it's not what you think they should be thinking. And, besides, even if some don't think like you do, they are, after all, mentally ill.

Your current attitudes about them merely reflect the fact that existentially, your own life unfolded such that you came to be predisposed subjectively to embrace one set of conservative political prejudices rather than liberal political prejudices. But that given new experiences, etc., you might change your mind.

Nope.

Yep. Nope. Maybe.

From above:

you recognize that given...new information and knowledge, you may well be in here concluding just the opposite of what you believe now.

Yep

Few choose to have cancer. But nature [given free will] allows men and women to choose the gender that they feel most in sync with. And since millions and millions have chosen to become drag queens or transvestites or have sex change operations how "unnatural" can it be.

Nope.

Again, in my view, that's simply preposterous. Millions and millions of men and women already have chosen to take their own at birth biological gender in another direction, You might claim they are mentally ill lunatics for doing so, but [given free will] they still did it. While thinking it was the most mentally sane decision they have ever made.

Surgical mutilation and wearing dress does not make a man into a woman.

Again, as though I haven't already addressed this above.

Not a one of us is perfect.

And perfection given the manner in which I construe value judgments existentially as rooted in dasein or perfection as embraced by the "my way or the highway"/"one of us" objectivists?

Nope.[/b]

This, in my view, is by far the most important point of mine that you have to be adamant regarding. Once you begin to grapple seriously -- existentially -- with your own sense of self you may well begin to "crumble" as well. As "I" did when my own comforting and consoling objectivist fonts began "cracking up" all those years ago.

Thus...

A person is not just meat. There is sumthin' about him that predates experience. He isn't an empty vessel. Experience influences, it does not determine.

Right. As though my point is not aimed precisely at rebutting the objectivists contention that unless others are inclined to be meat-minds and think exactly as they do, they must be mentally ill.

From my perspective, the objectivists among us come closest to being "meat-minds". Meat minds like Ayn Rand or Satyr who insist there really is only one "natural" or "metaphysically rational" manner in which to think about drag queens...exactly as they do.

[henry quirk]

All that is necessary to make something true is that you just know that it is.

"...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth..."
(with apologues to Mr. Doyle for the truncation).

you just know that it's fundamentally not?

The matter in the fire is fundamentally the same as the matter in John's brain: electrons, protons, and neutrons.

"Let me see if I can summarize this, because it’s really rather startling. The universe is nothing but particles. All those particles follow laws of motion. They aren’t free. The brain is made up entirely of those same particles. Therefore, there is nothing in the brain that would give us freedom. These particles also don’t understand anything, they don’t make sense of anything, they don’t grasp the meaning of anything. Since the brain, again, is made up of those particles, it has no power to allow us to grasp meaning or understand anything. But we do understand. We do grasp meaning. Therefore, we are talking about qualities we possess which are not made out of energy. These qualities are entirely non-material." (a fictional version of the dead Mr. Einstein summing it up for a fictional version of the living Mr. Rappoport)

And this is true as well because you know it is.

"In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the every-day affairs of life it is more useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically…Let me see if I can make it clearer. Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically." (Mr. Holmes, of course)

in the clip she sees the taxi but the driver was "momentarily distracted" and hit her anyway

Only becuz she put herself out in the road. She didn't stop & look but, instead, spun herself carelessly into his path.

What, it's their fault for choosing to live where these things created by God can happen?

Of course not. Those events are the kind of we often call acts of God, but, really, it's just luck of the draw.

if it's his God you burn in Hell for all of eternity.

Yep.

If it's your God...?

Unlike for God and free will, I see no evidence of an afterlife.

And if it's No God? Then all of our lives are essentially meaningless and purposeless; and we all tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

Yep.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute's website First Principles 1st Web Journal declares:

If there is no God, no hell, no right and wrong, no moral responsibility, no meaning or significance beyond your pleasure, then existence is meaningless. Nothing you do matters, others do not matter, and what you do with them—and to them—does not matter. Nihilism liberates. For the Sadean egotist, then, everything is permitted. Sade incessantly rationalized the most depraved and libertine sexuality, and every crime including cannibalism and murder.

( https://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_cannibalism )

When you claim to know something about them then that in and of itself makes it true.

No. I claim nuthin'. I state fact. Men cannot turn into women; women cannot turn into men.

But when they claim to know something about themselves and it doesn't fit seamlessly into your own "in my head" reality, they are simply "loons".

No. A man who sez he is a she is wrong. If he truly believes it, he's crazy. Men cannot turn into or be women.

Only what happens when your own deep down inside you Self comes into conflict with another's deep down inside them Self in regard to abortion and guns and drag queens?

Nuthin'. There's nuthin' I can or wanna do about Mary snuffin' her kid in the womb, never owning a gun, and paradin' herself around as Marvin. Of course, Mary isn't satisfied with my indifference. She wants my approval. She'll never have it.

as drag queens [for whatever personal reasons] they acquire a feeling about themselves that [for whatever personal reason] fulfils them

It's a fetish.

So, are they all Deists, as well?

They're scientists.

See page 4 of viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38735&start=45

After all, since you insisted above that it was a God, the God, your God that brought about the human condition as it is, don't they have to start there as well?

I did not. Nope.

then how do you explain your belief then?

"Let me run over the principal steps. (I) approached the case...with an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. (I) had formed no theories. (I was) simply there to observe and to draw inferences from (my) observations." (again, with apologies to Mr. Doyle, for truncation and paraphrasing)

let's explore the very first time you became aware of the Deist God

I didn't become aware of God. I concluded He exists. As for the process: I explained in a previous conversation.

you're not a fractured and fragmented moral nihilist...because you "just know" that through...God you possess the capacity to "follow the dictates of Reason and Nature" to the objective truth.

Nope.

You admit that given...access to new information and knowledge, you could, in fact, come in here and embrace the opposite of what you think you know now about these things.

Yep.

go to the websites of all the "ism" folks and note for yourself how in regard to moral and political value judgments they regard themselves [and not you] as being on the One True Path.

I'm a regular consumer of print and electronic news & opinion. I've never come across anyone claiming their's is the One True Path.

No conversations about natural rights? There are countless such conversations regarding countless conflicts in countless communities around the globe.

Not a one. And none of them address directly: does a man, every man, any man, have a natural, inalienable right to his, and no other's, life, liberty, and property?

even henry admitted above that given new experiences, relationships, information etc. he might well be in here embracing the opposite of what he believes now.

No, I did not. I agreed given...access to new information and knowledge, (I) could, in fact, come in here and embrace the opposite of what (I) think (I) know now about these things.

you come back to me with these one sentence/one word "rebuttals"

I read the questions, the statements, the assertions: I respond accordingly. Perhaps, if my responses seem lacking, it might be time to consider rephrasing those questions. Dis-embedding from personal prejudices might be a good place to start. How did you come to believe in God? rather than...

And, seriously, let's explore the very first time you became aware of the Deist God. What was the context? What variables had to fall into place to make it possible? And how did the Benjamin Button Syndrome not factor into it?

...is a less weighted or slanted approach.

[iambiguous]

Okay, henry, you win. As with IC, I''ll shift gears from taking you and the exchange seriously to merely entertaining myself.

You know, while waiting for godot.

All that is necessary to make something true is that you just know that it is.

"...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth..."
(with apologues to Mr. Doyle for the truncation).

Right, like this changes anything.

Basically you're saying that in regard to drag queens, you have eliminated the impossible "in your head". Then what you believe remains is the truth.

Like all of these folks...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
...God or No God, won't insist it's their truth instead.

you just know that it's fundamentally not?

The matter in the fire is fundamentally the same as the matter in John's brain: electrons, protons, and neutrons.

Yeah, that's my point. Matter is matter is matter. Only you believe God, in creating the matter in John's brain, provided him with the capacity to "follow the dictates of Reason and Nature". In other words, to think exactly as you do about abortion and guns and drag queens. Surely there can't be conflicting dictates, right? Not from God Himself!!

After all, your God split the scene and left you here to pin things like that down.

"Let me see if I can summarize this, because it’s really rather startling. The universe is nothing but particles. All those particles follow laws of motion. They aren’t free. The brain is made up entirely of those same particles. Therefore, there is nothing in the brain that would give us freedom. These particles also don’t understand anything, they don’t make sense of anything, they don’t grasp the meaning of anything. Since the brain, again, is made up of those particles, it has no power to allow us to grasp meaning or understand anything. But we do understand. We do grasp meaning. Therefore, we are talking about qualities we possess which are not made out of energy. These qualities are entirely non-material." (a fictional version of the dead Mr. Einstein summing it up for a fictional version of the living Mr. Rappoport)

Huh? Why go through all of this? Just say, "because God created things the way they are down here and in following the dictates of reason and nature I happen to know exactly what that means".

Sure, that's just something you believe "in your head". But haven't we already established that this makes it true? You and God together commanding everyone to embrace "life, liberty and property" as though they were, what, Divine Commandments themselves?

Only with no Judgment Day?

How did matter evolve into human consciousness? And how, when it happened, did we acquire autonomy?

It didn't.

Sorry, I keep forgetting that your Deist God created matter. And that when He created human brain matter He gave it free will. And this is true as well because you know it is.

"In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the every-day affairs of life it is more useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically…Let me see if I can make it clearer. Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically." (Mr. Holmes, of course)

Note to others:

You tell me what on earth this has to do with me pointing out that henry's God created human brains and installed in them the capacity to follow the dictates of whatever henry happens to believe "here and now" is true about abortion and guns and drag queens.

Okay, suppose she did look both ways. After all, in the clip she sees the taxi but the driver was "momentarily distracted" and hit her anyway. And we all know how that works. It could be anything that distracts us. Something completely beyond our control. Sure, sometimes these things unfold because of us, but other times they involve a series of interactions that we are powerless to prevent.

Only becuz she put herself out in the road. She didn't stop & look but, instead, spun herself carelessly into his path.

Again spinning or not, she saw the vehicle. It was the distracted driver that wrecked her life. Now, sure, maybe it was the driver's fault that he was distracted. Or maybe it wasn't. But that doesn't make all the variables in our life that we do have little or no control over go away.

Like when the next "big one" -- earthquake, volcano, tornado, tsunami -- wipes out tens of thousands. What, it's their fault for choosing to live where these things created by God can happen? Practically anywhere on Earth.

Of course not. Those events are the kind of we often call acts of God, but, really, it's just luck of the draw.

Look, with IC's Christian God, His "mysterious ways" allow the faithful to rationalize all the terrible pain and suffering. Your God however is, what, off the hook because even though He created a planet that pummels us over and over again with His devastating "acts", it's all now up to us to figure out where to live on Earth...a place where there's the least likelihood of being wiped out by nature?

Seriously, how does this all play out in your head? How do you make sense of it given your own belief in God? Have you and IC ever run these "acts of God" by each other?

If it's your God...?

Unlike for God and free will, I see no evidence of an afterlife.

What actual evidence that God exists? Actual empirical evidence, and not merely defining or deducing Him into existence. And your evidence for free will is basically that God installed it in our brain matter. I mean, it's not like you are a neuroscientist able to pin down precisely in the brain where autonomy is created.

As for evidence of an afterlife, IC offers none either. He merely quotes from the Bible and links us to videos that, up in the spiritual clouds, argue that it exists.

And if it's No God? Then all of our lives are essentially meaningless and purposeless; and we all tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

Yep.

At least here I am willing to acknowledge that I have no way in which to demonstrate myself that there is no afterlife. Hell, in a universe this mysterious anything is possible. All I can do is to ask those who claim to believe what they do about God and an afterlife to note how they go about demonstrating to themselves that it is in fact true.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute's website First Principles 1st Web Journal declares:

If there is no God, no hell, no right and wrong, no moral responsibility, no meaning or significance beyond your pleasure, then existence is meaningless. Nothing you do matters, others do not matter, and what you do with them—and to them—does not matter. Nihilism liberates. For the Sadean egotist, then, everything is permitted. Sade incessantly rationalized the most depraved and libertine sexuality, and every crime including cannibalism and murder.

Yep.

They don't call them sociopaths for nothing.

Indeed, it is precisely this frame of mind that is used by some as an actual justification to prove that I am wrong. There must be a God, they say, because what else is there to anchor morality to? Science? Philosophy?

Only your God doesn't seem to give a shit at all about what unfolds down here. He created the wisemen like you, sure, but that's no guarantee that others will see the light. After all, what's the incentive if there is no Judgment Day? Why not make it all about "show me the money", "dog eat dog", and "me, myself and I", if it all just revolves solely around the brute facticity of "birth, school, work, death"?

...what can you possibly know regarding what they themselves are thinking, feeling and experiencing as drag queens, transvestites, transgender individuals?

Nuthin' beyond the fact that if any of these men actually believe themselves to be women: they're loons.

Oh, I see. When you claim to know something about them then that in and of itself makes it true.

No. I claim nuthin'. I state fact. Men cannot turn into women; women cannot turn into men.

But for many of them they know that in fact they are not becoming women. But while in drag it allows them to feel more comfortable, more fulfilled with how they feel about themselves "in their head". Then what you and your ilk do is simply claim that in fact this makes them mentally ill. Facts here are merely what you claim that they are.

Thus...

But when they claim to know something about themselves and it doesn't fit seamlessly into your own "in my head" reality, they are simply "loons".

No. A man who sez he is a she is wrong. If he truly believes it, he's crazy. Men cannot turn into or be women.

Yeah, I suppose if a man in drag claimed that being in drag makes him a woman, he would be off his rocker. And if in drag he walks into the ladies locker room and there are a bunch of naked women around, they'd be justified in having him arrested.

But where is your substantiated evidence that merely being in drag makes him mentally ill?

As I noted, your "it's true if I believe it is" assumptions are [to me]...

The perfect philosophy. Like Maia's "spiritual Self" and MagsJ's "intrinsic Self" and gib's "emotional Self" over at ILP, all one need do is to think something and that makes it true. Deep down inside you "just know" it is what you believe it is. And since no one else is you, what can they possibly know about it?

Until...

Only what happens when your own deep down inside you Self comes into conflict with another's deep down inside them Self in regard to abortion and guns and drag queens?

Nuthin'. There's nuthin' I can or wanna do about Mary snuffin' her kid in the womb, never owning a gun, and paradin' herself around as Marvin. Of course, Mary isn't satisfied with my indifference. She wants my approval. She'll never have it.

Of course, out in the real world where actual flesh and blood men and women have to come up with one of another set of laws to reward and punish particular behaviors relating to abortion, guns and sex, conflicts are everywhere. And you can say "Nuthin'" right up to the point where the community passes laws that go after your own assessment of life, liberty and property.

Then what, go into Randy Weaver mode when they attempt to enforce them?

Instead, "in reality" it always comes down to one or another [often complex] intertwining of this:

1] those with most power prevail...might makes right
2] those able to convince everyone else that their own "right makes might" agenda should prevail
3] those willing to embrace moderation, negotiation and compromise in a democracy

My frame of mind (optimal or not) has nuthin' to do with the reality men cannot turn into women, women cannot turn into men, and anyone who thinks they can is deluded.

Right. Like those who from time to time become drag queens actually do believe that they are women. Instead, as drag queens [for whatever personal reasons] they acquire a feeling about themselves that [for whatever personal reason] fulfils them. Some need to go further of course but what can you possibly grasp about what unfolds inside their heads? Instead, you just insist that they are mentally ill.

On the other hand, some might argue that those who come into places like this and argue as though only their own value judgments reflect the optimal or the only possible rational truth are the mentally ill ones. After all, given all the objectivists out there -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies -- one would have to be somewhat off their rocker to actually imagine that they and they alone are on the One True Path. Philosophically, morally, politically or otherwise.

It's a fetish.

Note to others:

Wow. Not much I can say to that, right?

Oh, there's a consensus, that being: matter is all there, mind is the product of brain, and never mind that we can't tell you how mind is the product of brain...we'll explain it all one day...we promise.

Okay, sure, but using the scientific method, right? And not skipping all that empirical stuff and just attributing us to a God, the God, your God. And, besides, there's still the fact that, in using the scientific method there is no definitive consensus one way or the other: free will/no free will.

Yes, like Wilder Pennfield and John Eccles and Michael Egnor and others.

So, are they all Deists, as well?

They're scientists.

Okay, then...only your scientists count.

After all, since you insisted above that it was a God, the God, your God that brought about the human condition as it is, don't they have to start there as well?

I did not. Nope.

Let's try to pin this down. In regard to human biology and to human social, political and economic interactions where does God end and mere mortals begin? If God created human brains equipped to follow the dictates of Reason and Nature, is there or is there not a One True Path here or are mere mortals allowed to come up with their own ofttimes conflicting understanding of "life, liberty and the pursuit of property?"

If the latter, how can it not come down to might makes right, right makes might or democracy and the rule of law? And, when it's the latter here, down through the ages and across the globe, different people come to all manner of different conclusions regarding right and wrong, good and bad behaviors. Including, I suspect, those who call themselves Deists.

Your belief in...God then is just a subjective, rooted existentially in dasein "leap of faith".

Nope.

Okay, then how do you explain your belief then? IC also insisted that his belief in the Christian God was not just a "leap of faith". He insisted that he knows that He does exist and resides in Heaven. Yet every time I attempt to yank some actual proof of this out of him, he quotes the Christian Bible and notes 16 youtube videos that prove it.

How about you? No Bible right? So, if it's not just an existential leap of faith what is your belief predicated on?

I didn't become aware of God. I concluded He exists. As for the process: I explained in a previous conversation.

Right, right. You "reasoned" your way "naturally" to His existence. An intellectual/philosophical process by and large.

"Let me run over the principal steps. (I) approached the case...with an absolutely blank mind, which is always an advantage. (I) had formed no theories. (I was) simply there to observe and to draw inferences from (my) observations." (again, with apologies to Mr. Doyle, for truncation and paraphrasing)

Come on, none of us have a "blank mind" here. Instead, we are born and raised in a particular historical and cultural context, out in a particular world and based on our indoctrination as children and on our own uniquely existential trajectory of personal experiences [along with the Benjamin Button Syndrome] we come to this or that God on this or that religious path.

...you recognize that given...new information and knowledge, you may well be in here concluding just the opposite of what you believe now.

Yep.

Okay, let's get this straight. There's how you think about God. There's how you think about drag queens. There's how you think about life, liberty and property.

But that's just "here and now".

You admit that given a new experience, a new relationship and access to new information and knowledge, you could, in fact, come in here and embrace the opposite of what you think you know now about these things.

But you're not a fractured and fragmented moral nihilist like me because you "just know" that through your God you possess the capacity to "follow the dictates of Reason and Nature" to the objective truth. It may be for or against abortion, guns and drag queens but it must be either one or the other?

Nope.

Yep.

Note to others:

Wow. Once again, there's not much I can say here to refute that.

You do admit that...

"given access to new information and knowledge, you could, in fact, come in here and embrace the opposite of what you think you know now about these things."

But, uh, not really?

Please note all of the instances from your past in which this unfolded. You believed one thing, came upon new information and knowledge, and changed your mind.

Me? That happened over and over and over again. And regarding some truly important things.

Also, at least we are on the same page here in pointing out to those objectivists like Satyr that it could happen to them too. We just never really know what new experiences or friendships or philosophy posts here might completely upend our current convictions. I've just come to the conclusion that in a No God world it is not unreasonable to be "fractured and fragmented" regarding moral and political prejudices rooted existentially in dasein. But even here I recognize that someday I might change my mind about that too.

go to the websites of all the "ism" folks and note for yourself how in regard to moral and political value judgments they regard themselves [and not you] as being on the One True Path.

I'm a regular consumer of print and electronic news & opinion. I've never come across anyone claiming their's is the One True Path.

Well, they might not actually call it that, of course. But they wouldn't subscribe to an Ism if they didn't believe that some behaviors are clearly more rational than others. The Ayn Randroids even call themselves Objectivists.

What, now you are saying that you can't encounter a new experience, a new relationships or have access to new information that brings you over to his point of view? Which is it, henry? You either might or you can't.

As I say: there are no conversations, debates, or arguments about natural rights in the public sphere.

Note to others:

Again, a little help here.

No conversations about natural rights? There are countless such conversations regarding countless conflicts in countless communities around the globe.

And my point goes back to how we acquire value judgments subjectively given the existential trajectory of our lives.

Not a one. And none of them address directly: does a man, every man, any man, have a natural, inalienable right to his, and no other's, life, liberty, and property?

We'll just have to agree to disagree here then. In my view, you can go to any number of discussion forums that revolve around social, political and economic issues and find plenty of people who will insist that they are directly addressing such things as life, liberty and property.

Not only that, but most of them will directly address the issue of whether women should have access to life, liberty and property in the same manner that men do.

even henry admitted above that given new experiences, relationships, information etc. he might well be in here embracing the opposite of what he believes now.

No, I did not. I agreed given...access to new information and knowledge, (I) could, in fact, come in here and embrace the opposite of what (I) think (I) know now about these things.

Huh? How on earth do we gain access to new information and knowledge if not through new experiences and new relationships. We go to the library and find a book that changes our mind about things. We begin a new friendship with someone who changes our mind about things. We walk around a corner and encounter a situation that we have never experienced before. It changes us dramatically.

[henry quirk]

Right, like this changes anything.

It does.

Basically you're saying that in regard to drag queens, you have eliminated the impossible "in your head". Then what you believe remains is the truth.

Nope.

you believe God, in creating the matter in John's brain, provided him with the capacity to "follow the dictates of Reason and Nature

Nope.

Why go through all of this?

To reinforce my point.

haven't we already established that this makes it true?

Nope.

You tell me what on earth this has to do with me pointing out that henry's God created human brains and installed in them the capacity to follow the dictates of whatever henry happens to believe "here and now" is true about abortion and guns and drag queens.

As refutation: everything.

she saw the vehicle

While standing in the road.

it's all now up to us to figure out where to live on Earth...a place where there's the least likelihood of being wiped out by nature?

If that's someone's criteria, yes. It's not mine (if it were I wouldn't live in South Louisiana).

How do you make sense of it given your own belief in God?

I explained that in a previous conversation.

What(,) actual evidence that God exists?

Yep.

Actual empirical evidence

Yep.

deducing

Ain't nuthin' wrong with deduction.

And your evidence for free will is basically that God installed it in our brain matter.

Nope.

They don't call them sociopaths for nothing.

It applies to sociopaths, sure, but it describes atheism taken to its concluision.

what's the incentive if there is no Judgment Day?

Self-respect.

But for many of them they know that in fact they are not becoming women. But while in drag it allows them to feel more comfortable, more fulfilled with how they feel about themselves "in their head".

It's a fetish.

But where is your substantiated evidence that merely being in drag makes him mentally ill?

Google fetish.

conflicts are everywhere

Of course. There's always gonna be folks who willfully violate the lives, liberties, and properties of other folks.

In regard to human biology and to human social, political and economic interactions where does God end and mere mortals begin?

We're free wills, not parasites.

If God created human brains equipped to follow the dictates of Reason and Nature, is there or is there not a One True Path here or are mere mortals allowed to come up with their own ofttimes conflicting understanding of "life, liberty and the pursuit of property?"

There is no One True Path.

Please note all of the instances from your past in which this unfolded

I have, in a previous conversation, noted one: like a lead balloon, it was.

Me?

I know and I don't care.

they might not actually call it that

They don't talk about natural rights at all. Not directly, not indirectly, not thru allusion.

There are countless such conversations regarding countless conflicts in countless communities around the globe.

Yep. And -- again -- in all those conversations the individual's right to his, and no other's, life, liberty, and property are not included in any way, in any form, on any level. What is talked about: rationalizations for infringing on and further normalizing the infringement on an individual's life, liberty, and property.

you can go to any number of discussion forums that revolve around social, political and economic issues and find plenty of people who will insist that they are directly addressing such things as life, liberty and property.

Citation, please.

We walk around a corner and encounter a situation that we have never experienced before. It changes us dramatically.

In my 60 years I've had plenty of those: the car accident that stole my legs for a year; the year I lived alone in the desert; life with my wife; her death; my kid throughout his 16 years; the first time I was published; the deaths of close friends; finding three robbers in the house in the middle of the night; realizing my Ma has far more years behind her than in front of her; and on and on. I wasn't changed: I grew, became more complex. The mistake some frail folks make is thinkin' becuz their roots aren't deep, no one else's can be.

To paraphrase: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in us, But in you.

[henry quirk]

I wanna take a small break from the back & forth and focus on this...

Yeah, I suppose if a man in drag claimed that being in drag makes him a woman, he would be off his rocker. And if in drag he walks into the ladies locker room and there are a bunch of naked women around, they'd be justified in having him arrested.

Why should he be arrested?

[Walker]

Anyone who gets arrested, for anything, gets arrested for Inappropriateness.