Heinlein Reader’s Discussion Group
Saturday 12-09-2000. 5.00 P.M. EST
Take Back Your Government & Other Political Writings
Here Begins The Discussion Log
You have just entered room “Heinlein Readers Group chat.”
AGplusone: :::::waving, not trusting self to speak, yet::::::
DavidWrightSr: Hi David.
AGplusone: Afternoon, David … sorry it isn’t.
DavidWrightSr: I presume you are referring to the latest twist in the election process.
AGplusone: I’m actually thinking about Judge McCampbell, fraternity brother of Johann Sebastian Bach, the politician, right now. You really don’t want to know what I’m really thinking.
DavidWrightSr: Ok. I won’t go there .
AGplusone: Excellent decision. I admire your prudence.
AGplusone: I’m so pissed I can’t spell straight. I’m going out to NYTimes.com and see if I can download that accursed decision.
DavidWrightSr: I’ll just sit here and continue to listen to ‘Radio Svoboda’ in Russian.
AGplusone: Sounds like a more useful task than that which I’m engaged in
DavidWrightSr: I’m engaged in an effort to get my Russian back up to speed. It’s been 38 years and I have a rough time with it. Getting a clear radio programs really helps. Short wave was always way too poor to get anything out of it.
AGplusone: I wish I had a talent with foreign languages. I had the toughest time imaginable learning Rhade
DavidWrightSr: Rhade ?
AGplusone: I just cannot think in another language. What some abos speak who we mislead and left hanging out to dry once upon a time
DavidWrightSr: Where was that?
AGplusone: I actually don’t know what their language is called. That’s what they are called.
AGplusone: The squishy place.
DavidWrightSr: Vietnam?
AGplusone: Sorta
DavidWrightSr: I can think and speak. What I have trouble with is hearing and understanding.
AGplusone: Today I have that problem too
AGplusone: Back then I could hear reasonably well.
DavidWrightSr: Well, I was referring to Russian, but I guess it’s true in English also. .
DavidWrightSr: They are speaking so darn fast ! I need something to record and slow it down.
AGplusone: Sorry to hear that you’re so far from Atlanta. Chris, from his posts, seems like an intelligent sort.
DavidWrightSr: Yeah, I wish we could get together.
AGplusone: nytimes finally loaded
AGplusone: brb
DavidWrightSr: waiting is….
AGplusone: Yeah, they don’t have the text of the decision yet.
AGplusone: Ruth probably went through the roof. I’m looking forward to reading her dissent.
DavidWrightSr: Ginsberg?
AGplusone: Yeah
AGplusone: Renquist can forget about any decision stronger than 5-4 from now on until hell freezes over.
FraSprea has entered the room.
FraSprea: Hello
AGplusone: Hi, Francesco. Welcome.
DavidWrightSr: Greetings Francesca
AGplusone: “o” .
FraSprea: thank you (FrancescO please… FrancescA = Frances .
AGplusone: My mommie called herself Francesca
markjmills has entered the room.
DavidWrightSr: Sorry.
AGplusone: Hi, Mark. Welcome. Don’t be Dave
markjmills: Hi all! I’ve missed you guys.
DavidWrightSr: Welcome back.
KultsiKN has entered the room.
KultsiKN: Hi all!
DavidWrightSr: Hi
FraSprea: reminds me of the beginning of “A Bathroom on her own”.. same name
FraSprea: hello!
stephenveiss has entered the room.
AGplusone: We missed you too. Apropro of nothin’ I’m really looking forward to reading Ruth (but we better not get into that one)
stephenveiss: hang on .. lemme switch AIM clients .. and I’ll be back . ..
stephenveiss has left the room.
AGplusone: So how hast thou (all of you) been doing otherwise?
stephenveiss has entered the room.
AGplusone: HI, Stephen. Mum joining us too today?
KultsiKN: Busy making jewelry for Xmas presents…
stephenveiss: ya .. just changed clients..
AGplusone: What kind of jewelry do you make K?
KultsiKN: Earrings, pendants, chokers…
SAcademy has entered the room.
KultsiKN: I grind the stones meself.
AGplusone: That’s a wonderful thing to be able to do. Make things personally acceptible as gifts.
AGplusone: Hi, Ginny. Welcome.
stephenveiss: hiya
FraSprea: hello
DavidWrightSr: Hi
SAcademy: Thank you. Good evening.
AGplusone: I hesitate to do this: but could we talk about judges in Heinlein. They are, after all, some of them, ‘politicians,’ but I don’t want to get into any Republican vs. Democrat wars.
KultsiKN: OK with me
AGplusone: or “ex-politicians”
AGplusone: The rest?
SAcademy: Surely, you don’t mean like Fl’s Supreme Court???
DavidWrightSr: What did you have in mind? About judges, I mean.
AGplusone: I don’t want to tread on political beliefs.
FraSprea: good for me. I remember the one from ‘The Star Beast”
AGplusone: I’m thinking about Judge McCampbell in I Will Fear No Evil.
SAcademy: Those decisions, some of them–were about as political as anything I’ve ever seen.
AGplusone: I agree … Ginny, but I’d like to keep it clean, abstract or academic … as much as possible under the circumstanes
DavidWrightSr: Agreeable with me.
AGplusone: circumstances
SAcademy: Okay.
DavidWrightSr: ‘circumstanes’ = ‘Round stones” Old English .
AGplusone: Mark? Stephen?
stephenveiss: I havent read star beast .. or IWFNE recently, so, I’m staying quiet .
markjmills: As a hugely political animal I’ll try to reign in my natural ummm,, enthusiasm. .
AGplusone: Okay. I suspect we all may be hugely political. I’ll try to temper myself
markjmills: But as a lawyer….!
KultsiKN: I’m not
KultsiKN: Political, I mean
AGplusone: I can think about three judges who stand out in Heinlein stories. The one in Life-Line, the one in Jerry Was A Man, and Judge McCampbell in IWFNE
markjmills: How about Sergei, acting as a judge in “Star Beast?”
DavidWrightSr: I remember Judge Warburton in ‘Rolling Stones’
FraSprea: right.. the one in “The Star Beast” doesn’t really stand out at all
AGplusone: Okay, them too. Sergei as an ALJ was good. Is there anything that distinguishes any one of them from the others.
DavidWrightSr: Not the original judge, but Sergei Greenberg did stand out to me.
FraSprea: I was thinking about the country judge at the begininng of course, not Sergei
AGplusone: “ALJ” is an Administrative Law Judge, sort of a different animal to Mark and me than a ‘real’ judge.
DavidWrightSr: I think that his ‘cut to the quick’ and informal manner impressed me.
AGplusone: It did me too … of course, I worked for an administrative agency for a time, and served as a Hearing Officer (sort of an ALJ without the ‘status’) and admired him.
AGplusone: Let’s talk about Sergei and what he did and why he is different that ‘real’ judges.
AGplusone: What about the ‘cut to the quick’ Mark?
DavidWrightSr: We’re still officially on the TBYG and other political aspects of Heinlein aren’t we?
AGplusone: What’s important about that …
AGplusone: yes, Dave, but in the sense that we have three sorts of politicians (one of which is the judiciary, at least arguably)
AGplusone: E.g., “the Supreme Court watches elections returns” as they say.
markjmills: I think that what distinguished so many of RAH’s judges — formal and informal — was their humanistic and ‘common sense’ approach to solving unusual, even unique, cases (and yes, sense is NEVER common!)…including political ones.
AGplusone: What is significant about ‘cutting to the quick’? Anyone?
AGplusone: Okay … that’s one point.
AGplusone: A major one
stephenveiss: ack .. be back in a bit ..
BPRAL22169 has entered the room.
AGplusone: Hi, Bill. Talking about judges in RAH as “politicians” without going into Republican vs. Democrats …
KultsiKN: Actually, the expression ‘cut to the quick’ throws me…
DavidWrightSr: ‘cut to the quick’. Don’t waste time beating around the bush. Lets get it done usw.
KultsiKN: Got it.
AGplusone: The quick is the haft
DavidWrightSr: usw= Und so weiter, (and so on)
BPRAL22169: I don’t think that’s the idiom.
KultsiKN: Verstanden
Dehede011 has entered the room.
AGplusone: Maybe. The notion of not being bound by rules is what applies to Greenberg in The Star Beast
DavidWrightSr: I thought ‘quick’ referred to sensitive parts of the finger or something?
Dehede011: Howdy folks.
AGplusone: He does what he thinks correct ot solve the rules
BPRAL22169: Cut to the quick means actually hurt, not merely paring (as a fingernail) but cutting into the quick of the nail — the place where it grows.
BPRAL22169: The idiom you want is probably “cut to the chase.”
DavidWrightSr: Hi Ron. Welcome
AGplusone: Okay, that’s probably correct. Hi, Ron. Talking about judges as politicians in RAH
AGplusone: (without going to war with each other over the latest)
BPRAL22169: I’ve got a couple of (I hope) quick interjections.
DavidWrightSr: I stand corrected, but I think there might be an application of ‘to the quick’ to get things done .
Dehede011: No war from me.
AGplusone: Interject …
BPRAL22169: First, I noticed in the message posts you have Heinlein running in 1938 against Yorty; that’s wrong — he ran against Charlie Lyons.
Dehede011: I am familiar with to the quick as in “that comment hurt to the quick.”
BPRAL22169: Yorty was in the same election, but for some more northern Assembly district, I disremember which.
BPRAL22169: I think Pournelle misinterpreted Heinlein’s remark to that effect.
AGplusone: That’s good. Thanks for the correction.
BPRAL22169: Also, in TBYG Pournelle says Heinlein was a “moderate” Democrat, and this is not correct; he was a Sinclair Democrat, which would be on the liberal wing of the party — the far liberal wing.
Dehede011: Did the LA times carry anything about the Heinlein/Lyons race; anyone know?
BPRAL22169: I have no idea where Pournelle got that — he made it up, I think.
BPRAL22169: No. The race ended at the primary — Lyons cross-filed and ran against Heinlein in the Democratic primary — and got more votes from Democrats than Heinlein did.
AGplusone: I’d have to go down to their archives or the main LA Public Library to see, Ron. There were, however, maybe seven or eight dailies back then.
BPRAL22169: Yes — plus the heavily political weeklies, such as The United Progressive News, for which both Tony Boucher and Cleve Cartmill were writing at the time.
KultsiKN has left the room.
Dehede011: I asked about the only one I remember from bootcamp – late 52
AGplusone: Probably the Hollywood Citizen News might be a place to look.
KultsiKN has entered the room.
AGplusone: WB, K
BPRAL22169: Good thought.
DavidWrightSr: David. What were you thinking about in reference to Judge Mc? Did you have anything special in mind?
KultsiKN: Thanx
Dehede011: Welcome k
AGplusone: One thing about McCambell stands out. Wanna guess?
BPRAL22169: One more thing: when (if) ReillocNL shows up, I will leave the room — and probably not come back.
AGplusone: Your choice Bill.
Dehede011: Campbell is misspelled?
BPRAL22169: Yes, it is.
BPRAL22169: You may restrain him from piddling in this room, but his last set of exchanges with Jane Davitt were absolutely vile.
AGplusone: So long as people in this room behave in this room I don’t enforce any prohibition.
DavidWrightSr: Actually, he was relative nice last Thursday, but I was very upset about what he said to Jane.
DavidWrightSr: in the afh posts, that is.
BPRAL22169: I view it as my social responsibility not to endorse that kind of behavior by associating at all with that person.
AGplusone: And I happen to think too many people have been too touchy on AFH lately
AGplusone: As I said, your choice.
KultsiKN: A real Heinleinian…
KultsiKN: Bill, that is.
BPRAL22169: One can hope.
DavidWrightSr: I was ready to leave myself, but I waited to see what he would do.
FraSprea: I plonked him as soon I saw what he’d written to Jane… (on afh)
DavidWrightSr: There is an ‘ignore’ option with AIM, I have never used it, but I would assume that it simply ignores whoever is targeted.
AGplusone: Okay. Next subject please
AGplusone: Exactly, David
AGplusone: Any further interjections?
BPRAL22169: Ok — I just wanted you to know. Please continue to send me notices of the posting of the logs — I copy them for the archives in Santa Cruz.
DavidWrightSr: I don’t have any idea about McCampbell. ?
DavidWrightSr: Will do Bill.
BPRAL22169: Thank you
AGplusone: I think the distinguishing thing about McCampbell affected the future of the litigant before him for reasons which impeach that decision and which are in common with almost all the institutions in IWFNE
AGplusone: Unlike all the other ‘judges’ we see in RAH
DavidWrightSr: I have no idea what you mean.
AGplusone: Do you recall the business about the fraternity handshake?
BPRAL22169: Even the Galactic Tribunal in HSS-WT?
DavidWrightSr: Yes.
AGplusone: Yes, Bill.
AGplusone: Did you detect a change in attitude of the judicial officer toward Joan-Eunice from that point forward?
Dehede011 has left the room.
stephenveiss has left the room.
DavidWrightSr: All I recall is that he seemed to accept Joan Eunice to be in fact Johann
AGplusone: Recently, a trial court judge in Florida recused himself from further participation in a case. In my view, he did the right thing.
DavidWrightSr: But, I ‘m not sure that was the only thing.
KultsiKN: For what reason?
AGplusone: He did. But what he did raised an ambiguity about his motives thereafter. Do you recall how he and Alex Train started thereafter to help Jake Soloman?
BPRAL22169: That kind of thing might not be so obvious to a layman.
AGplusone: Is that the role of a judicial officer … a proper role?
AGplusone: And can you think of any other judicial character in RAH who does anything like that?
DavidWrightSr: I would assume not from what little I know.
BPRAL22169: Manny in TMIAHM
BPRAL22169: I mean — helping one side.
BPRAL22169: Manny didn’t play obvious favorites like that.
AGplusone: Now, RAH cloaked that act with the fact we think Johann should win. How Manny, Bill? But not judicially.
AGplusone: He helped Stu and the two kids socially
BPRAL22169: A judge may properly “help” a pro per.
DavidWrightSr: ‘Judges’ in TMIAH are subject to the kinds of constraints that our judges are today, I wouldn’t think.
BPRAL22169: In fact, I think he has a duty to do so.
AGplusone: His decision was rendered and there was no appeal. In McCampbell’s case, the decision was going on appeal, and everyone knew it.
Major oz has entered the room.
DavidWrightSr: Hi Oz.
BPRAL22169: It’s true there are no adverse consequences to letting his social connections influence his ruling.
Major oz: good afternoon, all
AGplusone: The society in IWFNE on Earth is entirely corrupt, I think, which is why Eunice has to get off Earth at the end, and McCampbell is just as corrupt as the rest.
BPRAL22169: City versus frontier?
AGplusone: I think so … altho IWFNE is a particularly citified society, to the extreme and to the worst.
BPRAL22169: Friday has the same sort of dynamic going.
KultsiKN has left the room.
DenvToday has entered the room.
BPRAL22169: I just got an error message. I’m going to cycle out and back in.
BPRAL22169 has left the room.
DavidWrightSr: Not my favorite by any means. Much too dark for me.
DavidWrightSr: Hi Denv
KultsiKN has entered the room.
DenvToday: Greetings all.
AGplusone: HI, Denv … we’re talking about judges in RAH as politicians with a promise by everyone we will not go into Republicans vs. Democrats.
DenvToday: I would never go into Repulicrats. lol
AGplusone: Talking about McCampbell in IWFNE in particular, contrasting him (or at least I am) with the others on the basis of bias.
Major oz: ….kings X….
AGplusone: Okay. Time out, Oz. Shoot.
DavidWrightSr: Check your ‘rage’ or ‘glee’ at the door, please .
Major oz: No…..just stating I didn’t agree to that
AGplusone: . Thank you, sir.
Major oz: I’m a Whig, anyhow
AGplusone: Back to my assessment of McCampbell. Does anyone wish to disagree, or comment …
DavidWrightSr: When it comes down to it, most of RAH’s comments about lawyers were less than complimentary, or so it seems to me.
AGplusone: [McCampbell went over to the side of Johann after he rendered his decision. Helped Jake. So too did Alex Train who had represented the claiment. All were corrupt. Conflicts, and bias, Denv.]
markjmills: I think most readers accept McCampbell’s rulings because we “know” he’s correct — but at the heart of the judicial system is the entire question of how do we evaluate the evidence to determine with some degree of finality who’s right or wrong…and without that meta-knowledge provided by the all-seeing author.
AGplusone: Okay …
Major oz: but did they meet the honesty test…..stay bought?
Major oz: I say that not in complete humor
AGplusone: The question becomes in my mind: after he ascertained that Joan was Johann by the fraternity handshake, how much of McCampbell’s decision was end-oriented.
DavidWrightSr: Then there was the ‘really corrupt’ judge in Coventry.
AGplusone: Which one, Dave?
DavidWrightSr: Was the decision to actually determine Johann’s identity or was there another aspect?
AGplusone: There are two … one the psychometrician who sentences David to Coventry, and one who enforces the tax impound.
DavidWrightSr: I meant the one actually in Coventry, the place.
AGplusone: It was to determine another aspect really.
Major oz: NOOOOOO
Major oz: the one in Coventry was not corrupt
DavidWrightSr: Ok, if it were just identity, that would have been different, I think.
Major oz: He enforced agreed-to social norms.
BPRAL22169 has entered the room.
DavidWrightSr: Didn’t he get part of the spoils?
AGplusone: He did, Oz. Like drug-confiscation statutes.
Major oz: again, part of the social norms
DavidWrightSr: Actually, I see your point.
DavidWrightSr: From our point of view, he is corrupt, but not necessarily from his pov.
Major oz: We all gets the gummint we deserves…..
BPRAL22169: Well, we all get the gummint we make.
AGplusone: One system was the real life one we have … within Coventry, t’other was one judged by the psychometricians … operating under their ‘science’ …
Major oz: as I said…..
DenvToday: The one thing we are learning from the present Election Follies is that we are not necessarily a nation of laws. We’re a nation of men. The law is something to be gotten around, not enforced.
Major oz: I prefer the one in Coventry
Major oz: At least it was founded on visible principles
BPRAL22169: I’m always tickled by the thought that the “hell” in Coventry is our world.
Major oz: The psychobabblers were a priesthood to themselves
AGplusone: I think you’re right, Oz. Who knows what the psychometricians establish with their
ainwashing?
Major oz: yo
BPRAL22169: I thought they decided not to do that.
BPRAL22169: “Free men are not conditioned.”
AGplusone: Getting back to lawyers in general, David: I think Heinlein protrayed as many decent ones as indecent ones.
ddavitt has entered the room.
ddavitt: hello all
FraSprea: hello
KultsiKN: Hello, Jane!
Major oz: What we see as conditioning was just common sense to those doing the conditioning — ask any “true believer”
ddavitt: What book are we on/
DenvToday: Jubal Harshaw was a lawyer and a kind of judge, wasn’t he?
AGplusone: Hi, Jane. Welcome. We’re talking about judges as ‘politicians’ in Heinlein with the caveat that we won’t go into recent events other than academically. (I.e., no Bush vs. Gore wars)
markjmills: Agreed…as in the one in The Door Into Summer, or Garsh in Citizen of the Galaxy, or Harshaw…
Major oz: Hi, Jane
markjmills: Hi Jane.
ddavitt: easy promise for me to make!
ddavitt: How are they politicians?
Major oz: by being non-impartial
Major oz:
AGplusone: Fran, Kultsi … tell us a little about the judiciary in Finland or Italy … how does it differ … ?
Phebe314 has entered the room.
AGplusone: If at all.
AGplusone: Hi, Phebe.
BPRAL22169: even impartiality, though, is a matter of the customs of the society — i.e., of politics.
ddavitt: i don’t see that as a prereqquisite of politicians tho
ddavitt: hi phebe
BPRAL22169: What constitutes “equity,” for example?
FraSprea: well, I don’t know if it differs not knowing exactly how it works there
BPRAL22169: And “common law” is a matter of customary practice over centuries.
Major oz: Thats why, Bill, they are politicians
Phebe314: Hi, Jane, et al.
AGplusone: No … point however is “The Supreme Court watches the election returns” so they say.
BPRAL22169: Exactly — I was agreeing with you.
KultsiKN: The jobs as judges are partisan nominations in the U.S, right?
Major oz: hokay
AGplusone: And of course, all of them are appointed by politicians.
Major oz: At the Supreme Court level, yes K
ddavitt: most of the heinlein lawyers are ‘wild cards’, rebels, seems to me
BPRAL22169: Kultsi, some are appointed; some are elected, depending on the area.
Major oz: In some jurisdictions, some are elected
AGplusone: Originally. Some in some states run for office K. Some are in office for life without needing to run.
ddavitt: Like martha’s shyster
DenvToday: Didn’t RAH think the only workable government for free men was a benevolent dictatorhsip, tempered by the ocassional assassination? I’m thinking of Ira in Time Enough for Love.
Major oz: We are the United States, not the United People
Major oz: Each state has its way of getting judges
markjmills: Judges can be no more impartial than the law — and we in the States do not have a justice system that seeks truth above all, because we are wedded to the adversarial system, i.e., hired gladiators who battle for their clients by fair or foul means.
AGplusone: Ira thought that, Denv. What Heinlein thought is subject to debate.
KultsiKN: In our system, once a judge gets nominated, it’s for life, unless he/she wants to quit.
AGplusone: Do your judges investigate the facts themselves, ex parte, as we call it?
AGplusone: As the judges in France do, for example?
FraSprea: Heinlein wrote that in a dictatorship if something was wrong no one could say so, and so democracy was better, at least in that… (I think to remember)
ddavitt: is judge judy a real judge? Or a TV one?
Major oz: retired real one
BPRAL22169: We have great diversity of practices in the U.S. because the place is so spread out.
Major oz: ….just used for special effects on TV
ddavitt: We don’t have judges like that in UK I don’t think!
Phebe314: I thought of something about the rational anarchist with respect to the counters in Oscaloosa County. They were working together, and the Paz idea only works for individual actions, like shooting a burglar in the bedroom and burying him in the orchard. If one of the counters was perfectly sure s/he ought to go on, that wouldn’t have been possible in any coordinated action —– s/he would have been stopped.
Major oz: The principles agree to abide by what she says
Major oz: Like who, Jane? Judge Judy?
AGplusone: Whatever she says … by contract, what we call an arbitrator.
ddavitt: Yes…ours are more staid .
Major oz: She is ENTERTAINMENT
DenvToday: ddavitt, my vast experience with UK judges (mostly from watching old episodes of Rumpole of the Bailey) makes me think they have far more lattitude than U.S. judges. They can comment and give their opinions during the trial.
BPRAL22169: Reminds me of a minor point — Heinlein had to make up a name for Prof: there is no position called “rational” anarchist; for some reason he didn’t want to call him an individualist anarchist, which is what his positions seem to amount to.
ddavitt: I’m not sure how they get to be judges actually; ashamed to admit it
BPRAL22169: Crown appointments, I believe.
Major oz: Appointed by crown
Major oz: sorry
ddavitt: but in practise, who does it?
AGplusone: The name, I think, was argumentative, by de la Paz. Rationale, not rational.
BPRAL22169: I believe the theory is every judge is a direct representative of the crown, administering high and low justice.
ddavitt: Prob local council
FraSprea: here they’re elected by other judges.. at least some of them.
Major oz: ….but through a real old boy network
Phebe314: Yes, Heinlein’s political philosophy basically rely on people being along: consider Farnham at the end, holding customers off with a shotgun.
AGplusone: Except the Chancellors, originally before merger of Church and state.
Major oz: Interesting, David; I never noticed that. Was that the spelling?
Phebe314: Whoops, I meant being ALONE, loners.
BPRAL22169: On the contrary, all Heinlein’s heroes are deeply embedded in communities of their choice; some are smaller than others.
BPRAL22169: Communities, I mean.
AGplusone: “chancellors” oz?
Phebe314: The Three-person cell as a community? Well, Man did have a family.
Major oz: no……rationale
AGplusone: Yes. “Rationale” is a reason, not necessarily a fact, an argument.
Major oz: It is perversily ironic of it were rationaille
Phebe314: Still, the three-person cell is nearly alone: the reproducing male, the beautiful woman, and the mentor, classical Heinlein triad.
Major oz: “if”
BPRAL22169: It’s a hermetic figure — the man-woman is the Platonic diad of one soul split in two, with the wisdom figure representing “enlightenment” — the cosmic fire.
Phebe314: Nice.
Major oz: father, son, holy ghost
Phebe314: Yes, very good!
BPRAL22169: Omits the female figure.
Phebe314: Three in one, one in three: we keep coming back to stark individualism.
BPRAL22169: This is what Panshin is trying to get to with his “three stage Heinlein individual” — only, he leaves the female out also.
AGplusone: How bout Donald, Daisy and Goofy?
Phebe314: Or Huey, Louie, and Dewey.
AGplusone: Exactly.
Major oz: holy spirit can be the female
Phebe314: Yes, that was my first thought.
Phebe314: The dove!
Major oz: IIRC, some sects thought of it that way (in spite of the conception of Christ)
BPRAL22169: I think Judaism rejected the female princple when they threw Hastur out of the Temple.
markjmills: Whoops, gotta go — the Boss says we’ve got to go to dinner NOW! See y’all in 2 weeks — unless there’s a holiday respite? If so, happy holidays — Channukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and everything else — to all in advance.
AGplusone: Propose we take our first hour break … ?
Phebe314: Bye!
DenvToday: Take care mark.
BPRAL22169: Which is why Maryolatry is the #1 heresy of Catholicism, worldwide, at the moment.
AGplusone: See you Mark, thanks for coming.
FraSprea: bye!
markjmills: .
markjmills has left the room.
Major oz: Oh, really, Bill……I haven’t been keeping up.
AGplusone: No objections to break?
Phebe314: Is it considered a real heresy, or just a sort of error?
Phebe314:
eak? I thought it was 6 to 8?
AGplusone: Okay, Oz, you’ve got conn. Back at 20 past the hour.
BPRAL22169: I don’t know whether it’s been formally defined as heretical — the moment the church does that, they will lose 3/4 of the world to schism.
AGplusone: 6 to 9. We break ten in every hour
Phebe314: Gleek.
Major oz: I will be more responsible this time.
BPRAL22169: I always thought there was something “therapeutic” about this group — we’ve got our own 50 minute hour going.
AGplusone: Yes, please don’t take off your clothing this time. .
AGplusone: afk …. have fun and play nice
BPRAL22169: what does AFK stand for?
DenvToday: away from keyboard
DavidWrightSr: Away from keyboard
BPRAL22169: ah.
Major oz: I’m stirring my home made chicken stew as we communicate.
Major oz: mmmmmm
DenvToday: In my case it means Always Feeds on Knishes
BPRAL22169: Knishes good!
DenvToday: Truer words were never spoken!
KultsiKN: ??
ddavitt: What’s a knish?
DenvToday: It’s a deep-fried dough case with meat stuffed inside.
BPRAL22169: a filling wrapped into a pastry packet and baked or fried.
BPRAL22169: Kind of like a banger, but not really.
DenvToday: Guaranteed to make you suffer a heart attack before the age of 50.
ddavitt: A banger is a sausage!
BPRAL22169: Or a pierogy or a piroshky
BPRAL22169: That’s a matter of opinion. When you put that much flour and bread into it . . .
KultsiKN: Got it.
ddavitt: I know perogies but they are boiled
BPRAL22169: But you’re right, bangers are more like kishka.
Major oz: Yes, Jane; I learned that from All Creatures…..
ddavitt: We had a great sausauge shop in UK; homemade from 100%meat;
BPRAL22169: That must have been a novelty.
Major oz: every culture has its own recipie for perogies…..first I found them was in Latvia
ddavitt: lots of flavours, venison and brandy
BPRAL22169: That sounds good.
ddavitt: or turkey and brie
ddavitt: stilton and celery for the veggies..can you tell i’m waiting for supper ans I’m hungry? .
KultsiKN: F! Cut it! I haven’t eaten anything today…
ddavitt: Why not?
BPRAL22169: Stilton and celery sausage? Hmmm.
ddavitt: Don’t know what the base was for that one…
ddavitt: But they were proper sossies
BPRAL22169: Polluting stilton with anything is a crime.
ddavitt: I agree, don’t want to know what’s in most of them
BPRAL22169: (except for Huntsman)
ddavitt: Purist…don’t you pour port in the middle of it?
Major oz: I have barely, brown rice, lentils, celery, carrots, potatoes, onions, half a bulb of garlic, diced chicken breast, assorted spice……….
ddavitt: I like Huntsman
ddavitt: I miss the Uk cheeses
BPRAL22169: Me too. There’s a variety here they don’t call by that name, but they’ve got a wonderful Double Glouchester for it.
ddavitt: Sounds great Oz; shame I can’t smell it but I can imagine it .
ddavitt: DG is a favourite…Whirl is nice, Double G with herbed garlic cream cheese in the centre
Major oz: Anyone here from the northern climes……my weather channel as background shows nasty snow.
Major oz: Yes Jane
ddavitt: We have snow here in Ont
ddavitt: but not deep and blue sky today. minus 10
Major oz: brrr
KultsiKN: Snow? Whazzad?
BPRAL22169: They’ve recently started featuring Mahon in our Trader Joe’s — a very tangy cheese.
Major oz: Are you inside the circle, K?
KultsiKN: +7 C
BPRAL22169: Balmy
ddavitt: . Saw a feature on the Ice Hotel in sweden kultis; looked good till they mentioned outside loos brr!
ddavitt: Kultsi sorry
BPRAL22169: I saw that last night.
KultsiKN: About 700 klicks south
Major oz: about four hours of daylight now ?
ddavitt: Very inventive idea
BPRAL22169: I particularly liked the barware.
KultsiKN: around 6 hours
AGplusone: Okay, back. For our second hour: does anyone wish to disagree or qualify my notion that de la Paz was intended by RAH as a false prophet? Feel free. It’s only my poor theory. [nice cheeses btw]
ddavitt: David says i have to say goodbye; never argue with the chef
ddavitt: brb maybe if not, happy holidays
ddavitt has left the room.
Major oz: see ya Jane
AGplusone: Oh … sorry Jane. See you soon.
BPRAL22169: Well — I’m not convinced, but I’m not sure I’d care to argue the point.
KultsiKN: Boy! Isn’t she quick!
Phebe314: I don’t think so, de la Paz as a false prophet. A very Heinlein character with the individualism.
DavidWrightSr: What do you mean ‘false prophet’?
Major oz: DlP may have been that, but is secondary to his role as guiding hand.
DenvToday: I doubt it. IMHO, RAH wanted as much rational anarchy as free men could get away with.
AGplusone: A false mentor … one who peddles a proposition to be debated, not believed.
Major oz: false prophet or falst mentor?
Major oz: maybe to first, NO to second
FraSprea: Like RAH himself?
DavidWrightSr: I believe that he meant it exactly as he said. I’ve been thinking about that all day and I am going to write it up, but it’s too much to go into now.
Phebe314: Prof de la Paz says state has no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals.Wyoh immediately brings up the H-bomb. The movie War Games does too, immediately upon beginning, same principle exactly.
AGplusone: I agree he wanted as much freedom. It’s the definition of anarchy that troubles me, Denv … I make my own rules and refuse to accept any of society’s.
KultsiKN: If we think of having revolted successfully: yes, a false prophet in that respect.
BPRAL22169: But that was not Prof’s — he accepted any rules anyone else needed to feel comfortable.
Phebe314: These two military guys are in the missile silo control room and are in a test, unbeknownst to them, in which an order to fire the missle at Russia is given and communications are down. They realize the phone could be down because Washington and other sites were knocked out, and their orders are clear. One simply refuses to do it, even when the other aims a pistol at his head.
Major oz: Prof acted somewhat like Patrick Henry — fire up the troops but disdain their result
BPRAL22169: All decisions are taken by individuals; all actions are taken by individuals.
AGplusone: Except he wouldn’t agree in advance on any as what someone else needed to feel comfortable.
BPRAL22169: Individual human beings is all there really is.
DavidWrightSr: Agreed, that’s the key to my thinking.
BPRAL22169: So.
Phebe314: Dissolve to the experts arguing that it is crucial to take humans out of the loop; to put in a computer that will always fire and cannot be stopped. You just know they are going to regret that. But War Games illustrates the de la Paz theory and answers Wyoh. That guy who wouldn’t fire was the state, and so was the other. Again, individualism.
AGplusone: I’m Jack Kennedy. What I need to feel comfortable is your agreement not to put a bullet in my head in front of my wife when I ride through Dallas.
BPRAL22169: That’s not a political rule.
AGplusone: For any reason whatsoever …
Major oz: But, Bill, you are familiar with mob psychology…….
BPRAL22169: you’ve shifted terms.
Major oz: identy gets lost
Phebe314: AGplusone: I agree he wanted as much freedom. It’s the definition of anarchy that troubles me, Denv … I make my own rules and refuse to accept any of society’s.—–
Major oz: identity
Major oz: duh
DenvToday: RAH adhered to the principal that the individual had the right to do as he or she pleased–as long as he didn’t harm others. Why should 51% of “society” (another questionable concept) enforce what the other 49% does?
Major oz: That’s ok till you get hungry
Phebe314: So what law would you refuse to obey? (Hmmm, copying David’s message changed my font.)
AGplusone: What’s a political rule? Assassination is prohibited by the USC, not to say anything at all about the common law against murder?
BPRAL22169: You were talking about a specific, contingent act. By the terms of your formulation, other murders at other times would be permitted.
SAcademy has left the room.
BPRAL22169: But Prof would accept a law against murder.
DenvToday: Is it murder if an individual is committing aggression against you? If a poltician denies you your personal rights and freedoms at the point of a gun, should he be held responsible?
Major oz: answer: yes, no, maybe
Major oz: Who decides?
AGplusone: Not true. PC sec 187 prohibits all unlawful killings with malice aforethought. Do you agree in advance to accept that, Bernardo? I submit he doesn’t.
BPRAL22169: That’s a matter for the conventions of a society.
Major oz: How many angels can dance on ………….
DavidWrightSr: The problem is that most people automatically think that such a ‘anarchy’ means that everyone would act for the worst. An assumption with no basis, and it fails to realilze that *everyone* already is acting individually, no matter what his motives, background, etc.
BPRAL22169: Prof would accept your rules — doesn’t mean he would obey them.
BPRAL22169: Very good point.
DenvToday: David, excellent point.
SAcademy has entered the room.
AGplusone: What’s the difference then? “Acceptance” means nothing.
Major oz: Adam Smith’s entire thesis is based on “anarchy”
Phebe314: Prof would accept anyone’s personal comfort laws, like not shooting him, or maybe not whistling and flapping arms if a feminist showed up on the Moon?
Major oz: It all lies in how you define it.
BPRAL22169: I think that “everyone is already acting individually” is one of those “facts” that one must face and move on.
AGplusone: What is the meaning of “is”?
DenvToday: Anarchy doesn’t necessarily mean lawlessness. In RAH’s concept, each individual was responsible for defending his own life, liberty and property. “An armed society is a polite society.” That’s one of his greatest quotations.
Phebe314: Everyone is already acting individually, right. That is a brilliant point Heinlein makes.
Major oz: That is the foundation of a liberal democracy.
AGplusone: But prof doesn’t say that. He won’t agree to comply in advance on any rule. His lip service to whatever turns you on, notwithstanding.
BPRAL22169: Exactly.
DenvToday: Do you refrain from comitting murder because it’s illegal? Do you refrain from burgling your neighbor because it’s illegal?
BPRAL22169: I think you’re misreading Prof, David.
DavidWrightSr: Part of my thinking deals with the definition of anarchy. I think that most people are assuming a certain aspect of the definition without realizing that RAH has actually defined it the way he means, not necessarily the full ‘commonly accepted’ definition.
Major oz: He is just being bombastic…..we know it’s bs
Phebe314: I think Heinlein’s rational anarchy falls apart for community endeavors. No?
Major oz: It is for effect — to make them think
BPRAL22169: It’s not BS; it’s a literal and exact statement of what he means.
AGplusone: No, I’m not! He won’t agree to accept any definition of the most heinous crime, treason, in advance.
Major oz: An advance of what?
Major oz: IN
AGplusone: In advance of his individual decision on the facts and on the statue.
BPRAL22169: Again, “accept” does not mean “obey.”
AGplusone: law
BPRAL22169: “An unjust law is no law at all.” Augustine.
DenvToday: Pebe, I disagree. Individuals bond together with other individuals for common defense and other common purposes. If they do it voluntarily, that’s all to the good.
Phebe314: Well, what laws currently exist that we may not obey?
AGplusone: agree to obey in advance, if you will
BPRAL22169: Every individually must evaluate every event.
Major oz: true, but acceptance means willingness to suffer legal remedies.
Major oz: ….for not obeying
DenvToday: Pebe, the drug laws come immediately to mind.
BPRAL22169: And that is what Prof means — he takes on himself the responsibility for getting in your way, and its’ consequences, if that’s what happens.
Phebe314: That’s right: de la Paz says we decide, but accept all consequences.
DavidWrightSr: Agreeing to obey in advance could always turn out to be ‘lip service’, because when the time came where an individual felt it necessary to break it, he would.
DenvToday: How have you harmed others if you enjoy smoking marijuana?
BPRAL22169: Exactly, DW
Major oz: In a micro sense MLK accepted Jim Crow……he just didn’t obey
AGplusone: Not an acceptance … if you contend that you must evaluate every event and you’re my neighbor, first time you look at me or my property or my family cross-eyed, I put a 357 Excedrin in your ear.
Major oz: …..He was willing to go to jail
BPRAL22169: So you may individually or collectively decide to define treaason in any way that seems reasonable to you.
AGplusone: No.
Phebe314: Oh, yes, I think so.
Major oz: YES, if you accept the consequences
DenvToday: RAH always understood societal taboos, and his characters usually took care not to break them–publicly. But they would break them privately if they didn’t harm others.
AGplusone: If my society’s laws say treason is levying war against the state or giving aid and confort (other than mere words of approval) to someone levying war, I want your agreement. Otherwise: move on, or I eliminate you.
Major oz: as we all do, D
Phebe314: On the Moon, people didn’t obey laws and rules well normally, to put it mildly. There was a lot of individualism there.
BPRAL22169: “Governments are instituted among men for these purposes.”
Major oz: You may want it, David, but you don’t have the power to take it.
AGplusone: Self-defense … take what?
BPRAL22169: And if any government abuses those purposes, it is the right of the people to dissolve it.
DenvToday: True Phebe. And “frontier justice” was usually the fate of those who harmed others. A thief was likely to be spaced by an irate citizen.
BPRAL22169: Your definition bites. Eliminate me, and ten thousand patriots will rise up against you, David.
DavidWrightSr: I intend to start out my ‘article’ on this subject with the sentence. ‘Every person is free to do what he wants. But, every ‘free choice’ is subject to constraints’. Then I go on to talk about natural constraints, societal constraints, etc.
AGplusone: Maybe.
AGplusone: I’ll risk the consequences.
Phebe314: Give us a hint about constraints?
Major oz: You beg the question: the scenario re: treason doesn’t hold up as you are an anarchist — society has no rules QED: “treason” is a null concept.
BPRAL22169: Part of the “social contract” of the American Democracy is the jefferson exception to the social contract.
DavidWrightSr: That’s what I mean by constraints.
BPRAL22169: Who said anarchists believe society has no rules?
AGplusone: Exactly: an anarchist cannot belong to any society, Oz.
BPRAL22169: That’s 100% crap. Not true.
AGplusone: He will accept no social compact in advance
Major oz: So I don’t worry about your threats re: treason. You don’t know what it is.
BPRAL22169: Again, not true.
DavidWrightSr: Definition of anarchy doesn’t deal with society, it deals with government.
BPRAL22169: Exactly.
BPRAL22169: An anarchist does not accept the State.
AGplusone: society’s embodiment is government
Major oz: any state?
BPRAL22169: Unless you’ve dug up some weird brand of anarchism I don’t know anything about.
Major oz: societies curse……
Phebe314: Thing is, EVERY neighbor actually DOES “evaluate every event” and all too often ends up misbehaving. I mean, that truly is our situation in the world normally. That’s why the guns, of course. We do live in a very imperfectly controlled society.
AGplusone: that also, Oz
DenvToday: Major, anarchism doesn’t mean “society”–whatever that means–has not rules. It has plenty of rules. Thou shalt not murder, steal another’s property, etc. And you’d better be polite. Being rude could get you hurt or killed. Manners was always a major RAH theme.
Major oz: ,….sorry, typing too fast…..
DenvToday: has no rules, that is.
BPRAL22169: Again, in the American system, governments are instituted among men to assist them in their goals.
BPRAL22169: Laws may parallel social rules, or they may diverge
DenvToday: Manners were. lol My typing lately.
Major oz: But the anarchist has set himself outside that society
BPRAL22169: Ethical rules, i mean.
DavidWrightSr: Constraints. That’s what I meant.
Major oz: so their rules dont count
Major oz: The extant society may be whatever it wants to be, the anarchist doesn’t care
BPRAL22169: One is morally bound to follow the ethical rules determined by one’s conscience. One is bound to follow laws only to the extent they parallel.
AGplusone: How can you have rules without anything other than a self-enforcing mechanism, Denv, and still have a ‘society’?
Major oz: non sequitor, Bill
BPRAL22169: The contrary proposition is that one is morally bound to act against one’s conscience — which is an absurdity.
Phebe314: That woman Patti in Oceola County a couple hours ago said to the judge, “If the Supreme Court says we have to stop, we have to stop!” And he argued with her out of dominance —- but he called a recess to find out. Both were acting as individuals, and as the State.
DenvToday: If every man and woman has the means to defend himself or herself, i.e. a firearm he or she knows how to use, then people find a way to live with each other.
Major oz: as they have forever
Major oz: what is the point, here
AGplusone: ‘one’s own conscience” that’s wonderful. Just don’t move next door to me and tell me you’ll only follow your conscience. I’ll take you out if you don’t agree on a few essential common rules.
Phebe314: Well, or die with each other, which is also common, and the preventing of SOME of that is supposed to be the point of the State.
Major oz: says who?
BPRAL22169: David, the notion that one must follow someone else’s idea of ‘conscience” is a collectivist idea, not a democratic idea.
AGplusone: Not at all. It’s simply self-protection. Security.
Major oz: good thing, Bill, you used a small “d”
Phebe314: de la Paz threw Molotov cocktails in his youth. Some of us marched illegally………the latter didn’t kill anyone. What is the difference? Both were illegal.
Major oz: ……sorry, David…..
BPRAL22169: David, you have a contradiction unreasolved.
DenvToday: Dave, that’s an exaggeration. Anarchy means that no overlord will impose the will of others on you, but there are many rules people have to follow. If your neighbor is armed, you’ll be polite and you’ll be a good neighbor.
AGplusone: March all you want Phebe … unless you stop the ambulance trying to carry me to the hospital …
AGplusone: Not necessarily … I may wait til his sentries go to sleep and then …
Phebe314: What would you do in that case? Get up out of the ambulance? Need another example…..
Major oz: And, Phoebe, I often speed…….so what ?
AGplusone: bye-bye
DavidWrightSr: It’s so obvious to me that I have a hard time seeing how anyone doesn’t see. *Everyone*, including all of you and me are already acting out of our own conscience. We have determined the constraints that bind us and have made our decisions as to which constraints we are willing to follow, recognizing that we may have to pay the piper on some of them.
DavidWrightSr: Obviously, there are people who don’t recognize the constraints, and that is why it is called ‘rational anarchy
DenvToday: And then murder? But that’s true of our society. If no cop is around, what prevents me from shooting you?
KultsiKN has left the room.
AGplusone: Cop enforce rules we jointly agree upon. Otherwise, no cop.
Phebe314: Yes, speeding is a good example.
DenvToday: RAH simply said that each individual is responsible for protecting himself. We substitute the state for the individual. Is that a better way to live?
BPRAL22169: I’m still curious — as far as I can tell, prof’s position is traditional “individualist anarchist.” Why did RAH feel the need to invent a different and non-standard name for it?
KultsiKN has entered the room.
Major oz: Hokay, Will, then we AIN’T anarchists……..what point did I miss?
Phebe314: How much more dangerous would it be if we had anarchy than now? The end of Farnham, which is indeed an anarchy, always chilled me a little.
AGplusone: No: we subcontract enforcement to the agency of the state so we don’t have to run around all the time evening the balance.
KultsiKN: Doh! The AOL service is real flaky tonite…
BPRAL22169: It was supposed to — the point was, no matter who “wins” a nuclear exchange, western liberal civilzation goes down the tubes, with all its civil values.
Phebe314: Heinlein wanted to dignify it by calling it rational anarchy; that’s a good reason to suppose he meant it.
AGplusone: Next month: Farnham and buddies get together and hire Wyatt Earp.
DenvToday: Phebe, in practice, day to day life wouldn’t be much different. The individual would have to take more responsibility, that’s all.
BPRAL22169: But it doesn’t dignify it; it just gives it a different name.
AGplusone: [then Farnham gets some free time to play a little bridge]
Major oz: I think we forgot the question
Major oz: Is that a GOOD thing?
AGplusone: ‘kay … what’s the question?
Major oz: I forget
DavidWrightSr: I give up. We are all ‘anarchists’, only some of us have realized the ‘rational’ aspects of it, (or the ‘rationale’ behind it) .
BPRAL22169: My question was: why make up the name “rational” anarchist?
Phebe314: You think day to day life wouldn’t be much different? I think it would go back to women having to be escorted everywhere, and everyone would need to carry arms. In the U.S. anyway. Everywhere there was anarchy, in fact.
BPRAL22169: As a general principle, I’d say it means he wants us to think about something in particular — I just can’t pinpoint what.
AGplusone: No … we are all contracting parties to a compact. I agree, pro tem, not to screw around with your sh*t if you leave my stuff alone.
DavidWrightSr: Can you give me any references to the ‘individual’ anachists you are referring to Bill?
Major oz: We, from Lenin to Mother Theresa, are all anarchists. The difference is in degree.
BPRAL22169: It’s a very long tradition in the U.S. — going at least back to Josiah Warren in the 19th century; Benjamin Tucker.
Phebe314: Heinlein wanted to dignify it by calling it rational anarchy? I don’t think he meant anything more complex. There are *several* varieties Wyoh then mentions.
BPRAL22169: I think most anarchists would agree to the contract theory of social organization.
AGplusone: Isn’t that the situation portrayed in IWFNE, Phebe?
Major oz: I speculate that the adjective “rational” was tacked on was to indicate a measure of rationality on that scale that goes from Lenin to MT.
DavidWrightSr: I never contracted with anyone. I do what I do because *I* have found it pleasing, and expedient to do so. I keep to the law,(mostly), because I fear the consequences, and feel that most laws have good reasons behind them, but if it becomes necessary for me to break one of them to defend my family, or my country, then I will break it.
DavidWrightSr: And I am willing to accept the consequences.
AGplusone: And suffer the consequences …
Major oz: And so would almost everyone
AGplusone: GMTA
Major oz: that is nothing new
Phebe314: Yes, IWFNE had “abandoned zones” (never forgot that concept since it does currently exist in inner Baltimore, Los Angeles during the riots, etc.) and it was very dangerous. Imperfect government has the same violence everywhere, of course: Russia, Albania, etc.
AGplusone: But, pro tem, until or unless, you accept the rules (mostly).
DavidWrightSr: And that, I propose, is *exactly* what Prof was saying.
AGplusone: Not exactly …
BPRAL22169: Didn’t RAH characterize Jubal Harshaw as having “that streak of anarchism that is the birthright of every American”? Quoting from memory.
Major oz: It is also connected with Darwinism. Those who don’t shoot the intruder often don’t live to reproduce.
AGplusone: a streak isn’t Prof de la Paz … he’s 100% anarchist.
BPRAL22169: Yes — but I wasn’t responding to that, but to the earlier “we are all anarchists . . .”
AGplusone: I won’t agree to anything in advances except whatever turns you on … uh-huh
Major oz: I say again: much of it is instructional bombast.
BPRAL22169: Again, you are misrepresenting Prof.
BPRAL22169: I think prof meant exactly what he said.
DenvToday: BPral, I believe he did. And for some reason…Jubal’s physical description was very similar to RAH. Hmmmmm….
AGplusone: Then why didn’t he say so to Wyoh?
Major oz: missinterpreting, perhaps……
BPRAL22169: Nothign more and nothing less — certainly not the complex agenda you seem to be bringing to this subject.
AGplusone: I won’t agree to any definition of treason in advance …
Phebe314: A very early description of the reign of one of England’s medieval kings said, “A virgin carrying a sack of gold could walk from the east coast of England to the west coast without being molested.” This has always struck me as remarkable security (not that I believe it), and is a very effective point for a woman.
Major oz: Isn’t that a pretty normal way for a revolutionary to think?
DavidWrightSr: Why didn’t he say What to Wyoh?
Major oz: Only, Phebe, that you wouldn’t want to aid in propagating any of those male’s genes.
AGplusone: They won’t molest her, Phebe. They’re satisfied with the gold. Can buy other women with it.
Phebe314: Women have a particular interest in government, because as David Brin’s The Postman points out (and Glory Season even more!) —- men are the problem. Get rid of men, no violence to women.
Major oz: …..as your kids would be wimps
AGplusone: Why be greedy?
DenvToday: Pebe, the same could be said of a woman in a frontier town in our “Wild West.” Despite popular conception, woman were safe to walk the streets where everybody was armed. Coincidence?
Major oz: and, next generation, no women.
Phebe314: Can buy other women AFTER they molest her too. I can see you are a man!!! .
DenvToday: women were, that is.
AGplusone: Naw, just lazy …
Major oz: For reasons, David, almost identical to the ones Manny outlines.
Phebe314: Women do seem safer when there aren’t enough of us to go around, because those who protect us get more access. Otherwise, we’re out of luck.
AGplusone: yep
Major oz: Yes, Phebe, see any city in the orient.
Phebe314: Right. Prostitution.
AGplusone: Argument for the deep bag and the bridge … .
Major oz: sales is what I had in mind
DavidWrightSr has left the room.
Phebe314: Hmmmmmm, isn’t this where Aberdeen comes in? I don’t have red hair, though.
BPRAL22169: I see DW just left — will that affect the log for this session, David?
Major oz: Then you won’t bring much hereabouts.
SAcademy has left the room.
AGplusone: Funny thing: maybe the anarchists were right … after all the governments fell apart, the veterans got together and created the government of Troopers.
Major oz:
DavidWrightSr has entered the room.
Major oz: Great idea
SAcademy has entered the room.
DavidWrightSr: Dog gone it. I got dropped. Can someone please send me the portion from where I left to where I came back in?
AGplusone: ‘kay … we’re having fun. Another break? Five minutes this time and then we come back and someone cooks up another topic question?
Major oz: I am constantly amazed how soldiers of all nations, those who rail against each other included, get along under a mutual comradship. Their coming together is not all that far-fetched.
AGplusone: Yes so long as I stay on David, long enough.
DenvToday: However…just as soon as the loonies won the revolution, they started factions, wrangling, taxes, etc. Manny moved on.
BPRAL22169: Typical frontier experience.
AGplusone: Back at five past hour, folk? Go water cats.
BPRAL22169: “Paint Your Wagon” recapitulated.
AGplusone: Conn to Oz
Phebe314: I have often thought that anarchy is mainly a problem for women, or at least it affects us most. The security that government provides is most important for us, because we are smaller and less violent (I’m not one of these women soldier types. I personally don’t believe there actually ARE any women soldier types, really.). I’m as mean as they come, but
Major oz: yo
Major oz: NOOOOOOOO, Phebe
Major oz: You are a prized possession
Major oz: Now don’t rant about “possession”
KultsiKN: I don’t agree, either, Phebe.
Major oz: You are ultra safe.
Phebe314: Well, I understand very well that this is the implication. Farnham, for example.
Major oz: But you are not a full participant.
DenvToday: Phebe, I understand your concerns. Most women feel that way. But were women more secure a century ago, or are they more secure today? I think a century ago, when there were fewer laws.
Phebe314: Farnham was a slave then liberated: his new trophy wife was never liberated.
DenvToday: Of course, it depends on your definition of secure.
Phebe314: Why do you think a century ago when there were fewer laws? We had to be escorted EVERYWHERE. Women could not go out alone.
BPRAL22169: I believe she was already as liberated as she felt she needed to be.
AGplusone: [interesting definition of ‘trophy wife’ Phebe. Not what I usually think of]
Major oz: The old canard: “you can have security OR you can have freedom” applies to women in society also.
BPRAL22169: That thought occured to me, too, David.
Major oz: With participation, comes responsibility
DenvToday: Yes. Now women have the freedom to be equally oppressed as men. Is that an improvement?
DenvToday: It is debatable, I’ll admit.
Major oz: Some of that escort was because the “ladies” were not always ladies
Phebe314: . re trophy wife. It’s obvious. We just didn’t have the word then.
BPRAL22169: Not obvious
Phebe314: No, I don’t agree with the Oz comment: those ladies didn’t want an escort!
BPRAL22169: A trophy wife is someone married because of looks or status, to impress others with one’s status. I don’t see that definition could be applied to Chez Farnham at all.
AGplusone: Naw, most of the trophy ones lay back and become club wimmen, like Grace without the sauce getting to her
Major oz: But, Denv, they get to debate it. We (males) don’t.
DenvToday: I would gladly become a trophy husband. Cindy Crawford, are you listening?
Major oz: Not what I said Phebe.
DenvToday: Major, good point.
Phebe314: Oh, no, I’m an expert here: a trophy wife is a younger floozy who gets the older guy and his income power as soon as menopause of Wife No. 1 triggers his genetic predisposition to go looking for someone to get preggers, literally or metaphorically.
BPRAL22169: That’s not the way the term is used.
Major oz: A jaundiced view
Phebe314: Hmmmm, that seems to have been a conversation stopper.
DenvToday: lol
AGplusone: You think Grace got fouled up because she was menopausal?
Phebe314: Yellow with jaundice, that’s me.
DenvToday: lol Phebe .
Major oz: The TW is what the guy turns to when the FW has left, taking all the goodies.
BPRAL22169: No.
BPRAL22169: A trophy wife is a “trophy.”
Major oz: I take it your mileage varries
Major oz: Actually, I am the trophy
BPRAL22169: Something you put on the shelf for others to admire.
Phebe314: No, sometimes I admit there may be a tiny, tiny little fault that exculpates the terrible guilt of the dumpers just a little bit, like 1 %. Total alcoholism WOULD be that tiny fault, I agree.
DenvToday: Major, in the sense that a stuffed bear is a trophy?
Major oz: I’m not that fat…….
KultsiKN: I can see Oz’s point: TW also runs on a shorter leash…
DenvToday: Okay, in the sense that an anorexic stuffed bear is a trophy?
AGplusone: I probably agree with you Phebe
Major oz: I’m lost in a jungle of tangled metaphors.
AGplusone: How ’bout I will not go where you go?
DenvToday:
Major oz: suits….
BPRAL22169: You anarchist, you.
Phebe314: David asking about Grace….actually that possibility is implicit in Farnham, because they were happy when younger. But mainly she liked the struggle more than the accomplished luxury.
BPRAL22169: That is Hugh’s “take” on the situation — but it might have been quite different.
Major oz: What are the other clues?
AGplusone: She got lost … or who knows what … was empty or conflicted somehow … according to Hugh’s take.
Phebe314: Well, I’m buying it because he is fair —- he doesn’t say she is crazy or a drunk. Just bored with success.
BPRAL22169: But Hugh is inside his head, not inside hers — and he is not all that attentive to other peoples’ “realities,” shall we say?
Major oz: Reminds me of Queegs lawyer saying what he (Q)once was.
Phebe314: *Usually* American men say the dumpee is crazy. Think about it. ALL first wives being dumped are crazy, according to your friends. Right?
DavidWrightSr: All of this illustrates another part of my ‘article’. We often assume that others ‘mean’ the same thing we do when we use a word. When the difference is apparent as it is with TW, we can spot it. When the difference is *not* obvious, it can lead to immense difficulty because people are possibly going in totally different directions withoug realizing it. I think that this is the problem with ‘anarchist’.
Phebe314: So Heinlein had quite a reasonable description of the problem.
DenvToday: It’s ironic, but wasn’t Farnham happier afterwards? He was no longer a middle-class wage slave. After “le deluge” he was gleefully running a frontier general store, enjoying every minute of it.
Major oz: Not, Phebe, if the dumpee is the man.
AGplusone: No. Because I know better. I dumped one of my friends who dumped his wife.
BPRAL22169: DW, with these long, long posts I cannot see the top — can’t scroll back.
AGplusone: He never was wage slave, Denv. He was his own boss, a contractor.
AGplusone: Unless he was wage slave to his own family.
BPRAL22169: I’m afraid most of the “dumping” I’ve seen has been because the parties didn’t want to take the effort to maintain contact with the other.
DavidWrightSr: Sorry. didn’t realize that. I don’t have that problem myself.
Phebe314: They are usually happier with the young trophy. It is VERY annoying. That’s why we put their suits on their BMW and spray them with the garden hose. (My group loved that story; she had to tell it twice.)
BPRAL22169: It’s something wrong with my installation, but I haven’t been able to fix it.
DenvToday: True, but he was a slave to his mortgage, his “position” in the community, a family he was tired of.
Major oz: Is there a place for a male dumpee in your universe, Phebe?
AGplusone: You know, accepting Hugh’s viewpoint, he was a slave at the beginning, to his wife …
Phebe314: No, the heck with them. Except for you and other people I like, of course.
AGplusone: to his sense of responsibilities undertaken in times past.
Phebe314: I guess the situation is so predominantly the other way, I can’t see too many male dumpees.
Major oz: Aren’t we all, in the beginning, David? (unless your name is Kennedy)
BPRAL22169: I don’t think you would get much shrift from Heinlein about being enslaved by duty.
AGplusone: Yes, we are. Which is why I have more an affinity with Hugh than with Laz, for example.
Major oz: They are legion in military retirees, Phebe. A radical law was passed accomodating them.
DavidWrightSr: Acceptance of constraints, duty is a big one.
Phebe314: I don’t recall Hugh being enslaved at the beginning; thought they worked hard together.
AGplusone: Laz wears out wives like I wear out underwear and moves on …
Phebe314: What radical law are you talking about, Oz?
Major oz: now,now…….he has their permission
DavidWrightSr: HE said, that they got tired of him .
Major oz: Former Spouse Protection Act, promulgated by the bitch from Denver.
AGplusone: Oz: if I really put my mind to it, I could cause anyone to give me their permission … recall the “cold ass” technique Maureen talks about?
Phebe314: Ummmm, Reno, a woman I always thought quite nice and a very proper woman I admire, but have yet to find ONE man who likes her. Hmmmm.
Major oz: Therefore, David………….
Phebe314: I admit to not knowing the FSPA, with military implications.
Major oz: Reno who.
AGplusone: That’s ‘gaslighting’ your spouse.
Major oz: ?
Major oz: Talking about squinty
BPRAL22169: There’s a running joke on the Wave radio station about one of the morning DJ’s having the hots for Janet Reno.
AGplusone: Movie: Ingrid Bergman. Man married to her wants to get rid of her. Drives her mad.
AGplusone: So she will leave him. Friends therefore won’t blame him for dumping her.
BPRAL22169: yes — by doing an Allie MacBeall on her.
Major oz: Or the other one with Doris Day and Cary Grant
Phebe314: Yes. Old, difficult divorce laws. Also a Hitchcock about a physical fitness nut in the 45–55 age who kills his wife because she is looking older, and that scares him.
Major oz: Dial M for Murder
AGplusone: Movie was called “Gaslight”
BPRAL22169: Did we come up with a third hour topic?
Major oz: tis another
Major oz: not yet
AGplusone: Somehow we got onto divorce. Anyone wish to propose a third hour topic on “politics”?
Major oz: without alluding to the present ?
Major oz: difficult
Major oz: Saw the History Channel thing on the founding fathers
Phebe314: I guess this one has been — aside from divorce — about how anarchism disproportionately affects the sexes. And people less able to protect themselves from the many aggressors in society.
Major oz: VERY GOOD
BPRAL22169: What about the political shape of the Future History?
AGplusone: If not, then ‘free chat’ unmonitored by me … no rules except try, try to play nice …
Major oz: Go ahead, Bill
Phebe314: This has been very nice.
Major oz: What choo got in mind
AGplusone: I think that’s the reason for my objection to arnarchism or Randism, Phebe.
AGplusone: anarchism
BPRAL22169: Well, we touched on Coventry and the Covenant Society. That “first scientific political document” fell apart around the time of Methuselah’s Children.
Major oz: Ok I got one
BPRAL22169: Anarchism or Randism? Two terms which absolutely do not go together.
Phebe314: Oh, really? That’s interesting. Children are another…no laws lead to rampant child abuse. Also dog abuse. Women abuse. Poor and uneducated people abuse.
AGplusone: Yeah, but Prof “gets along with a Randist” doesn’t he?
BPRAL22169: So?
BPRAL22169: I can get along with a Randite — doesn’t mean he’s an anarchist.
AGplusone: So he must see somethin’ in common.
Phebe314: Why don’t they go together? Ayn Randism was ubermensch making own rules, right?
BPRAL22169: No.
AGplusone: Or the sentence and his point is meaningless.
BPRAL22169: No — you’re bringing a screwy interpretation to what Prof said.
Phebe314: Well, I admit to not having read the Fountainhead et al.
AGplusone: He’s a fellow traveler is what I think he’s saying.
BPRAL22169: That was just an example of an extreme position he could get alogn with.
BPRAL22169: Rand was an individualist, but within a conservative democratic context.
AGplusone: Not the way I read it: he was asked if he meant Randism.
BPRAL22169: She wanted The Right laws.
FraSprea: “Randist” is from Ayn (Sp?) Rand?
BPRAL22169: Yes.
AGplusone: Yes.
FraSprea: ah, ok.
BPRAL22169: But she wrote several diatribes against anarchism in the late 60’s.
BPRAL22169: So her position is quite clear.
Phebe314: What didn’t she like about anarchy?
AGplusone: Most of which none of us have read … we read Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and moved onward.
BPRAL22169: She held the old Hobbesian “war of all against all.”
Major oz: Postulated: At the national level, non-partisanship and bi-partisanship are equally foolish and accomplish virtually nothing.
BPRAL22169: (which is inconsistent with her other positions, btw)
DenvToday: None of us have read Rand? Au contraire. lol
Phebe314: You mean as a virtue, or a problem, Hobbes?
AGplusone: Heinlein says both ‘non-partisanship’ and ‘bi-partisanship’ are equally foolish and useless.
BPRAL22169: As a “feature”
Phebe314: Oh, I HAVE read Rand (both novels AS and F) but I didn’t like them and so didn’t reread. If I don’t reread, I don’t remember.
AGplusone: No, I said most of us have read the two I mentioned and nothing else.
AGplusone: Same as Phebe.
BPRAL22169: If you want a quick overview of Rand’s position, there’s a 90 page speech toward the end of Atlas Shrugged that summarizes things.
Phebe314: Besides, that scandal with Brennan (?), whose books I like, shocked me.
Major oz: How bout “the virtue of selfishness”
Major oz: Or “Anthem”
DenvToday: I’ll admit that Rand is a bit..doctrinaire, to put it mildly. The content is excellent. The style is overwhelming, however. And she brooks no disagreement, which always riles me.
Major oz: Anthem was wonderful.
BPRAL22169: The diatribes are in Capitalism The Unknown Ideal.
AGplusone: That one too … forgot its title. Long time ago, Oz. When I was younger and stupider.
Major oz: Like any -ism, Denv
DavidWrightSr: What y’all are still assuming that Prof wanted ‘anarchy’, i.e. lack of government. He never said that.
Major oz: now,now
Major oz: tsk
DenvToday: True Major. Objectivists scare me. lol It’s not what they say, it’s the way they say it.
Phebe314: What do you mean? He espoused anarchy, he threw bombs and got transported.
AGplusone: Huh? Then what was he prattling about, David?
Major oz: Expand, Denv……
AGplusone: Or rather, why was he wasting our time with his prattle about it?
AGplusone: Or is it your theory he was a deliberate provocateur?
DenvToday: Objectivists revere Ayn Rand…it’s very near to a cult. If you don’t accept every syllable Ayn Rand said, they consider you an apostate.
BPRAL22169: Rand made it that way.
Major oz: no, provacateur…….never………
AGplusone: Good.
BPRAL22169: She killed the Objectivist movement in 1968.
DenvToday: My philosophy is “live and let live.”
Major oz: so how does that differ from any other -ism
BPRAL22169: Made it impossible to extend the theory.
Major oz: ?
DavidWrightSr: He said that he could get along with any government, because he knew that *he* decided what rules he followed. He didn’t try to stop them from forming a new government, he simply tried to make it as minimal as possible.
DenvToday: You mean the split with the Brandens?
AGplusone: My philosophy is leave me alone and I’ll let you live.
DenvToday: lol Dave
BPRAL22169: Coincidental with it — perhaps a peripheral part of the split, but it was happeningon its own. She didn’t want control to get out of herhands.
Major oz: In California, Dave?
AGplusone: But I’m getting grumpy in my old age.
Major oz: you are reduced to hedge clippers
Phebe314: Branden? Sounds closer. She said in her will he couldn’t come to her funeral and posted guards. Of course, that meant she badly wanted him to try. He didn’t, but I doubt she noticed. All very sad.
AGplusone: “codgerhood” is neat!
AGplusone: Much better than adolescence.
DavidWrightSr: As my wife said, ‘now she is eccentric, whereas before she was weird’
BPRAL22169: Actually, Rand does get credit: she created singlehandedly a fourth tradition of Aristotelian philosophy.
BPRAL22169: Not a minor achievement.
Major oz: How can ;you tell
Major oz: ……my smiley face thingy is gone from the screen
Major oz: .
DenvToday: True Phebe. I’ve never been a fan of cults, but I still admire her philosophy. But no person is infallible, and Rand considered herself just that.
Major oz: it works
AGplusone: Here, use some of mine: …..
Major oz: Interesting…….what is a cult?
Major oz: my group or yours ?
BPRAL22169: Somebody else’s religion.
DenvToday: Deification perhaps?
BPRAL22169: That’s L. Sprage de Camp’s definition.
AGplusone: Anything that we’uns don’t believe in or that threatens our religion, the One True Religion!
DenvToday: lol. It’s a great definition.
Phebe314: No, I agree with BPRAL —- what do I call you, by the way? Monks are not very different than Moonies, even have robes.
BPRAL22169: Actually, I think he said something like “a religion you weren’t born into.”
Major oz: Aren’t they all cults until they are established?
BPRAL22169: I think, strictly speaking, a cult is a religion with a focus on a single figure.
Major oz: like Christ?
BPRAL22169: Or a subset of a religion.
DenvToday: True enough, Major. I suppose you become a religion when you have a building committee.
AGplusone: Yeah, well, ask the Baptists about Masonry some time, Bill.
Phebe314: Boooooo. .
BPRAL22169: I grew up a Baptist. I don’t remember the subject of Freemasons ever coming up.
DavidWrightSr: Don’t ask the Orthodox, please don’t
Major oz: So it has to be a religion to be a cult ?
AGplusone: Check back in …
Phebe314: It’s considered a heresy.
AGplusone: and you’ll see that the Southern Baptists have defined it a cult.
BPRAL22169: What is considered a heresy?
Major oz: whatever I say it is
KultsiKN: A different opinion.
BPRAL22169: Problem is, we don’t have a consensus definition any more.
Major oz: “I”, of course, being an established religion.
DavidWrightSr: See what I mean about definitions?
BPRAL22169: The Romans could define “cult’ in opposition to the state religion.
BPRAL22169: Though the state religion also contained cults of personality.
Major oz: again: does a cult have to be a religion ?
Phebe314: A religious belief that truly cannot fit into the established religion. For instance, I saw one once: while I was teaching Sunday School the Methodists (who want to be all things to all people) came out with children’s lesson books that said Jesus was a man ——- but a nice man!!!! Even I recognized that as heresy!
AGplusone: But the Romans did not require a ‘state religion’ for anyone except Romans until Domitian or so …
DavidWrightSr: When I grew up all of my Southern Baptist friends and family were all Masons. Have the Baptists swung around again?
BPRAL22169: Yes, I believe a cult is a religion by necessity.
DenvToday: No Major. I consider many environmentalists as cultists.
AGplusone: Yeah, sadly, Dave.
BPRAL22169: By analogy.
Major oz: The Greens
Phebe314: Yes, they did used to swing both ways, Mason and Methodist. But it became controversial.
BPRAL22169: Though, I suppose environmentalism can be turned into a religion internally.
Phebe314: I have NO idea what Masons believe that is “not Christian.”
BPRAL22169: As, apparently Democratic party politics can.
Major oz: nothing, Phebe
AGplusone: My birth religion, Roman Catholic, has swung back again too.
DavidWrightSr: To or away?
Major oz: they are not UN-Christian
Phebe314: Well, what was that all about, then?
Major oz: turf
AGplusone: Away. Once again forbidden.
AGplusone: Always turf
DenvToday: Communism was a religion, despite Marx’s talk of “opiate of the masses.”
BPRAL22169: I think the Catholics didn’t like Freemasonry because of the anti-clerical basis of liberal politics they were involved in.
Major oz: self-described
Major oz: always thought that was funny
Phebe314: Naaaaaah, surely communism is no more a religion than the original Buddhism. You do need a God for a religion, I maintain.
AGplusone: Goes back to the Age of Enlightenment
BPRAL22169: Oh, yes, Denv. I’ve seen marxism called a Jewish heresy.
Major oz: Go Giaists are not a religion?
DenvToday: Bpral, that’s sexist. It’s a himesy.
BPRAL22169: No, you don’t need a god for religion.
AGplusone: But really got hot when Garbaldi, Grandmaster of Masons in Italy took away the Papal States.
BPRAL22169: Gods are rather late inventions, while religion goes ‘way back.
DenvToday: Phebe, communism always had Gods. Marx, Lennin, Stalin and Mao.
FraSprea: you know Italian History better than me .
BPRAL22169: Otto’s definition of religion: the experience of the noumenal.
Phebe314: Heroes, surely.
AGplusone: .
DenvToday: In China, Mao was quite literally a god.
BPRAL22169: You can experience the noumenal in an oak tree– heck, you can experience the noumenal by rocking.
Phebe314: I think primitive religions were always god-ridden, surely, even if it was just the anacondas as gods.
BPRAL22169: Nope.
BPRAL22169: Neither history nor anthropology agrees with that.
Phebe314: Well, if you mean Mao was pronounced a god, which I had not heard, so were the Roman emperors. Politics.
AGplusone: Are you a traveling man, francesco?
BPRAL22169: Part of the problem we have is that we try to read “god” back into those things.
Major oz has left the room.
FraSprea: No, I’m not (wish I were)
Major oz has entered the room.
Major oz: back
DavidWrightSr: Define ‘God’
Phebe314: Well, you’ve puzzled me now. I thought Buddhism became a religion when people built temples and carved statues and basically started calling the unlucky Buddha a god, which he explicitly denied being or believing in any of.
Major oz: changing bottles……
AGplusone: Someday perhaps …
FraSprea: hopefully
KultsiKN: Well, God is just like me, except where HE is otherwise…
BPRAL22169: You’ve tapped into the distinction between “religion” and “church.”
BPRAL22169: Religion is one of the four basic human ways of experiencing the world. The other three are science, art, and philosophy
DenvToday: Mao had a church (the state and its machinery). Mao was worshipped as an entity above other mortal men. Isn’t that a god as we define it?
BPRAL22169: People tend to use one predominantly, but everybody has something of all four.
KultsiKN has left the room.
DenvToday: I guess the discussion of cults bothered Kultski. lol
BPRAL22169: Maybe if we had talked about Kults . . .
DavidWrightSr: Again, define ‘God’. what do y’all mean by the term?
AGplusone: No, he has trouble with his ISP
Phebe314: No…..a god is someone we can’t see (unless they decide to be seen, like Pallas Athene becoming Mentor) who is powerful and can make “magical” changes.
Major oz: OT: Let me put in a plug for the best combination of Science Fiction and religion I have ever seen. A book called The Sparrow, a first novel by Mary (something). It is superb. It gets inside the head of Jesuits like I have never seen.
BPRAL22169: A God: the nounmenal personified.
DenvToday: David, any entity deemed by “worhshippers” as intrinsically superior to other humans. To disobey a god is heresy, not mere disobedience.
Phebe314: Controversial book. People either love it or hate it, I gather from my scifi list.
Major oz: Those who know Jesuits (and I am a brainwashed product) will love it.
Phebe314: Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky has a wonderful treatment of Gods in scifi.
BPRAL22169: “Heresy” is technically defined as emphais of one portion of dogma at the expense of others.
Major oz: Like Jesus’ little brother ?
Phebe314: It’s —– illogic, surely? Like gnosticism, believing that God and the Devil are equal powers.
BPRAL22169: That’s manichaeanism
Phebe314: Can’t have that if God is supposed to be omnipotent!
DenvToday: Yes. The violation of the tenets of a religion. Anything a ‘god’ says is, by definition, a tenet of that religion.
Major oz: logic ? in the same breath as religion ?
BPRAL22169: Gnosticism is knowledge by direct experience.
Major oz: shame
DavidWrightSr: Well, I can’t agree or disagree with you. As none of your definitions match mine, and useless for the purpose of discussion as I can’t articulate very clearly what it is.
Reilloc has entered the room.
DenvToday: Hello Reilloc
BPRAL22169: Oz, I have a set of Aquinas you are sentenced to read.
Reilloc: Hi, DT
BPRAL22169: So long, all, it’s been fun participating in this group.
Phebe314: Gnosticism is only that? Because that’s what Christian fundamentalists, indeed all Protestants believe.
DenvToday: Bye Bpral. Good to see you.
FraSprea: bye Bill
DavidWrightSr: See you Bill.
AGplusone: Did anyone ever think about whether Jubal, after the end went into business with Saul and because Peter and Paul with him.
AGplusone: Bye Bill
BPRAL22169 has left the room.
AGplusone: We’re pretty well wrapping up LN … free chat about anything for the next ten minutes …
KultsiKN has entered the room.
Phebe314: Postulated by Oz: At the national level, non-partisanship and bi-partisanship are equally foolish and accomplish virtually nothing. How can we tell the difference? And is either even *possible*?
SAcademy: Nite, all.
AGplusone: Heinlein didn’t think it was.
Major oz: Nite, SA
DenvToday: It was great being here with you all. It’s been a while, and I had a great time. Thanks to you all.
KultsiKN: Nite, SA
FraSprea: night!
DenvToday: Good Night, SA.
DavidWrightSr: Night SA
SAcademy has left the room.
Reilloc: Did I miss the comprehensite discussion of the Bear Truce sorites?
AGplusone: Thank you, Denv … nite SA
Phebe314: For instance, I am not non-partisan in the current Troubles, nor is anyone at all up to and including the highest courts. Scary, really.
DenvToday: Take care everybody! Night!
AGplusone: No, we never got to that … I didn’t insist.
DenvToday has left the room.
Major oz: As I see it, bi-parisanship means compromising your principles and Non- means you never had any.
AGplusone: Heinlein thinks non-partisian is a delusion …
Phebe314: Good enough definition. I basically haven’t seen it occur, and this has been a great test.
Major oz: You HAVEN’T seen it in the current test?
AGplusone: and bi-partisian is silly and impossible as it connot exist with a platform that has any difference with that of another party.
Major oz: And it is a betrayal of those who agreed with you enough to vote you in.
AGplusone: You’re either in all the way, or out, in his opinion, with the decision of the caucus that made the platform.
AGplusone: Yes
Phebe314: I think I’m as non or bi as possible, thinking that it would be nice to hand count all the counties, and I’m a Republican. No, I have not seen non or bi in the current test. Unless the Florida Supreme Court did show it.
Major oz: That was the shining example of extreme partisanship.
Reilloc: Which decision?
Major oz: …..overruling the dissinterest that a court is supposed to exhibit
Major oz: both
Phebe314: Well, that’s what we all thought upon going to bed, and Cheney had a heart attack over it, but it DID result in a victory for Bush! However temporary.
Phebe314: The first decision, moving the deadline out a week, the one the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t like.
Major oz: I have no quarrel with the FSC. My quarrel is that they pretend to be what they are not.
DavidWrightSr: Phebe and Reilloc. I don’t know if you saw it, but we had a decision not to get into the Dems vs. Rep. debate.
Reilloc: We’re just lucky to have a guy like Rhenquist around to keep things from being decided politically.
Major oz: ….ah……but David said “free chat for 10 min”
Phebe314: Oh, that must have been at some point when I wasn’t here.
Reilloc: It must have been in some universe I haven’t entered yet.
AGplusone: He’s right about the decision … if you wish to discuss it for 3 minutes, fine with me. It was Phebe before we started.
Major oz: I have no problem with any of the partisanships involved, just that they won’t admit it.
AGplusone: But I’m going to close the log now.
Reilloc has left the room.
DavidWrightSr: Agreed.
AGplusone: Room is yours … I’m gone.
Major oz: whoa
Major oz: is 21 dec discussion cancelled?
DavidWrightSr: Yes
Major oz: hokay
AGplusone: Closing log: Saturday, December 9, 2000, 4:58 PM, PST.
Major oz: night, dave
DavidWrightSr: There was discussion on Thursday. Did you see the log?
AGplusone: Yes, night Oz … and now that I’ve closed the log … go ahead … just this doesn’t appear in the log David or anyone else posts.
Major oz: Question has been nagging me: FraSprea, is Fra a title?
FraSprea: no!! .
Phebe314: Well, I’ll go on too, then —— I gather some pizza awaits in the other room. Thanks all, lots of fun.
FraSprea: My name.. Francesco
Major oz: hokay, no offense……..
FraSprea: no, of course .
DavidWrightSr: Frank Not Francis Right?
AGplusone: No offense taken. I’ll be happy to discuss the election and my view off the record with you Oz.
FraSprea: right
Major oz: that was directed at Fra, David.
DavidWrightSr: Although Francis was a ‘male’ mule in the movie .
AGplusone: ‘kay
AGplusone: Francis is my brother’s middle name
Phebe314 has left the room.
FraSprea: the talking mule, yes .
DavidWrightSr: No I’ve got it wrong. Frances is female , Frances is male\
AGplusone: and Frances was my mother’s first name
AGplusone: Franc*i*s is male
DavidWrightSr: Oops
FraSprea: yes.. and Frances female.. I’m getting fuzzy…
DavidWrightSr: David, don’t forget to send me the portion of the log that I missed, or you can send the whole thing if you want to edit it.
Major oz: Hokay, folks; I’m out of here. Happy Holidays to all and stay off the roads as much as possible. See you next year.
FraSprea: next time in a month, then?
KultsiKN: See ya, Oz!
Major oz has left the room.
AGplusone: Yes
AGplusone: Topic: guns, glory road, etc.
AGplusone: I’ll post and mail it.
DavidWrightSr: Thanks.
FraSprea: ok, oh, interesting
AGplusone: G’nmite all. Thanks for coming everyone.
FraSprea: Merry Xmas then and a Happy new year
KultsiKN: Oh Ghod! Can’t we put them on different discussions, pretty please!
AGplusone: Yes, have lovely ones everyone
FraSprea: se ya next century, good night
DavidWrightSr: s’ prazdnikom
AGplusone: .
DavidWrightSr: Next Millennium
Final End Of Discussion Log
