I encourage everyone to read this book. Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky he explains detail about how the media is changing everything.

Hello! Cei here. Thank you for your question and for your willingness to learn and grow for your community!
Question 1.a. If you are providing a space (a group, a confirmation class, a retreat, a bible study, a weekly potluck, a movie night, etc) for these young people to be themselves- to use they name they choose, to use the pronouns that fit for them, and to create norms where the other youth in the space must be respectful of these identities- then you are creating a safe space for the youth to go through the process of self-actualization in their identity. Ideally the church congregation would also be asked to affirm these youth in their identity. Depending on your comfort level, you could address the congregation and explain that you would like the church to be a sacred and safe space for all, and that in the interest of achieving this goal, you would ask them to respect names, pronouns, and gender expressions of all congregation members. b. One of the best ways to advocate for young people to their parents is to explain that the young person is happy, responding well, and thriving in environments where they are allowed to be themselves. If you have a young person who comes to your group/bible study/etc. who is using the name they choose, the pronouns that fit their identity, and is affirmed by the group around them and they are thriving, tell the young person's parents so. It may be that at home the parents see a kid who is struggling and sad and they are scared that being gender diverse will make things harder for their already unhappy child. To show that gender affirmation can radically improve a kid's quality of life is often the best motivator for parents to adopt affirming language.

2. Here are links to a few resources that we've found helpful over the years: Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, The Transgender Teen, The Genderquest Workbook, Confi's Article on Gender, Families In TRANSition.

I hope this helps, and thanks again for advocating for the gender diverse people at your church!

The recommended section is just a treasure trove of amazing garbage:

Ben Shapiro

Mike Thernovich

Vox Day

This dumbass

The_Alinsky_fearer has logged on

Trump as a soviet worker

Sharia law is coming to your chipolte

The adventures of Hitler

Scott Adams: Failing is actually success

He wrote a whole book (or, well, a collection of essays and other stuff chronicling his lifelong anarchy support): http://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Anarchism-Noam/dp/1904859208

He's one of the most well known anarchist thinkers.

He wrote a 'book' as well, this is a scary man....

Why I'm Making It Legal for Your 18 Year Old Daughter to Get In Bed with a Complete Stranger for Only 500 Bucks: A Short Essay from a Pro Se Litigant who is Challenging the Utah Brothel Bans https://www.amazon.com/dp/1520441509/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_Uz2lzb95W508N

You, Laura Southern, are a bright northern light casting a warm glow on all our shoulders. Thank you for being you. :) Congratulations on your "Barbarians" book I hope it sells like pancakes with bacon and maple syrup.


Did you idolize anybody in the news business growing up?

NMMNG is a good starting place, a gentle introduction.

Now you should move on and read the Book of Pook and Jack Donovan's The Way of Men. You should also be learning more TRP theory and applying it IRL. Lift, approach women, find your mission and pursue it, etc.

If you don't wanna fall backward, then it is incumbent that you keep moving forward.

Some responses and questions for your thoughts here (thanks for being thorough, by the way):

You say:

> 1) The polarization of society shows that… moral standards are being strengthened rather than lowered.

> a) To say that [moral standards] are lower because they are not Catholic is to [claim that the] Church [is] right because it says it is right, not because it is [demonstrable.]

I say:

First, “polarization of society” does not equal a “strengthening” of Catholic moral standards. Just because two groups hold competing and increasingly hostile views does not mean that either of those groups hold to the fullness of any particular moral standard, let alone Catholic ones.

As an aside, I’d also be interested in what you mean by “polarization of society.” Which society? What kind of moral structure do these two polarities adhere to? Are there really only two dominant competing moral theories that exist?

Second, how would you suggest we demonstrate the superiority of a particular moral position in a way that is intelligible to those who lack the moral language or conceptual framework to grasp it? Alasdair MacIntyre writes about this problem in the important work After Virtue—one cannot simply “demonstrate” the superiority of a moral position because we do not have a common lexicon in which to understand these positions.

I mention this because saying something is “not Catholic, and therefore not right” seems to me a very valid way of expressing one’s moral perspective. It doesn’t “prove” anything, but it encapsulates a moral position succinctly and objectively, something more than most modes of modern moral theory can muster. (I had to keep my m’s going there.)

You say:

> 2) In the 50’s and 60’s Kinsey found that 50% of married men had cheated on their spouses. In 1990 Lauman discovered the number to be 25%, and another report by Treas in 200 showed the number of people who had cheated to be 11%, which shows a decline in infidelity over that period.

I say:

These statistics do not account for the rise of internet pornography, ease of access to said pornography, and certainly doesn’t reflect the actual state of affairs (excuse the pun) between men and women today versus 60 years ago.

As for the first point regarding pornography: “Infidelity” is an amorphous moral term, because it always references how we conceptualize “fidelity”. Does a man remain faithful to his wife if he doesn’t sleep with another woman, but masturbates to pornography in the confines of marriage? As the taboo against porn has waned, so has the increase of its consumption (an easily searchable statistic.) It has become easier and “safer” to satisfy extramarital sexual desire through the use of the internet, so it follows that the more “risky investment” of an affair would fall.

Finally, the statistics you mentioned, especially Kinsey, cannot account for the actual occurrence of infidelity. Most are already aware of Kinsey’s methodological problems, and of course the very nature of infidelity is one that is shrouded in deceit.

Therefore, it isn’t helpful to use statistics surrounding infidelity and illegitimacy when discussing morals unless: 1) there is an agreed upon understanding of what constitutes infidelity and 2) there are a number of more reports regarding infidelity with varying methodologies that might be compared.

You say:

> 3) …even though they are not married, [couples with children are] still performing the same roles as if they were married

I say

This isn’t relevant to the thesis that “love, marriage, sex and procreation are all things that belong together” for the simple reason that, even if marital “roles” are established, the sacrament of marriage, which is an essential component of a “right” moral structure (as it relates to the identity of the human person, which relates to the identity of God, which relates to the ultimate happiness of the human person) is deemed unnecessary. This deeming rejects a sacramental word-view, which in turns rejects the foundation of Catholic moral theory (again, as it pertains to human flourishing in relation to the Sacred/Divine).

You say

> 4) “…with the expansion of women’s rights we are… objectifying women less than when Humanae Vitae was written.”

I say

As you mentioned, this is your opinion, and one I can appreciate—but disagree with. I agree with you that this is a “touchy” subject primarily because we haven’t done a good job defining what it means to “objectify” the human person. I think it’s clear this kind of objectification has always been present in human history, but I also think it’s clear that it has grown worse in the 20th century moving forward. Simply look at the “adult entertainment” industry for proof of this: There is literally a multi-billion dollar industry that revolves around turning the bodies of men and women into consumable objects. Not to mention the sex-trafficking industry is operating at an all-time high and demand is ever-growing. These kinds of industries have always existed, to be sure, but never before on such a massive scale and with so much tacit support from the general population.

You say

> 5) “Government coercion in reproductive matters [seem] hardly tied to expansion [of] birth control…children are expensive and as society becomes more consumeristic… people would rather spend their money on more things rather than more children.”

I say

Two things: First, I agree that people would rather spend their money on things than children. This fact supports the thesis that birth control has a corrupting and constricting effect on the morality of a nation, not a liberating one. Orienting people’s desires towards products rather than people is a commonly mentioned moral transgression, in and outside of a Christian ethical schema.

Second, it’s hard to prove “government coercion” when it comes to the expansion of birth control. In fact, countries like Japan are now having to encourage that their citizens not use birth control because of the devastating effect of population decline on the economy. But when the aforementioned consumeristic ideology has taken root even in the minds of those who control government, it’s clear to see why dispensing contraceptives becomes a priority, even to the point of elevating them to the status of a “woman’s health product.”

Finally:

I think that your conclusion that “the prophecies of Humanae Vitae did not come true” is unsubstantiated and, perhaps more unfortunately, a misunderstanding of a component of the document’s argument. The idea that “increased birth control is an effect and not a cause of the shift in moral standards” glosses over the reality that moral standards are tied to material changes. The advent and widespread dissemination of artificial birth control was a catalyst, not an effect for the growth for the already-present disordered sexual ethos found natively in virtually every culture.

He's written and published an essay!

TIL Lauren Southern wrote a book as well. It's listed down below in the "buy together" recommendation.

Eh, Marx was inevitable. He took the ideas of a genius, Hegel, and the idea of the historical dialectic and inverted it.

Marx made a good observation about a way of interpreting the driving forces behind human history. He was ultimately wrong (historical materialism is too simplistic), but that idea was going to happen one way or the other.

We ought to blame Marx as much as Stalin and Mao as well as everyone else who behaved like a total fuckwad when it wasn’t necessary to behave like a total fuckwad.

I recommend everyone to listen to Peter Singer summarize Hegel

https://www.amazon.com/Hegel-Short-Introduction-Peter-Singer/dp/019280197X

And Marx

https://www.amazon.com/Marx-Short-Introduction-Peter-Singer/dp/0192854054

Edit: Lots of overlap between Peterson and Hegel btw. Though Hagel was highly critical of the Classical Liberal notion of freedom.

Edit: Fixed spelling for all anal retentives

I think it's more like a neoconservative sub in the sense that neoconservatism, when it's really effective, is to present right-wing or far-right positions as the true "left" position. A lot of the people there would've been big Christopher Hitchens fans during the Iraq War and so on, and they do still think very highly of him. I've also seen the "Euston Manifesto" get shared around there which is an old neocon document from the mid-2000s. Basically the argument was that the parts of the left that opposed the war had betrayed its principles and fallen into "moral relativism" and all these right-wing tropes. Today this kind of tendency also rewords the main right-wing positions of the time (cracking immigrants over the head with clubs, transphobia, etc.) as left-wing positions.

If anyone here is British they might be familiar with Nick Cohen. It's like "I'm on the left guys really but why is the left apologizing for MILITANT ISLAM???" Stupidpol is Nick Cohen-esque:

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Left-How-Lost-its/dp/0007229704

The analysis of the stock transactions was put forward in a book by Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The book, entitled "Throw Them All Out", and subtitled How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison, was featured in a recent "60 Minutes" investigation that gained a lot of attention.

In it, Schweizer said McDermott "bet big" by buying 2,000 shares in ID Biomedical of Quebec for $10 apiece in June 2004. That was six weeks before the House of Representatives passed the $5.6 billion bill dubbed Project Bioshield. Shares in the company subsequently tripled before McDermott sold them in September 2005.

Asked if he was accusing Rep. McDermott of insider trading, book author Schweizer said, "it is highly unethical to purchase stock in a bill you are supporting and then enjoy the profits when the corporate recipients see their stock climb."

Also named in the book as beneficiaries of cronyism and insider tips are Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

> 4.Which is a better outcome

The best outcome is following the truth about homosexuality and abortion, don't you think?

And truth can't be "made more accessible" or changed for utilitarian ends like bringing people back. It just is true.

I would highly recommend some good books, such as What is Marriage: Man and Woman, a Defense and Persuasive Pro-Life by Trent Horn. It may help to understand why pro-lifers and people who believe in natural marriage hold the views they hold, before suggesting they change them.

Furthermore, many liberal denominations are in decline, even though they changed their teachings to be more accommodating to outsiders. The Catholic Church does not need to become more liberal or accommodating to current trends to thrive and be successful: https://onenewsnow.com/church/2016/11/20/study-churches-with-conservative-theology-grow-faster

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Civil-Resistance-Works-Nonviolent/dp/0231156839

Collected data on protests between 1900 -2006. Showed that non-violent protests are about twice as likely to work than violent protests. This is the book that extinction rebellion frequently talk about.

Think by Simon Blackburn.

and

Five Dialogues of Plato.

I'm afraid you're seriously mistaken. Two people of the same sex can't be married. It's like how a square can't be a circle. It just goes against the definition of the term.

If you want to understand why I say this, I highly recommend this book. It explains why it is illogical to consider anything other than an exclusive man-woman union as a marriage.

This isn't about "tolerance". This is about the meaning of the term marriage.

It was front page news several weeks ago, and the man who wrote the book about all of this is enjoying a few weeks on the bestseller's list.

>Princeton University’s Omar Wasow studied protest movements in the 1960s and found that violent upheaval tended to make white voters more conservative, whereas nonviolent protests were associated with increased liberalism among white voters. “These patterns suggest violent protest activity is correlated with a taste for ‘social control’ among the predominantly white mass public,” wrote Wasow in his study.
>
> Stephan and Erica Chenoweth produced a book, Why Civil Resistance Works, which found nonviolent resistance movements were twice as likely as violent movements to achieve their aims in the 20th and early 21stcenturies.

Important message here. It shows that violence is counter-productive.

Here's the thing, International Relations is all about figuring out why states act as they do, using culture as the metric misses a lot of motivation for how states interact as logical players in a somewhat anarchistic game of survival as a state.

I haven't read this book, but I've read Joesph Nye and he's also one of the standards that most IR students will end up reading.
https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Global-Conflict-Cooperation-Introduction/dp/0205851630/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

I also mention Mearsheimer's Tragedy of Great Power Politics in another comment. It's heavily assigned and great if you loved playing Risk as a kid.
https://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Great-Power-Politics-Updated/dp/0393349276

• Why abortion isn't about "life"
  
• Why outlawing abortion is deeply immoral
  
  If you want to be well prepared, get a hold of prominent ethicist Peter Singer's book Practical Ethics!

OMG I know this dude.. Look up his "book" on Amazon: https://smile.amazon.com/Making-Legal-Daughter-Complete-Stranger/dp/1520441509/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

The "secular" argument against the redefinition of marriage is based on the discussion about what marriage is. The moment you frame the discussion around "equality of marriage" you're already taking a step beyond the basis that form marriage in the first place, so it's question begging.

One must first define what marriage is and then we can begin to discuss whether people have a "right" to it. The secular argument is based on natural law (regardless if people think or don't understand it).

I have yet to have a single pro-gay-marriage person give a definition of marriage that ultimately doesn't make marriage meaningless, which would mean they're advocating something they don't believe exists in the first place, which is absurd.

BTW, this is a secular defense of traditional marriage: http://amzn.com/1594036225

Feast your eyes on this: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Legal-Daughter-Complete-Stranger/dp/1520441509

And then you can google-fu from there if you're not dead of laughter.

https://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Boomers-Immigrants-Screwed-Generation/dp/1541136942

gotta hand it to her, she definitely used all the buzzwords

> Rich people aren't being represented obviously!

This book, outlined in this article and summarized in this video says otherwise. It is an inevitability of liberal democracy.

^^I'm ^^agreeing ^^with ^^you, ^^btw.

There are a few core psychological drives that compel men to do what they do. In no particular order:

Sex, obviously. Sexual dimorphism results in males on average having stronger libidos than women of similar demographic. Year+ dry-spells often lead men to suicide ideation.

Female companionship Ties in closely with sex, but is moreso the emotional connection component. Sex alone isn't enough to satisfy men's psychological needs; a supportive and loving partner is necessary. But on the flipside, a supportive female companion but lack of sex is also insufficient for healthy psychological functioning. Case study: /r/deadbedrooms

Male companionship Men generally seek esteem and reputation among their peers. For reference, the feeling a man gets when his fellow men look to him for leadership or admire his skills is similarly emotionally pleasurable as sexual release or close romantic moments. It's a very different type of emotional gratification, but is on a similar level of pleasurable intensity. This is what fuels male competitiveness.

Competence Along with social gratification from other males, men need to convince themselves of their own competence. A man that does not believe in himself is not psychologically healthy, regardless of how others view him.

Independence For most men, there is no greater disgrace than being a burden to others. Case study: chronic unemployment or underemployment is strongly correlated to suicide.

Purpose Ties in a good bit with male companionship and independence. Men want a cause. I know that personally, I feel much more driven, dilligent, and psychologically healthy when I know people are counting on me. I'd postulate than a cultural "lack of feeling of purpose" has contributed to increasing suicide rates as well. I'd also postulate that desire for purpose leads many men to military service or radical social movements. (Case study: Disaffected European men joinging ISIS)

There's a comment I read a while back about the "male romantic fantasy" which is incredibly insightful into the male psyche. I'll see if I can dig it up.

EDIT: Found it! Incredibly insightful comment chain on "the male romantic fantasy" (The third comment down is the one I want to especially draw attention to. Quoted below)

> The Male Romantic Fantasy
I'd say that men usually feel most loved when this normal state of affairs is negated; when they are made to believe that a woman's love is not conditional in the cause-and-effect manner described in the parent post. Love is work for men, but it can be rewarding work when things are going smoothly and the woman is happy as a result. But the male romantic fantasy is to be shown that the woman feels the same way and stands by him when he's down on his luck, when the money's not there, or when he's not feeling confident. He wants to know that the love he believes he's earned will stay even when the actions that feed it wane (however temporarily). A good woman can often lift a man up in his times of need and desperation and weather the storm even when things aren't going well. The male romantic fantasy is an enduring and unconditional love that seems to defy this relationship of labor and reward. A man wants to be loved for who he is, not for what he does in order to be loved.

> An interesting way to examine this is to look at what women often call romantic entitlement. An entitled guy is a dude who maintains an unrealistic notion of men's typically active role in love. Before acknowledging reality, this boy uncompromisingly believes that he shouldn't have to do anything or change anything about himself to earn a woman's love; he wants to be loved for who he is, not what he does.

> All men secretly want this, but there comes a day when they eventually compromise out of necessity. After that day, they may spend years honing themselves, working, shaping themselves into the men they believe women want to be chosen by. A massive part of what causes boys to "grow up" is the realization that being loved requires hard work. This impetus begins a journey where a boy grows into a man by gaining strength, knowledge, resources, and wisdom. The harsh realities of the world might harden and change him into a person his boyhood self wouldn't recognize. He might adopt viewpoints he doesn't agree with, transgress his personal boundaries, or commit acts he previously thought himself incapable of. But ultimately, the goal is to feel as if his work is done.

> When he can finally let go of the crank he continually turns day after day in order to earn love and, even if only for a moment, it turns by itself to nourish him in return, that is when he will know he is loved.

If you're up for more in depth reading, I recommend, "The Way of Men" by Jack Donovan. (Disclaimer: towards the end of the book, the author espouses some rather radical personal philosophical views. His personal views in no way reflect my own, but I still see his book as a fantastic window into the baser male psyche)

This guy is insane. He'll probably wait for them outside an event an stab them or something.

He has a book too

he wrote a book. its on amazon. this fucking guy has a book for sale in the real world...

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Legal-Daughter-Complete-Stranger/dp/1520441509

his title game is fire though

You can also buy a book by him, if for some reason you want to dive into his mind (Mildly NSFW cover on it).

haha, instead of asking us, read what he was to say on anarchism

They're cuckservatives. Read more here. https://www.amazon.com/Cuckservative-How-Conservatives-Betrayed-America-ebook/dp/B018ZHHA52

If by 'best journalism on TV' you mean they read Peter Schweizer's book Throw Them All Out.

http://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Peter-Schweizer/dp/0547573146

Prior to Quantitative Easing 1 (QE1), "there were 18 Federal Reserve Board members who were previously high-level executives of the “too big to fails” that were in line to receive the bailouts, according to a GAO report. And 76 percent of Fed board members also own or owned stock in those same institutions."

"Those (top 6 financial) entities spend billions of dollars to lobby Congress and finance Congressional campaigns and buy Presidents (they own both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney)."

Source

Sounds like plenty of corrupt breathing down of throats already.

If you haven't read Throw Them All Out, I highly recommend it. Both sides are corrupt as the day is long, and the Federal Reserve is just another tool of that corruption.

>the manipulated man

It looks very interesting:

https://www.amazon.com/Manipulated-Man-Esther-Vilar/dp/1905177178

I like the top review.

u/Pleasedontstrawmanme u/Umbly u/maluno22

In context, its about a minority of women who claim the large F (feminism) who scream and bray about 'objectification' which was an invented idea by large F, as a means of shaming and dominating sexual discussion and behavior.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVYiJV_1IwM


Consider the fact that women attack others through Reputation Destruction rather than punches to the face. Consider also that big F has always described and reduced sexual activity down to Power Games, Power Dynamic, etc.

Within the context of PD and PG, the term objectification makes sense. They have literally been pounding away at these memes since the 1960's, to shift the narrative from "people are selfish and sometimes want to just have sex with someone for pleasure" to "men, specifically, objectify women by desiring them sexually without knowing anything about their family life or their accomplishments, or lack thereof".

To put it another way, does a lion or chimp objectify potential partners because its horny and just wants to screw the other? if humans are an extension of basic animal behavior, then objectification has to be something all species do. But you can see the problem with this because objectification is defined by large F as willful and intentional degradation of others, and I don't think any animals, even humans, are doing that simply because they find something attractive.

If there's one thing you notice among large F people who discuss objectification, they typically fall WELL outside social norms of beauty. The suffragette panels of the early 1900's looked like a leper colony.

https://www.amazon.com/Manipulated-Man-Esther-Vilar/dp/1905177178

Consider the fact that today merely questioning the honesty and integrity of large F or people who cry about objectification gets you attacked and shamed nearly universally in the western world. Consider also the fact that narcissism, sociopathy, and psychopathy exist in women just as much as it does in men, and the fact that such people are NOT 100% raving lunatics, but often careful and meticulous in playing with others and looking for power and dominance over others. Consider that every group or movement can be co-opted by people with truly evil intentions and no actual connection to humanity.

Consider that all of this "women are wonderful" business has provided the PERFECT cover for female narcissists, sociopaths, etc, to abuse, shame, humiliate men in general or specific for any man transgressing against women by "objectification" while not being sexually valuable.

What's that joke? How to avoid sexual harassment. Step 1: Be attractive. Step 2: Don't be unattractive.

Women seem perfectly fine being "objectified" if the guy has some sort of value or attractiveness. I've met more than one woman who complained about their ex being "objectifying" or "sexist" AFTER breaking up from 3 years. And more than once this has involved really decent guys who actively tried to keep the relationship together.

In particular, there was one woman who claimed her ex tried to rape her, which is completely ridiculous because she was always a slut and was once fucking 3 different guys before she got with her boyfriend, he is not a rapist and he's now happily married to a non-psycho, and she consistently gets drunk and tries to have sex with the nearest pole. There's no need for him to try to rape her. And when she talked about it, there weren't any details, it was just vague suggestion. This same person also showed me texts of another guy talking about his dick to her, and she was pretending to be upset about it, but it was really a demonstration of sexual value because she had been fucking this guy previously and was using him as a form of narcissistic supply, for sex and attention, when she was lonely, and then shit talking him when she wasn't. She's been PUA spinning him as a plate for 2 years.

What this comes down to is Reputation Destruction as Revenge because of ill will and bad feelings, or laying the groundwork for sympathy, etc.

Maybe not all men have experienced the worst that there is in women, and they can count themselves lucky. Maybe they HAVE experienced the worst, but have been unable to understand it or reason it out because they've consistently been fed the narrative that men are predators and women are victims of men, and that "women are wonderful", so they can't conceive that women could be highly manipulative and that especially women who want to dominate would claim positions of authority, like large F, to manipulate men on a grand scale.

Just look at how women are benefiting from the double standard, able to behave that way while men basically cant. Look to who benefits and who is controlled, and you should see that its all a game of power.

Someone made a sub this time around to document the widespread absurdity:

/r/BernieBlindness

It's hard to not conclude the media aren't a corrupt monolith.

EDIT:

Noam Chomsky concluded this long ago:
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Noam Chomsky​ Lecture with introduction by Bernie Sanders​

He basically makes his money from critiquing the left. He wrote this book back in 2007 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whats-Left-Lost-Liberals-Their/dp/0007229704


Literally "what happened to the left", and hes been cashing those "i don't like the left" checks for like 10 years at this point.


That said, hes not wrong, corbyn needs to go

If you mean the original Hegelian idea, not Marxism, then good luck; it's bizarre and baffling. The clearest book I ever read on it was Peter Singer's Hegel, A Very Short Introduction. Singer does as good a job as anyone could. For Marx's version, Singer's Marx, A Very Short Introduction is the best introduction too.

Before diving in, Scott does a very good job of explaining why its worth paying at least a bit of attention to Hegel even given his horrible reputation among analytic philosophers

I'm amazed at how little philosophy the ""philosophers"" that write for these magazines seem to know. I've read just two books on Hegel and the very first thing that pops out is how utterly divergent he is from the enlightenment ideal of progress through incremental problem-solving. Hegel's version of progress is Mind/Spirit resolving contradictions through a dialectical struggle, then reaching a new understanding of itself, as part of a historical process with the goal of obtaining absolute knowledge. That's not a kind of progress that Kant or Mill or the American founding fathers would recognize.

This is subjective, but in the moral philosophy course I'm taking right now we are currently covering what is called ethical intuitionism, and W.D. Ross and Michael Huemer (perhaps even Huemer more so than Shafer-Landau and Audi) can be considered some of the best here due to their innovative expositions. Ross is usually taught in intro classes, and Huemer even wrote a book called Ethical Intuitionism.

Ignorant? That was the published opinion of Alisdair MacIntyre, the greatest (and most respected) moral philosopher of the last 100 years in what is generally considered the most important book on moral philosophy in that time period, After Virtue.

Ignorance is not even knowing the basics of the conversation, its terms, its players, and what is or is not actually up for debate. Go spend time on /r/badphilosophy and see how often your own view point comes up.

IMHO the realist/Clausewitzian explanation is by far the most effective. The theory posits that all states are inherently confrontational, as all states seek to maximize their own security, and doing so necessarily compromises the security of other states. The situation is tragic, as elucidated by Mearsheimer.

How this is Clausewitzian is that he posited that any state in a position of strength would become aggressive, whereas any state that is weak would become passive and seek peace. China and Russia were both in positions of extreme weakness around 2000 economically, something that they both fixed during the GWB administration. Note China and Russia's economic ascendance during his terms. Both the Chinese and Russians have expressed the desire for peaceful relations with the US, neither of which receive much reciprocation, because the US doesn't have to, at least not yet.

So, bottom line, China and Russia have become aggressive because they can now actually challenge US aggression...and make no mistake the US has been ultra-aggressive since the end of WWII (chart #2 shows % of global military spending by US since 1988).

>Unless you can qualify this statement with an actual source of information it is only an opinion.

I did mention that there's an entire book of source. Don't bother with the Amazon reviews, just read it. Get it out of the library if you don't want to pay money.

Maajid on Twitter today acknowledged that, although he coined the term, Nick Cohen was really the grandfather of the concept. He published a book on the subject in 2007 called What's Left.

From the /r/philosophy sidebar: Think, by Simon Blackburn. I've read it, and it's exactly what you're looking for.

Tell her to do the work herself. She is a professional therapist, that's her job! I guarantee you aren't the first or last person she'll see with gender issues.

Books:
http://www.amazon.com/Transgender-Emergence-Therapeutic-Guidelines-Gender-Variant/dp/078902117X

http://www.amazon.com/Trans-Bodies-Selves-Transgender-Community/dp/0199325359

You'd be hard pressed to find an Ethicist who agrees with you. You know - someone who's philosophy major was in ethics?

Here's a good book to read - maybe you should consider taking an ethics course.

As stated in this segment, it is based research done in this book, http://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Peter-Schweizer/dp/0547573146/?tag=wwwbreitbartc-20 . The book probably should be required reading.

I have many gay friends, so when I first shifted from an ideological libertinism to traditional value set, I was having trouble reconciling my views. Isn't the right supposed to hate gays? I am against cultural degeneracy, and homosexuality seems degenerate, so what does one make of it? Furthermore, the science clearly shows that homosexuality, whether an aesthetic preference or
"sexual orientation," is generally not a choice (though there is nuance).

Reading The Way of Men by Jack Donavan, who is gay, helped to clear this up for me. He argues that what we need to fight is not homosexuality, but the men who work to upend and destroy traditional masculine values (strength, honor, courage, mastery). The two heavily overlap, especially in urban circles, which leads to the association, but this still leaves a quite significant percentage of honorable gay men.

Interestingly, a counterculture is emerging among male homosexuals to distance themselves from their peers. They've been coopted by the Left, willingly, in exchange for sinecures like gay "marriage." This is what happens when you sell your soul; you no longer get to determine how it is used, and they are now open to blowback. The risk is that the public will take back all of their gains and then some, which the gays with foresight recognize in leaving L-BT behind.

I've heard good things about Vox Day. I haven't read much but there were a few good posts along our lines.

The book "The Way of Men" by Jack Donovan is a strong read for anyone.

While some of OP's responses make me question that this is being asked in good faith, I will nonetheless try to answer.

First, one needs to consider the fact that there is literally a book on non-religious reasons why Gay marriage is bad policy. This is a pdf of the article that the book was later spun into with more arguments and sources. It is only 43 pages long and easy to understand.

Ultimately, it comes down to a couple of things: if you think there is value in humans procreating, then marriage policy should encourage biological sex (reproduction) in any shape or form to the exclusion of other relationships, otherwise, there is no added incentive to have children.

Similarly, you need to think of people as having natural ends, limited as they may be. Biologically, humans tend towards survival, reproduction, and expansion. If you do not think humans are supposed to, by our nature (because you deny that humans have a particular nature, which many people do and have done) do anything of the aforementioned, then this argument will ring hollow to you. You might say, is a computer natural? I would say yes, any tool is a natural expansion of our desire to survive and expand. Computers included.

Therefore, you might see then that while a liberal approach (classically speaking) might want to leave gay people alone to enjoy their rights to self determine, the same people might not want to extend incentives designed to reward a stable family unit to a relationship that will neither result in children, nor can.

From the article above:

> A thought experiment might crystallize the central argument. Almost every culture in every time and place has had some institution that resembles what we know as marriage. But imagine that human beings reproduced asexually and that human offspring were self‐sufficient. In that case, would any culture have developed an institution anything like what we know as marriage? It seems clear that the answer is no....The essential features of marriage would be missing; there would be no human need that only marriage could fill....Because marriage uniquely meets essential needs in such a structured way, it should be regulated for the common good, which can be understood apart from specifically religious arguments. And the needs of those who cannot prudently or do not marry (even due to naturally occurring factors), and whose relationships are thus justifiably regarded as different in kind, can be met in other ways.

You can take it or leave it, but it is rather meaningless now that gay marriage is the law of the US.

He wrote a book called On Anarchism:
http://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Anarchism-Noam/dp/1904859208

Which I read and can confirm: he's an anarchist. Not marxist collectivist statist at all.

I suggest Men on Strike by Hellen Smith, I see her book as the most redpilled I've ever seen written by a woman and plus no shaming BS. She doesn't mention MGTOW, but she was able to spot everything we agree in general about marriage and law.

​

Then you can read The Manipulated man and the rational male. I think it's a great order to read.

​

Men on Strike: https://www.amazon.com/Men-Strike-Boycotting-Marriage-Fatherhood-ebook/dp/B00OFK22Y8/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1537752537&sr=1-1&keywords=men+on+strike&dpID=51yxYrh%252B4xL&preST=_SY445_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

​

The manipulated man: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1905177178/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

​

The rational male: https://www.amazon.com/Rollo-Tomassi/e/B00J2165RA/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1537752638&sr=1-2-ent

Free:

Stanford's Intro to logic - w/ Free online tools for completing exercises.

Paul Teller's Modern formal logic primer - w/ free tools for completing exercises

Peter Smith’s Teach Yourself Logic and other materials, like his reading guide

Katarzyna Paprzycka Logic Self-Taught - w/ free workbook

J. Ehrlich's "Carnap Book" - w/ free exercises & tools

Open Logic Project - and List of other open/free sources.

Not Free or Kinda Free:

Gensler's Introduction to Logic - Book not free, but Free online tools

Howard Pospesel's Introductions to Formal Logic (prop and pred) - Book includes useful software for additional logic exercises

Practical Ethics by Peter Singer

Although I disagree with many things in this book it made me reconsider every choice in my life, rethink my moral framework, and my goals in life. For me, no other book has been more thought provoking.

I remember when that book came out detailing the insider trading and horrible corruption going on in the halls of Congress. As I recall, 75% of the politicians mentioned negatively in the book are Democrats with the remainder obviously being Republicans. Guess who /r/politics ragged on . . .

Toilet cleaning should be a privilege for these jackals. They deserve to be on a chain gang turning big rocks into smaller rocks. Read "throw them all out" by Peter Schweizer to learn about how nearly all of our elected officials are straight up criminals, via insider trading and other shady deals they all conduct.

Holy shit, he wrote a book

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Legal-Daughter-Complete-Stranger/dp/1520441509

This creep wrote a book too:

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Legal-Daughter-Complete-Stranger/dp/1520441509

Define "news", because his name and face have been out there for a while, in addition to some choice writing.

Can't wait to read this

>You proved my point exactly, that media is biased.. thank you. They intentionally paint her as such, yet you can’t find any work she has done (without it being completely edited) - aka a primary source.. which can reasonably paint her as such.

>Name one thing, together with primare source footage that mandates her being far right or white nationalist.

She backs "Defend Europe" which is a white-identity/white-nationalist group, and has been arrested in work with them.

She wrote and published this book. from it's own back cover: "Southern is a Right-wing activist"

Her Allah is gay leaflet was the spark that got her denied from entering the UK, which was a trip to meet up with the English Defense League, which is very clearly "far right"

Bunch of fun ones in this video

@4:00 "the Alt-right calls me alt-lite, the alt lite call me alt-right"
@7:29 "I'll be going out and doing some postering for the "It's okay to be white movement"

I can't check further on this 18min video right now, but I'm sure there's more. And this is her talking, not being "busted" so it's only her side, talking to someone on her side.

She's staunch anti muslim, anti lgbt and anti feminism. That's pretty damned clear to me. I don't call anyone fascist or neo nazis, and focusing on the few people that do go that far just undermines your own arguments.

She IS racist. She IS bigoted.

There's really no question about it. He has been an anarchist his entire life.

But to your second point, I can remember a conservative teacher complaining to the class about teaching Chomskian grammar, because she found his politics offensive, but couldn't discard his linguistic work.

Awesome article.

For more, here's a decent documentary based on Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent:

>It's basically an institutional analysis of the major media, what we call a propaganda model[...] they do this in all sorts of ways: by selection of topics, by distribution of concerns, by emphasis and framing of issues, by filtering of information, by bounding of debate within certain limits. They determine, they select, they shape, they control, they restrict -- in order to serve the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society.

That was right out of Manufacturing Consent last night, if you ask me.

In no specific order: The Dictator's Handbook: presents a realist perspective on international and intra-national politics, specifically it presents a real-world analysis of politics through the lens of Selectorate Theory.

Something from Chomsky, I'd say Manufacturing Consent or Understanding Power or both. Chomsky has written about 40 books so it's impossible to keep up with him and you may end up disagreeing on substantial points, but I think he's probably the most important to read because he situates his political analysis outside the invisible constraints of American political culture, and American political culture tends to be naive about the goals and methods of government and other institutions.

Watch this CGP Grey video and consider how it applies to political parties, political discourse, and political activism. Afterwards you should either read the meme wikipedia page or Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene.

Looking back I notice all my recommendations circle around studying politics itself as a phenomena, I don't know if that's what you meant but you might enjoy it. If you're more wondering which political stances you should take, decide that by which policies have empirical evidence of working and base your decisions on how robust you think the evidence is.

They had the story from an NSA informant (actually a FISA court lawyer). They were told by the Bush administration that "the terrorists would win" if they published it, so they buried it.

http://www.npr.org/2014/06/05/319233332/new-york-times-editor-losing-snowden-scoop-really-painful

If you want a better idea of the timeline on it, Frontline covered it pretty well.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-secrets/

If you want a better idea why the New York Times would cow-tow to the White House like that, Manufacturing Consent does a pretty good job of explaining the forces at play here (access, flack, anti-terror hysteria).

I see one of them wrote with Vox Day, whose collected works could feed this sub on their own.

Never be afraid to call a spade a spade. This was one of the points made in Cuckservative how the left controls what the right can say - http://www.amazon.com/Cuckservative-How-Conservatives-Betrayed-America-ebook/dp/B018ZHHA52

USAs kutsutakse neid cuckservative'deks. Räägivad küll kõvasti et on konvservatiivsed, aga lagunevad liberaalide ja sotside jõu all nagu selgrootud.

He was behind this in the early 2000s when he thought that the Left was becoming toxic, especially after Iraq.

http://eustonmanifesto.org/the-euston-manifesto/

Essentially a manifesto that says universal values should be upheld instead of relative oppressor/victim politics and the politics of anti-imperialism.

He also wrote the book 'What's left'.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whats-Left-Lost-Liberals-Their/dp/0007229704

This book was a critique of modern double standards in leftists which excuse Islamists, horrible dictatorships and other nasties in the name of anti-imperialism. His principle is that someone like Putin should be opposed, and not supported because he is an enemy of the USA. Same with people like Chavez, Iran, Hamas, Hesbollah and so on.

A few months ago he made a 2 minute video in a spectator column on why he 'left the left'. Critizing Corbyn, though mostly his politics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQQw5T2T94M

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/09/why-ive-finally-given-up-on-the-left/

Alain Badiou recently wrote this article on Hegel's master/slave dialectic, but did so asking the question as to it's relation to real slavery. It answers the question quite nicely while also providing an extremely clear reading of Hegel's argument.

Frederick Beiser also wrote a book on Hegel (there are ways to get the PDF version of this if you look in the right places) that is clear and does a good job dispelling the common misreadings of Hegel.

Peter Singer's Very Short Introduction to Hegel (again, available as a PDF in the right places) is also extremely clear and well written.

If you're serious about reading Hegel, pick yourself up a copy of Phenomenology of Spirit and read through it with Gregory Sadler's Lecture series. He goes through paragraph by paragraph explaining the whole text. He's extremely engaging and extremely insightful.

If you can't get enough Hegel and you want to go all in, I'd recommend The Hegel Variations by Fredric Jameson, Hegel: Three Studies by Theodore Adorno, and Less Than Nothing by some Slovenian guy.

Sorry if that's overkill, hope it helps!

"No longer"?

Do you libs still believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus too?

The US was never Democratic. This is why liberalism is not a real, serious ideology. More like propaganda, mythology, fairy tales to shape how the sheeple feel about and relate to their political overlords. A sheeple control mechanism.

And liberal myths about progressive heroes like Lincoln, FDR, JFK, etc, are nothing more than mythology and hagiography, fulfilling much the same role as, e.g. myths about old Teutonic heroes like Armenius were intended to fill in Nazi Germany.

I'd like to suggest Thomas Ferguson's "Golden Rule."

Wish I had time to engage properly today but I don't. Here's some well regarded arguments for realism you can look into if you haven't already.

Enoch's Taking Morality Seriously Shafer-Landau's [Moral Realism: a Defense] (https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Realism-Defence-Russ-Shafer-Landau/dp/0199280207/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CNVDTNHGJW3FHXNR8821), Oddie's Value, Reality and Desire, Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism, Parfit's On What Matters Wedgwood's The Nature of Normativity, Cuneo's The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism.



And here's some free papers you can read (too lazy to name them all, sorry):
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Boyd5/publication/240034001_How_to_Be_a_Moral_Realist/links/556f6f4308aec226830aab09/How-to-Be-a-Moral-Realist.pdf


http://www.academia.edu/4116101/Why_Im_an_Objectivist_about_Ethics_And_Why_You_Are_Too_


https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=433000088031098030104101075089022124028072042008084011092124087113084016108098084005098003032035018116033080110110127020085084106080012039033080068103113067015099089032030091083096096084064089109093065079071016028099008078093021125125068072101086002&EXT=pdf


https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=207103102008006126082026003080087077015002001000090086121025066112086090029103080091030096049125038001052020081100031102121000046002046043009065006112075102115099049080048111067091106094117103109111097113120126103124079110093018090122114122112110007&EXT=pdf


http://www-personal.umich.edu/~umer/teaching/intro181/readings/shafer-Landau2005EthicsAsPhilosophyADefenseOfEthicalNonnaturalism.pdf


http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1007/s11245-016-9443-7?author_access_token=R2EN7zieClp6VWWEo8DyZPe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY6_LyD8T3yNLLNQUBcKQRpfV5lbirZE36eSIc6PLipzIUjIvQrTe9aO4meFw0oJ_Dp784B0R9TnA9qTFaNLe9oWPQUaroxf3o-BsITKWjp_6Q%3D%3D


http://www.owl232.net/5.htm

Have you read Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue? It is a great book. In the opening chapter he points out that the classic moral/ethical debates (e.g. abortion, homosexuality, pacifism, animal rights, etc.) are all marked by the inability to step out of one pre-determined system of argumentation. People simply argue past one another. Your comment here about 'human goods' vs. 'penis in vagina' is getting at Alasdair's point. When we have these (optimistically named) conversations, we simply entrench ourselves within the system we affectively choose to be in. "If only these would see that (insert assumed premise), then they would understand." This whole thread is a great example of this dilemma. The premises we assume are usually not even assumed consciously and they end up destroying our ability to have a conversation. Natural law or virtue ethics? 'Penis in vagina' or fidelity?

I keep coming back to Nick Cohen's What's Left when these things crop up. Some on the left have a big blind spot when it comes to the behaviour of others on the left, preferring to believe that their innately moral nature means that any reports of misdeeds must surely be propaganda of the right.

Plenty on the left supported Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq prior to 1991, as he was seen to be a pan-Arab socialist standing up to American neocolonialism. The fact that he massacred tens of thousands of Kurds was merely incidental.

Corbyn has banged on and on about how great Venezuela is, when it's wildly corrupt, funds FARC terrorism, and is now pretty close to becoming a totally failed petro-dictatorship.

This is just another example.

Hey man. I am in the same shoes as you. I am going into junior year, and I just started reading Philosophy this summer. I would recommend Simon Blackburn's Think. I am two thirds into it, and its great. He touches on variety of questions and different answers to those questions and arguments for and against those answers, and what effect they have on the world. Here is the link.

As a follow up, Simon Blackburn's [Think](Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy https://www.amazon.com/dp/0192854259/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_kGZMyb74JTWKH) does a great job at providing a wide landscape of philosophical inquiries and possible solutions.

As well as Bertrand Russell's [Problems Of Philosophy](The Problems of Philosophy https://www.amazon.com/dp/1514341018/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_7GZMyb8QH6M4T) , which does the same.

>Socrates isn’t really that convincing for me. Especially because of outside information. Modern biology, psychology and physics, has just completely dismissed my belief in life after death, at least when referring to the soul (Intelligence, conscience, etc.) Now of course this is a cheap shot, since Plato was writing this 2400 years ago.

More than a cheap shot, really. I'd argue that you're missing a lot of the value of Plato (and will miss out on the value of a lot of philosophy) if you're addressing it like this. I'd highly recommend Pierre Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life, which offers a different, and perhaps more productive way of reading Greek writers than what you're doing. If you're looking for his arguments to hold up to neuroscientific accounts of existence, of course Plato isn't going to hold up, but Hadot (and others) would argue that the Plato was more aimed at human flourishing. Alasdair MacIntyre also digs into Aristotle with this in his After Virtue.

Reddit doesn't like Amazon links with a bunch of options because it assumes they are associate links (links where the referrer get a cut of the sale). So when linking Amazon books on Reddit it best to use bare links such as:

• http://www.amazon.com/After-Virtue-Study-Moral-Theory/dp/0268035040
  
• http://www.amazon.com/dp/0268035040
  
  Both of which do the same thing because the book title in the url is ignored by Amazon. In fact you can do the following as well and it would still work:
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/digifork-is-da-bomb-diggity/dp/0268035040
  
• http://www.amazon.com/the-sex-toy-bible/dp/0268035040
  
  Which means you can prank people with Amazon links pretty easily.

Introduction to Logic 2nd ed. by Gensler is a good place to start.

Also, buy her book.

https://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Boomers-Immigrants-Screwed-Generation/dp/1541136942/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485887234&sr=8-1&keywords=lauren+southern

The first one I read was Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, which was a great introduction. It's short and very easy to get into. You can read it in an afternoon. It's actually from a speech he gave, so you can probably find the audio online for free and listen to it instead if you prefer.

But his best book, in my opinion, is Understanding Power. It's more of a collection of essays, speeches and interviews, but it really shaped my understanding of the world better than any other book I have read. I can't recommend this book enough.

If you're more interested in libertarian socialism, in addition to Understanding Power, read Chomsky on Anarchism. He presents the theories in very clear language, instead of being overly theoretical.

If you're more interested in his writings on US foreign policy, also read either Failed States or Hegemony or Survival.

Enjoy!

Immigration: (the biggest redpill of all of them) https://smile.amazon.com/Cuckservative-How-Conservatives-Betrayed-America-ebook/dp/B018ZHHA52

HBD: (A much broader topic, also check out /r/HBD subreddit) http://www.unz.com/jman/hbd-is-life-and-death/

Behavioral genetics: http://www.unz.com/jman/all-human-behavioral-traits-are-heritable/

SJWs: Where they come from? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_fBYROA7Hk

Race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2RVIi6M7oM

Feminism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mzYKWDx6YI

Diversity: (Diversity actually destroys communities) https://np.reddit.com/r/DebateAltRight/comments/5u734a/what_is_most_worrying_aspect_of_an_international/ddrw8n6/

well. A book that changed my life back when I was 15 was Walden from Thoreau. I threw away everything I owned. yeah I mean everything even my bed. I own nothing that dates from before I was 15. Would this have the same effect today? who knows.

back then, the book Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche had something to to with me ''taking a break'' from school, contributing too did: genealogy of Morals, into the wild, Adorno - dialectic of Enlightenment ( had no idea what that guy was talking about back then but made me real queasy about the world nonetheless.)

books that changed my life recently: Lying from Sam Harris. Steven Pinker - Enlightenment now made me pick a lot of fights with people who like to hate this world.

Insanity of Normality made me forgive some people I had real bad feelings toward, though I'm sceptical now of what is said in the book

unless you understand german you won't be able to read this: Blödmachinen , made me a snob in regards to media. Bernard Stieglers books might have the same effect in english

oh and selfish gene by Dawkins made me less judgmental. Don't know why. I just like people more

EDIT

oh lest I forget: Kandinsky - Concerning The Spiritual in Art made me paint my appartement black blue; Bukowski and the Rubaiyat made me drink more, Born To Run made me run barefoot, Singers Practical Ethics made me donate money and buy far less stuff.

This is a good chance for you to get into ethics/morality. Try 'Practical Ethics' by Peter Singer. It will make you think more deeply and understandingly about morality, including this issue. http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Ethics-Peter-Singer/dp/0521707684

> MGTOW Doesn't Get The Respect It Deserves

Now why is that? We know that its not respectable for a man to quit, to run away from that which he finds appealing (all healthy young men find women appealing). Let alone walking away from a challenge, which women today are.

Lets set a definition. From our side bar glossary:

• Men Going Their Own Way; the growing contingent of the male population who are saying “Fuck It All” to the Mating Dance.
  
  MGTOW are committing an act of self-betrayal. Especially the younger ones. They don't seem to realize an important fact: Eventually we all go MGTOW. Its called "Getting old".
  
  MGTOW just gives a feeling of validation to a generation of young men wasting their days on videogames and porn, completely hoodwinked into thinking that they are wasting nothing by doing so. There is no book, no art, no website that will teach a young man more than he would learn by going out and socializing. Particularly with women he is interested in.
  
  Yes, dating sucks. Yes, it has never been this hard. No, young men should not give up. They should change strategies and improve their socializing skill while they have the energy and availability to do so. Throwing their opportunity in the trash is self-betrayal even if they don't realize the mistake they are making.
  
  Even worse, by accepting the validation that MGTOW provides, they are taking on an identity that other people have made for them.
  
  
  > backlash from women because it is a direct threat to their sexual strategy
  
  Absolutely not. Read the sidebar. They will happily move on to the available men, particularly the top 20%.
  
  > Even those that are in happy relationships seem to understand why MGTOW makes sense and can come to a rational agreement and support the freedom that MGTOW gives men.
  
  Running away is not freedom. Freedom when one is able to do something one wants to do. This is granted via the right perspective, which is for a man to put himself first. MGTOW cannot lay claim to this perspective or any other self-improvement despite its attempts to redefine itself.
  
  > However it is not meant to be a lifetime commitment as it directly challenges our biological need to procreate and reproduce.
  
  This is somewhat correct but for the wrong reasons. The challenge from MGTOW is not to our biology but to our freedom, which is (indirectly) what MGTOW will do to a young man as he ages.
  
  From the MGTOW subreddit sidebar definition:
  
  "We are men going our own way by forging our own identities and paths to self-defined success; cutting through collective ideas of what a man is."
  
  > forging our own identities
  
  Admirable try. Identity is created by harsh experiences and reactions from others, as undesirable as that may be.
  Also, interpersonal identity is not as self defined as one would hope
  
  
  > paths to self-defined success
  
  Here is the problem: If one does not know what a successful life is or its potential, how would one know what success is or can be? I ask rhetorically because its clear that younger men do not personally know their potential . They have no business writing off the things they aspire to, this is essentially why MGTOW gets a bad rap, as it should.
  
  The men who experience high levels of success do everything they can to continue it and increase it. They do not check out because of the complaints that MGTOW espouse.
  
  > cutting through collective ideas of what a man is.
  
  Thanks to feminists and gender identity politics "A man" is a murky concept that everyone believes they have a valid opinion on. Young men are understandably unclear about it.
  
  Here is a part of one of my definitions:
  A man changes his environment to his will, as best he can.
  
  Here is a good book on the matter
  
  
  In conclusion, game (Socializing) is a skill and if every MGTOW built up that skill instead of rationalizing away his retreat there would be no such thing as MGTOW. I have empathy for these boys but they are making the wrong choice. We only live once.

This interview is transcribed in the book Chomsky on Anarchism.

That’s not surprising. Propaganda works. There’s a book you might want to check out called Manufacturing Consent that explains why the media pushes certain ideas even if those ideas are lies. The book was written in the 80s but it’s just as true today as it was then.

https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media-ebook/dp/B0055PJ4R0

1. Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins
   
   
2. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
   
   
3. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media by Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky
   
   
4. Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies and the Public Relations Industry by John Stauber

What the hell do you mean we can't win by opposing the liberals on x, then once x passes, accepting x as hallowed tenet of conservatism? What are you saying? That we're cucks? How dare you! When opposing women's suffrage was the right thing to do, we opposed it. But once it was clear that Women's suffrage was in keeping with conservative principles we accepted it. And when we let Reagan ban machine guns and allow no-fault divorce and amnesty for illegals, those were conservative positions, and don't you dare criticize him for it! And we might have been the first ones to propose Obamacare, but when it came time to oppose it, we did! But of course we couldn't repeal it when it came time. It was the status quo once it passed. After all, we're conservatives and we conserve the status quo, whatever the hell it might be.

There's actually a book called Cuckservative that was recently written by two Native Americans as a way to warn the West about white genocide.

Here's the Amazon description of the book:

> Fifty years ago, America was lied to and betrayed by its leaders.

> With virtually no debate, Congress passed the most radical change to immigration law in American history. Since 1965, America has endured the biggest mass migration of people in human history, twice the size of the great wave of immigration into the USA between 1870 and 1930. As a result, Americans are being displaced in their own land by an ongoing invasion that dwarfs Operation Barbarossa, is two orders of magnitude larger than the Mongol hordes, and is one thousand times larger than the First Crusade.

> America's so-called conservative leaders and the conservative media have joined forces with liberal internationalists in openly celebrating this massive invasion, relying on bad theology, outdated economics, and historical myths to falsely claim that immigration is a moral imperative, an economic necessity, and in the national interest. Cuckservative: How "Conservatives" Betrayed America is a powerful defense of America's right to exist as a nation by two Native American authors, as well as a damning indictment of a conservatism that has failed to conserve America's culture and traditions.

> This powerful and remorseless book addresses the myth of the Melting Pot, proves that mass immigration is a net negative for the U.S. economy, and exposes the anti-Christian ideology behind the Christian establishment's support for multiculturalism and open borders. It even shows how 50 years of immigration have lowered America's average IQ. The authors pull no punches in conclusively demonstrating that it is not right, it is not moral, it is not economically beneficial, and it is not Constitutional to betray America's posterity.

> In Cuckservative, John Red Eagle and Vox Day warn Americans that if they do not defend their culture, their posterity, and their nation, they will eventually find themselves on their own Trail of Tears.

https://www.amazon.ca/Cuckservative-How-Conservatives-Betrayed-America-ebook/dp/B018ZHHA52

For those looking for a good introduction on Hegel, I recommend the Very Short Introduction title written by Peter Singer.

I think my favourite introductory book was Blackburn's Think, which was just a good all-round explanation of lots of areas of philosophy. Another excellent book was The Philosophy Book which goes through the history of philosophy and explains the (or one of the) 'big idea' of the major philosophers. One really nice thing they do is for each of these they do a flow chart of the philosopher's argument for their view, which I found a really useful thing for understanding. Other very good introductory books are the philosophy-related books in the Very Short Introductions series by OUP, for example they have ones on lots of the big philosophers, as well as on ethics, free will, philosophy of science, existentialism, metaphysics, logic, the meaning of life etc.

For non-book stuff, I highly recommend the Philosophy bites podcast. Basically these are reasonably short (10-20 min) highly accessible interviews with professional philosophers. There have been so many now that there's one for practically any topic you find interesting and they are all very high quality philosophy.

What might also be useful to you are the resources on the Routledge site for the UK Philosophy A-Level (i.e. in the last two years of our equivalent of high school we do 3-5 A-Level qualifications, and one of the ones you can choose from is Philosophy) which Routledge publishes a textbook for. There are lots of pdf documents on there written to help students understand the various topics which are worth looking at. N.B. AS refers to the 1st year of A-Level and A2 to the second year, so the AS resources will be simpler than the A2 ones.

There have been many threads asking the same question; you should search or you haven't searched well. Anyway, I popular recommendation in another post was Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Blackburn. I downloaded it and it's pretty lay (compared to the Kant and Nietzsche I tried to read xD), but still pretty interesting.

This is generally the answer I give to anyone who's unsure about specifically what they're interested in. You probably wanna spend a little while doing "general reading" so that you can find out what subjects interest you the most. Here are a few introductory books which are commonly recommended in no particular order:

• Think by Simon Blackburn
  
• A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton
  
• An Introduction to Philosophy by Jon Nuttall
  
  These books all cast a very large net. The Warburton book (from what I remember) gives a more chronological account since it's concerned with the history of the ideas as well as the ideas themselves. Though, this was my first introduction to philosophy and worked just as well as any other.
  
  Given the authors you've mentioned, you might be particularly interested in the religious philosophy, ethics and political philosophy sections but you sound open to anything new. A tip: if you get your hands on one or two or these books, as you go through them, make notes on authors or particular ideas that you find interesting so that you can branch your reading out independently based on your preferences. These books will very much be discussing the classics of western philosophy like Hume, Descartes, Aquinas, Kant (maybe) etc at least a bit so I would also recommend searching out contemporary writers or 2nd hand sources if you're interested in the ideas of these historical figures. I say this because diving into their original works early on will be intimidating, exhausting and probably uninteresting. You may well find them difficult to interpret without knowing before hand what they're getting at. Having some idea of their historical context also helps. Contemporary writers are usually more approachable and sometimes more relevant.
  
  ​
  
  If you're also looking for good introductions to other topics like physics, I could help you out. In the spirit of this sub, I'll recommend you a couple writers that are philosophy literate. Philosophy has gotten a bad rap from popular science icons like Neil Degrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss, recently. Lawrence Krauss probably dominates in terms of ignorance but hey that's just my opinion. Nye, on the other hand, has recently changed his tune. Don't let this put you off because there are popular science writers like Sean Carroll and Carlo Rovelli who know their philosophy and understand the historical and conceptual importance of philosophy to their science. Here are my recommendations:
  
  
• The Big Picture by Sean Carroll
  
• From Eternity to Here by Sean Carroll
  
• Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
  
• Reality Is Not What It Seems by Carlo Rovelli
  
  The Big Picture is Sean Carroll's "treatise" on his philosophy, essentially. It covers is views about knowledge, values and science all in one. (Scare quotes because the book is intended for a large audience and the word 'treatise' makes it sound a lot more dense than it really is). In it, he introduces Bayesian epistemology which is quite a popular idea in contemporary philosophy of science.
  
  From Eternity to Here essentially aims to answer quite metaphysical questions about our experience of time like where it "comes from" and in some parts he aims to resolve paradoxes relating to time travel all from the point of view of our best theories of physics. He also discusses big bang cosmology and, throughout, pays great respect to other philosophical views on the questions he's discussing.
  
  Seven Brief Lessons is basically what it says on the tin. It's a very short introduction and is probably the best place to start off reading popular physics (at least on this list).
  
  Reality Is Not What It Seems is a discussion of the history of physics essentially from the ancient greeks up until modern speculation on quantum gravity. Rovelli also pays great respects to the 'physicists of antiquity' by discussing ancient greek ideas about physics and metaphysics within the light of modern physics. He gives credit where credit is due and then some.
  
  Hope this was helpful.
  
  Oh, P.S. A few people have recommended the SEP but I'd be careful with it since plenty of the articles on there get pretty damn technical pretty quick and even sometimes they assume knowledge that you may not have. It's usually best used to accompany other reading and when you know what you're looking for (in terms of author, period, topic etc). Going on there and just blindly searching by topic probably isn't a good idea. A similar resource which presents topics in slightly less detail is the IEP.
  
  Here's a good youtube channel to check out too.

>And I don't pretend that I have anything more than a populist's understanding of these topics. I'm surely just scraping the surface of most topics, misunderstanding things, and I would never think I can be part of an academic conversation because I listen to a couple podcasts.

And I respect you understanding your own ignorance in a topic, because that shows intelligence. Philosophy, interestingly, is the subject that most makes me feel more stupid the more I've studied it, so you're definitely not alone! That being said, many people from the new atheist / "skeptic" community act like this gem

>Yeah, I just say "this is interesting, I'd even like to talk about it with strangers", but I acknowledge the second part of your sentence and am OK realizing my understanding is often limited and quite possibly wrong.


And I think you should use that understanding as motivation to maybe go directly to the sources that these podcasts engage with :) Philosophy is a subject with so many fantastic, but extremely accurate introductory books and I go back to them every now and then to refresh myself on the basics. My favorite example is Prof Simon Blackburn's - Think and another really good piece which goes into a lot of informal logic as well as the jargon: The Philosopher's Toolkit

I find both of those to give an excellent simplification of some of the bigger elements of philosophy without overstretching and misrepresenting their subject matter! :)

I've heard this one is good. Haven't read it though.

Currently reading Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy which I've been told is a good introduction. So far it seems to do a good job of explaining in plain language the more confusing aspects of philosophy, which itself can become confusing. I can only take it in like 10 pages at a time.

Also maybe Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?

there's kinda two spectrums of beliefs on what is trans. some people adhere to social construction theories to explain trans stuff. some people adhere to peer-reviewed scientific research to explain things. i prefer the later, so i'd suggest searching this sub for research as well as reading the papers off pubmed. here's a nice overview of concepts from harvard: Between the (Gender) Lines: the Science of Transgender Identity. i also like the center of excellence for transgender health care as well as the world professional association for transgender health's standards of care document.. there's also an excellent book available called trans bodies, trans selves on amazon that covers a huge amount of information from the perspective of trans people. i really like this book a lot as it gives a very human touch to us as well as attempts to cover the vast diversity of the transgender experience. lots of people are given a voice in this book and it is very beautifully written. honestly, this is where i'd start with us.

the transgender community is incredibly diverse and it really is one of the best parts of being a part of the community.

If anyone wants to understand this academically try reading Thomas Ferguson's Golden Rule : The Investment Theory of Party Politics, but it is an academic read that might be difficult to parse for those not trained in political science methodology. You can view a documentary regarding the book here.

> In other words, you're contributing to a Christian sub when you are closed-minded to all Christian ideas. Why? To educate all of us dumb Christians?

I don't think you're dumb. I mean some of you definitely are, but that applies equally much to the atheists here as well (although I haven't yet been blitzed with homophobic PMs by one of them).

As to why.

> A great place to start, then, would be to explain why it's objectively wrong to be a "Bigot!" It's something you feel strongly about--and by the way, I happen to agree that real bigotry is wrong--so I'm sure you can explain in a way that won't appeal to the supernatural (since you're an atheist) or the subjective.

If you want me to prove moral realism and an egalitarian ethical theory, you're going to need to give me some time. If you want to skip my sad undergraduate reformularizations of them, see (1) and (2)^(1).

____

^(1. Expecting a single ethical theory to cover all moral situations is to my mind pretty foolish [you need multiple ones for different problems the same way chemistry, physics, and biology all study the natural world but are suited to different environments] but I think this gives the broadest coverage. Which theories are suited to what environments and questions is an important thing to discuss in itself.)

>You have yet to justify that just because you control your body means you ought to have exclusivity over it

I forget exactly how it was put, but I heard it described one time that we typically recognize ownership based on people's willingness to defend their preferences. So if I prefer to own my body so much that I'm willing to go to extreme lengths to exclude its use by others, and others don't want to risk as much to take control of it, then the aggregation of the calculations that take place in people's heads tend to align themselves with a 'right to self-ownership'.

I think I heard it from David Friedman, and then a similar thing described by Michael Huemer in his book Ethical Intuitionism.

Do you think the netherlands is at risk of falling into tyranny in the near future? Do you think they are a particularly authoritarian culture? This is very internally coherent rhetoric but I wonder how effectively it maps onto our actual world.

So with regard to the notion of the armed citizen struggling to topple the oppressor I'm not convinced that is actually a better alternative to nonviolent actions. This opinion is specifically informed by Erica Chenoweth's highly compelling work, can't recommend the book enough. It's not clear that violent struggle is ever actually more effective even in autocracies, and especially in places with consolidated democratic norms.

Now as for policing, the country that has the best police force near as I can tell is the UK. Part of that is cultural, their institutions were founded with notions of just policing at heart. Further, they're mostly monoethnic communities and those tend to have better policing outcomes as there isn't an ethnic hierarchy to reinforce.

Keeping these in mind, I think it is worth mentioning that the degree to which their citizens are armed does appear to play a role. We ask cops to do tons of stuff that's not just investigate specific crimes, they're also sorta societal magistrates. If your neighbors are having a really ugly public fight that looks like it may turn violent but is now just a screaming match, you call the cops and have them sort it out. These sorts of ambiguous situations have the potential to turn lethal at any time in the US, and this makes being a cop really dangerous. Accordingly, they feel the need to be in dominant control of any ambiguous situation, and a firearm is a really fast way to assert that control. In the narrow scope of our society, it seems that cops would become less resistant to actually rooting out and expelling the aspects of their culture that leads to such crazy rates of violence if our public was less frequently and lethally armed.

That's not to say I don't find any use in the marxist lens, far from it, but I do find sometimes it's a bet existentialist. I find the notion that the only reason I could oppose our civilians owning guns as much as we do is some latent fascism kind of insulting. Guns are not the only mechanism by which society changes, indeed I'd argue they've been much less effective than our institutions at leveling social change in the last century. Part of the benefit of living in a consolidated democracy is that there are avenues for change that are accessible independent of violence

I'm not, though I will have to look at this. The inspiration for this post primarily came from The Invention of Art and After Virtue.

Rawls is obviously important. It's also probably good to read something from the communitarian school of thought. Influential books include After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice by Michael Sandel, Sources of the Self by Charles Taylor, and Spheres of Justice by Michael Walzer.

Well, obviously you should give Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics a thorough read.

A modern philosopher well known for his attempts at reviving virtue ethics is Alasdair MacIntyre - his seminal book on the subject is After Virtue.

Also, another philosopher, with virtue ethics in the baggage, who's more politically oriented would be Martha Nussbaum. She's noted for going on about her 'capabilities approach' for many years, and some people regard this as an equally viable political option to utilitarian/liberal minimal states or Rawlsian social democracies. The literature on the approach is rather massive, so I'd go give the SEF page on the subject a go for starters, as she also makes very compelling arguments strengthened by interdisciplinary research with experts from other fields.

Also, I highly recommend [this book](http://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Political-Philosophy-Will-Kymlicka/dp/0198782748/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414771070&sr=1- 1&keywords=contemporary+political+philosophy), as it has great chapters on communitarianism and citizenship theory, which draws heavily on the Aristotelian legacy - the citizenship theory chapter being especially great, since Kymlicka there points out how difficult it turns out to be trying to cultivate civil virtues in modern societies.

EDIT: grammar.

If ethics is more interesting to you than doctrine, you should read Alasdair MacIntyre's 1983 After Virtue. It's a serious work of moral philosophy, written before MacIntyre converted to Catholicism, arguing that contemporary moral disagreement is unresolvable and therefore useless, and thus we ought to return to an Aristotelian framework. Eventually it requires a deist God at the least to be logical, but he argues for that along the way, and you don't need to begin with such a belief. It is excellent, but you do need a little philosophical background to not feel swamped.

Some from my shelf

Arsenals of Folly

The Cold War

On China

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

NATO's Return to Europe

On War

Bonus: The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_realism

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics by Mearsheimer.
https://www.amazon.ca/Tragedy-Great-Power-Politics/dp/0393349276

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemonic_stability_theory

Introduction to Logic is actually highly recommended. Or you can find a free introduction, called ForallX.

British author and journalist Nick Cohen wrote about this in 2007 in his book What's Left?: How the Left Lost its Way: How Liberals Lost Their Way Where he discusses this unholy alliance came to be of the left and the Islamist far right.

The left have become so rabidly anti-US/West that they have adopted the idea of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend". They have abandoned their core principles and will make bedfellows with those that are antithetical to their world view and goals. This is how you have British Labour protesters marching shouting "We are all Hamas" or have an ostensibly progressive organization to combat fascism named Unite Against Fascism have an Islamist Fascist serving on the board...

A principled left would be supporting Arab intellectuals, journalists, authors, professors, feminists, trade unionists, Marxists, etc. Instead we have the left supporting the far right Islamist movements in these parts of the world i.e. Hamas, Hizbollah, etc.

I know the author splits opinions, but Nick Cohen's book What's Left? really is an excellent deconstruction of the Corbyn-style left in Britain. It's never been more relevant than now, I read it recently and it's spot on in many of it's arguments and insights.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Whats-Left-How-Lost-its-Liberals-Their/0007229704

For What's Left?

Absolutely. It's short, but Singer manages to make the most of it, in my opinion. I'm not sure whether it satisfies OPs demand for a book to "tackle Marx's arguments in the modern world", though. It's more of an introduction to Marx's thought.

His short introduction to Hegel is the best I've read in the series, by the way.

/u/ksan recently wrote a good piece that lists a number of introductory texts for Hegel here. I'm currently in the middle of reading Beiser's Hegel and it's very manageable. If you want something lighter, I'd recommend starting with this first but it is a very short introduction. Whilst it's a hundred pages or so you'll be left feeling like you just read an abstract. You should be able to find a copy of both texts online in PDF form without any trouble.

At the very least, you'll probably want to get a grasp of what the structure of Phenomenology PoR is and what Hegel is trying to convey before Marx's Contribution will make any sense.

Peter Singer devotes a chapter to this in Hegel: A Very Short Introduction. If you don't have the book, go to the Amazon link here, open up the book by clicking on it, and go to page 32.

hmmm, it depends, do you have any background in philosophy? If so I would recommend some more academic theological work like Kathryn Tanner, Leonardo Boff, Borden Bowne, Edgar Brightman, Jurgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Karl Barth, etc... if not I would recommend a book like this to help you understand the philosophical framework most theologians use.

As for Biblical studies, Michael Coogan has a really good intro to the Hebrew Bible and Mark Powell has a great intro to the New Testament you can supplement those readings with work focused on the historical context like Richard Horsely's work Jesus and Empire I haven't found a good book that offers a comprehensive overview of the context of the Hebrew Bible, mostly because that covers a large span of history. From there you can go on to read people like E.P. Sanders, William Herzog, Richard Bauckham, Jon Levenson, John Collins, Adela Collins, Carol Meyers, etc.

There is a ton of great academic work out there, unfortunately many seem to shy away from it because its 1) intimidating or 2) challenges embedded theological assumptions or 3) they buy into the myth that learning about theology and biblical studies only causes people to lose faith.

> Not beyond philosophy of science and picking up the occasional book (Singer, Nieztche, some Eastern oriented stuff) and a decent amount of political philosophy.

Ah, OK. You should maybe consider reading Think, an introduction to philosophy by Simon Blackburn. It's a good read, but more importantly, it's short and accessible.
If you want something more focused on ethics, I suggest Blackburn again with Being Good. Also short and accessible.

> The claim that 2 + 2 = 4 seems much more concrete than the claim that 'killing is bad.'

I would agree ("2 + 2 = 4" is a priori, the other is most likely a posteriori), but I am not arguing that killing is bad, I was just demonstrating that something relatively uncontroversial, like "killing is wrong", cannot be applied in a world where ethics is just subjective.

> Can one choose to just not care about right/wrong?

Sure - what one does is separate from the discussion of theory. One could believe 2 + 2 = 60 even! :D

> instead choosing to focus on the result of such behavior and how it ultimately harms oneself.

Sounds a lot like utilitarianism :-) You should read up on ethical theory - I think you would enjoy it.

Do you have a specific interest? Otherwise a general introduction like Think, Problems of Philosophy, or Justice are all well regarded. Though, all have their strengths and weaknesses. There are tons of accessible introductions though and depending on your interests it might be better to use one rather than another. All of those are fairly general

I would stay with them and see how you feel. Also it REALLY helps to learn as much as you can about the trans experience and trans issues.

http://www.youtube.com/user/tsdollhouse/

reddit.com/r/transgender

http://www.amazon.com/Trans-Bodies-Selves-Transgender-Community/dp/0199325359

I think what you posted is a really good start if it's specific to your area. For additional resources, this website has a lot of info for providers on prescribing T (http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/trans?page=guidelines-masculinizing-therapy) & the WPATH Standards of Care would be a good one (https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc), but I know there's some disagreement about some of its recommendations. The book Trans Bodies, Trans Selves (https://www.amazon.com/Trans-Bodies-Selves-Transgender-Community/dp/0199325359) is a really good comprehensive overview & would be a great place for a psychiatrist who wants to learn more to start. It's basically a textbook but costs around $30 on Amazon, they keep the price low to make it as accessible as possible.

Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems SPOILER

Amazon

Google Books

B&N

If there is anyone who wants to read this and legitimately can't afford it.... reply to this... and I'm sure we can find a way.

The Golden Rule Documentary feat Noam Chomsky


Can you add some info about the book(official title, author) for those just arriving to the party? I was searching Amazon... but I don't know the author and there are a few "The Golden Rule".

You should read this, if you get a chance.

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Rule-Investment-Competition-Money-Driven/dp/0226243176

I thought the documentary was great but it's very long and I think a lot of people don't catch the details. I also thought it was good to revive the video since I think it's informative and more people should check it out. This particular excerpt seemed relevant to social democracy.

The rest of the documentary is largely focused on Thomas Ferguson's book Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems and features quotes from Ferguson and Noam Chomsky quite heavily. Ferguson believes that you can predict government policy by following the financial backing of the various politicians. For example, it is argued that health care entered the US national debate in 2008 not necessarily because people wanted it but because various manufacturing industries were seeing their costs of labor go up and were feeling the pinch during the financial crisis and they in turn lobbied the politicians. At the end the documentary tries to make the case for both socialism and democracy.

> So most an-caps would agree that the societies would be run with natural rights as the rule of the land, how though does one prove that humans even have rights?

Not all an-caps derive their beliefs from natural rights, and there are different understandings of the term 'natural rights.' In any case, here are what I think are some good resources:

• [Ethical Intuitionism][1]
  
• [The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey][2]
  
• A Positive Account of Property Rights
  
  [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Intuitionism-M-Huemer/dp/0230573746
  [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Political-Authority-Examination-Coerce/dp/1137281650
  

Glad you found it interesting. My favorite philosopher (Michael Huemer) wrote a piece in that book (although I am unsure of his argument's soundness -- I can't exactly fault it, but I can't help but feel something went wrong somewhere.) Anyways, he has two other really great books out there about meta-ethics and political philosophy, if you are interested in those topics. He is a very clear writer. The books are Ethical Intuitionism and The Problem of Political Authority.

AFAIK most of the philosophers are moral realists whether they're atheist or theist. Also Michael Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism may be change your view on morality.

This is a tangential point and doesn't really answer your question, but just want to chime in to say that the research seems to show that nonviolent resistance is about twice as effective than violent resistance in bringing down authoritarian regimes (Chenoweth has done the most famous research on this). I'm not familiar enough with the research to to know all of the qualifiers and caveats to this generalization, but it seems to be a pretty big difference in effectiveness.

This is a very general question, but let me try to point you to what you might be looking for.

If you're looking for people's attitudes on Harper, you can check out this thread from a little while back.

If you're looking for people's ideas on any particular policy, you can either do a search of this subreddit, or ask that question yourself!

If you're looking for people's philosophies, as dmcg12 said, those will be evident if you keep an eye on frequent posters; the more you see them write, the more coherent your picture of their ideas will be. If you're looking at philosophies rather than policies, though, there are philosophers who have produced better arguments than any of us here are likely to be able to articulate in support of their own stances (or at least, they've articulated them in greater detail than I think any of us have done). Some of the best books I've ever read are this (by a Canadian liberal egalitarian/social democrat), this (by a libertarian), and this (by an ex-Marxist Catholic conservative-in-a-way-that's-different-from-most-people-who-call-themselves-conservative). Of those three, I'd start with the Kymlicka, and read at least the chapters on Utilitarianism, Liberal Egalitarianism, and Libertarianism before deciding whether to put down the book. If, however, you take a look at Kymlicka or either of those other books and are intimidated, this does a fabulous job of explaining in accessible language what sort of things people might disagree on, without very strongly coming down on one side or another of such disagreements; it also has outstanding suggestions for further reading. All these books should be in any university library.

I think that The Tragedy of Great Power Politics is a really neat book. This is somewhat unrelated to your niche, and some of you guys have heard me speak about this on IRC. I have no education in International Relations and a high school education in history, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but it really does a good job at explaining ambitions that underpin nations foreign policy and what causes them to have such ambitions. It's certainly not a perfect book, but it does a good job at explaining a staunchly, sobering realist theory of international relations. One reviewer puts it this way, "I found the book an enjoyable read but Mearsheimer has a surprisingly superficial grasp of world history. However, he does provide a helpful explanation of American foreign policy over the past 200 years." That's important to know before digging into this book, and it's also important to know that John is very staunchly realist. In my own opinion, I think realism is a very good theory, but it also assumes (again, my uneducated opinion) that (like with books like the Dictators Handbook) that leaders are psychopaths with no emotions. That ideology doesn't play a role on some level in decision making. That foreign policy is entirely predicated around protecting a nation.

I'd like to hear /u/Fresh-Snows thoughts on it. He studies international relations extensively from what I've heard. He could offer an interesting opinion.

Also, Ender in Exile is a very good book that I am currently reading. If you have read Enders Game, or of Scott Cards books on the Ender universe in general, I highly suggest picking up this book.

A book recommendation for you: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Mearsheimer builds up a clear argument, with analysis of historical relevance stretching from Napoleonic France, Nazi Germany up to the modern United States.

His view is arguably colored by his assumptions about International Politics. However, the author makes this clear in the first few chapters, explaining his theory of Offensive Realism. It is at the same time a logically understandable and depressing view of the interaction of states.

The book finishes with a chapter wherein it is predicted that the rise of China is unlikely to be peaceful. There also are suggestsions of strategies for the U.S. to deal with this change in the balance of power. A clear and convincing read, highly recommended.

To give some sense of overview, there are other views of International Poltitics, this is just one of them, there is enough room to be critical. This book gets a serious debate going though, which you are looking for, reading from your post.

And since you are asking my opinion: Great Power politics are likely to trump relatively minor factors of environment and language in international relations. I assume that being the leading nation in the world means having the most power in the world. This has little to do with language and less to with environmental policy. It has everything to do with military forces, arsenals and alliances. Economic power as well, has a higher priority.

I am not saying the factors you point out are unimportant. The spread of language and the accompanying culture can be a spread of "soft power". The spread and popularity of Hollywood movies is an example of this. Many people throughout the world today speak English. But this can change. It is not hard to imagine that in three generations Chinese can have spread its influence as a language significantly.

If Chinese military and economic growth can be turned into a dominant position, other countries will study its culture in order to court and befriend it and hopefully benefit from associating with them.

This entire conversation is basically a way of saying "how can we prove neorealism wrong?" Neorealism says that it is the nation state that's important, and liberal institutionalism says that it is institutions that are important (constructivism focuses on identity). The EU is a supranational institution, and with the problems caused by forces of nationalism during the 20th century in Europe and how they led to war, and because nobody wants war, some Europeans thought they could overcome the nation-state, and therefore overcome war.

And that's why its a 'tragedy' that neorealism is right. If you want to find out how the world really works, I can't suggest anyone better than John Mearsheimer (along with Stephen Walt). They're both neorealist theorists, Mearsheimer being an offensive neorealist, Walt a defensive neorealist; they agree on most points.

After years of studying this stuff, I couldn't find anyone apart from these two academics who explained international politics better. As an example, check out this book and all the controversy it created.

They are not popular in Europe, for reasons such as neorealism being pessimistic, nation state-centric, and concerned with questions such as survival, rather than the thriving of a society (they would say geopolitics trumps economics, or that you can't have economics without first taking the security and defense issues off the table as it were). They would say that it was not the EU which deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, but that it should have gone to NATO, as an example. They would likely say that the democratic peace thesis is wrong, because it is non-falsifiable; no democracy would call the country it is going to war with a proper democracy like it is.

There's more to say, but when I found out about these guys, it was like a bomb going off in my head. Finally, everything made sense, instead of things always being twisted around like a pretzel. In conclusion, they'd likely say the dream of a properly federalized Europe is a waste of time, and your time and personal political philosophy would best be spent elsewhere. Oh, one last thing - they're just as harsh on the US as they are on Europe!

What kinds of deductive reasoning? I'd recommend practice and study of a specific application of deduction over reading about it in general.

I've played several games that require deduction:

• Flow Free: Android iOS
  
• Hashi: Android iOS
  
• Slitherlink: Android iOS
  
• Paint By Numbers/Hanjie: Web (can be printed for pencil and paper), Web
  
• Electric Box: Web, requires Flash
  
  Other examples are Logic grids, Sudoku, and many others.
  
  I find that deduction is a skill that's easy to develop in a particular domain (like any of the above games), but hard to generalize. Playing the above games for fun, I've developed a better understanding of how to use proof by contradiction, but not much else.
  
  Those kinds of high-level ideas are probably best learned from a logic textbook like Introduction to Logic, but the abstract knowledge may not translate to practical skills without domain-specific practice and study.

Have you read any of Peter Singer's books? He's a utilitarian philosopher who doesn't just stick to atheism, but covers all sorts of very challenging ground including abortion, euthanasia, animal rights and so on. I don't agree with every position he takes, but he's the best introduction to those squirming issues that I've ever found.

If you're interested, start with Practical Ethics. It's the one university Ethics papers use as an introductory text.

NukeThePope often suggests this book:

https://nukeexcathedra.jottit.com/2011-03-09%3A_book_review%3A_sense_%26_goodness_without_god

Not exactly 'how to be successful' but it is about morality

some other suggestions:

http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211?tag=dudugo-20

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Ethics-Peter-Singer/dp/0521707684/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1315260344&sr=8-2


http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

(not about morality, but it will help you to avoid being gullible, which would help with the success thing)

I'd recommend the following:

• For a good survey, see the history of utilitarianism by Julia Driver at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  
• Utilitarianism is a specific type of Consequentialism, so I'd check out an article at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.
  
• For the historical roots in Bentham and Mill (who laid the foundation), Troyer's The Classical Utilitarians is a good anthology.
  
• For something a bit more readable and contemporary, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics is a classic.

Peter Schweizer was a foreign policy advisor to Sarah Palin. He works with Andrew Breitbart and has authored several books with titles such as Makers and Takers: Why conservatives work harder, feel happier, have closer families, take fewer drugs, give more generously, value honesty more, are less materialistic.

But I don't bring this up to discredit the man. I think it's great to see a person of his character addressing such a pertinent issue like insider trading in Congress. The fact that it is him delivering this message encourages unity between conservatives and liberals so that we can more effectively confront the extensive corruption within our state and corporate systems.

Edit: This story was also covered well by Newsweek. Peter Schweizer's new book, on this topic and based on his independent research, is Throw Them All Out.

The problem with the world is, there are way too many people that have been apathetic for too long about political corruption. It's start to demand change at every level of Government, which means kicking out all incumbants and anyone that was so much affiliated with anyone participating in any type of Fraud, Waste, or outright Abuse. Anytime anyone in government commits fraud, they should immediately be forced to resign, or should be voted out in the next election cycle.

https://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Out-Politicians/dp/0547573146

This book is incredible, it probably has a Republican bias to some extent but well worth reading. The legal standard for insider trading among US politicians is completely different from what you’d find in business.

Something like http://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Out-Politicians/dp/0547573146?

The Way of Men, by Jack Donovan is a must read. Just finished it recently myself.

Speaking of redpill reading, I feel the need to shout out Jack Donovan here. Two of his books, "The Way of Men" and "Becoming a Barbarian" have been absolutely revolutionary for me. These are dangerous books, full of dangerous ideas. The former one, in particular, is an excellent primer in masculine virtue. I bet I've given half a dozen copies away. Read them, learn them, commit them to memory. Also recommended: "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius and "Letters from a Stoic" by the one and only Seneca.

To be fair this is Based Russell, he is physically disabled and quite possibly developmentally stunted. Under no circumstances should you try to make contact with this man despite the fact that his name is public record and it is very very easy to find his contact info.

He has attempted to sue Taylor Swift, among others, into associating with him so that he can achieve his dream to have a career in entertainment as well as have prostitution legalized in the state of Utah.

Again I urge you not to contact him, not only because he's funny in his own right and contacting him will just get him to nuke his accounts again, but also because he's a very litigious man and if you fuck with him too much he might do the same to you.

I stumbled on this link on another thread in this subreddit and from there found his Facebook - it's public so you can see most of his rants.

Roger Stone's new book, ‘The Making of the President 2016’: How Donald Trump Rode the Wave of Alternate Media to Become President



Lauren Southern's book




Miscellaneous Pepe fun



KEK (OG Pepe)

> Link to book here, don't be thrown off by the length. Good things come in small packages ;)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541136942/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1482511794&sr=8-18&keywords=Lauren+Southern

IMPRESSIVE LENGTH!

I haven't read this yet, but I'm getting ready to buy Lauren Southern's new book Barbarians - from what I can tell, it looks like it'll be pretty good.

How Baby Boomers, Immagrants, and Islam Screwed My Generation Tho

Lauren Southern's book is super short and easy to read:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1541136942/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485339740&sr=1-1&refinements=p_27%3ALauren+Southern&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&dpPl=1&dpID=51UjKwyaOhL&ref=plSrch

> no purpose other than an emotional one.... led to the widespread image that Republicans are gay hating bigots.

To quote Donald Trump: "Wrong."

The problem with this argument is that it fails to consider the legal arguments against gay marriage. Actually, the only reason why people want gay marriage is because of a misunderstanding of the nature of marriage and their emotional response to what they feel is an inequality(which doesn't exist).

People who give up over the battle of gay marriage due to political correctness are the reason why people see Republicans as gay hating bigots. Basically they are admitting that there is no(and was no) justifiable argument that could be used against Gay Marriage. This patently false, we simply were so involved in Gay Marriage fervor, that no bothered to do a substantial argument against it.

I have said publicly I am not sure who is right, the Libertarians or the Conservatives, but to say there is no good arguments against Gay Marriage is intellectually dishonest.

The best argument in print is here: http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Marriage-Woman-Defense/dp/1594036225

> The fact is, the only time anyone EVER trots out the "the government should be out of the marriage business entirely" line, is when they are being forced into a corner of admitting they want to limit the rights of gay Americans arbitrarily,.....During the Supreme Court and higher court hearings of the gay marriage cases, I paid close attention and read court transcripts and listened to recordings of the proceedings

Genetic Fallacy, just because you don't like where it is coming from doesn't mean its the wrong position. It seems that you are bias against this argument for no justifiable reason either as many libertarians have been arguing this for years but as I explained above,

I agree they did a bad job on defending in the Supreme Court, still has no bearing on the validity of the issue. People should actively seek out non-religious arguments and taking political arguments from Herman Cain is going to give you a skewed view of the subject.

> Please try to from a non theological perspective defend denying gay marriage?

http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Marriage-Woman-Defense/dp/1594036225

>Please from a non theological perspective try to tell me why a fetus without a heart beat spawned from a rapist has more rights than the mother whose body contains it?

http://www.cambridge.org/cr/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/defending-life-moral-and-legal-case-against-abortion-choice

You definitely would enjoy some of their works. Particularly:

https://www.amazon.com/What-Marriage-Man-Woman-Defense/dp/1594036225/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=X39PYP8GT616NY99W3SC

http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Marriage-Woman-Defense/dp/1594036225

http://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Anarchism-Noam/dp/1904859208

The link will take you to a book of his. The book is about his personal anarchist views.

I thought you were talking about this book, which I refer to as "my Bible."

https://www.amazon.com/Manipulated-Man-Esther-Vilar/dp/1905177178/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493220573&sr=8-1&keywords=the+manipulated+man

Look at the price on the hardcover and softcover.

That's about the same price, if not more than a college textbook.

The Manipulated Man

Here’s some books:

• 9 books

-most of these can be found in video form on YouTube

• understanding power

• manufacturing consent kindle (couldn’t find it as a pdf)

Chomsky is a great read, he also has some great lectures on YouTube. The reason that only a tiny minority knows him is because of his lack of appearance in mainstream media (in my opinion). He summarizes it greatly in this video:

Noam Chomsky- concision

anyone surprised by this should read this and this and later this

Would you consider Theadore Beale (AKA Vox Day, author of "Cuckservative: How "Conservatives" Betrayed America", /u/voxday) for a cabinet position?

And if you want to know more (and the science behind it) read Cuckservative: How "Conservatives" Betrayed America

Well, it is not that there are two sides.
You are right that the cuckservatives - the National Review, William F Buckley, establishment types are part of the elite uniparty. The Tea Party, the MAGA crowd - are something else. The Libertarians are something else, although imho naively utopian.

The biggest fraud the establishment media pulls is to promote the gentry conservatives as opponents of the progressives - neatly marginalizing most of the actual right inclined opinion in the country. This is why the rise of free speech online must be stamped out - too much truth is leaking out.

It depends. But I'm glad you asked, for the following suggestions might also be helpful to others.

If I understand you correctly, you seem to think that pointing out fallacies is an efficient way to "fight the good fight". At least, that's my impression. Please correct me when I'm wrong.

Unfortunately, almost all the evidence points to a different direction: It's usually not very effective, because those committing the fallacy usually don't care much about a logical analysis of the situation, anyway. This does also apply to non-believers. Assuming all humans process information in two ways (see Kahneman's System 1 and 2), even atheists often seem to ignore their own system 2, because it actually takes effort to use it.

However, if you're looking for resources about fallacies, any good book on logic will help. One of the best one, I've been told, is "Introduction to logic" by Gensler. You may only need the first 5 chapters, because it becomes quite technical after that. Maybe, Amazon can help find a less technical book.

If, however, you're looking to persuade people, that's a completely different story.

Here, a very common recommendation is Cialdini's "Influence". You can research its contents easily online, so there's no need to buy it. Cialdini emphasizes six common areas to get people to agree with you.

I've looked at your comment history, so here's a short overview what you may want to change to be more effective:

• Liking: People say yes to people they like. Being offensive to believers is thus unlikely to help you make your point.
  
• Scarcity: People often want they don't think is hard to get. It's thus okay to say that we as atheists may indeed by the exception. It might help to say, you understand if your opponent is unable to understand your position.
  
• Authority: It helps to have bookmarks, or notes, from authorities who believers respect (typically other believers).
  
• Social Proof: It helps to have notes and bookmarks about being a non-believer is on the rise, generally speaking.
  
• Reciprocity: People tend to return a favor. This is hard to apply online, but it may help offline.
  
• Commitment: If people commit, verbally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment. It's thus worth trying to get your opponents to agree to a certain set of principles. For instance, the fight about gay marriage was won by appealing to one of the most common principles among Americans: Freedom. A simple change of words (from the "right to marry" to the "freedom to marry") made a big difference.
  
  Hope this helps.

Get a basic background in logic and statistics and their respective fallacies. This will give you the knowledge and tools you need to think critically of 99% of what you find in news media and websites. A good introduction to logic is Harry Gensler's Introduction to Logic textbook. A good guide to statistical fallacies and how to spot them is [The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb] (http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable-ebook/dp/B00139XTG4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421288487&sr=1-1&keywords=the+black+swan+taleb).

>Your rule says that the exception shouldn't happen, period. If it does, then the rule needs heavy revision.
Ron Paul hired Amway spokesperson and author Doug Wead to serve as senior campaign adviser for $8,000 a month. Wead continues to run similar schemes to this very day with other members of Ron Paul's family, and Rand Paul himself recently hired Doug Wead as senior adviser as well.

No it doesn't. I don't subscribe to a philosophy that advocates for a utopian society. You throw up straw men like nothing I've ever seen before. Also, why are you so obsessed with Amway?

>Irrelevant. People are also voluntary voting for Donald Trump, in far higher number than they are for Rand.

Not irrelevant. You said that people can become billionaires by selling a product that 99% of people think is bullshit. Which is still completely false and you've yet to back up that claim. Also, Donald Trump has nothing to do with this argument. Please focus on defending the claim that a billionaire can make a product that 99% of people think are bullshit and still be a billionaire.

>Bernie Madoff.

He's serving 150 years in a federal prison. Let's keep it to billionaires that played within the law because in a free market economy he would still be rotting in prison.

>Estimated minimum wage effects on employment from a meta-study of 64 studies showed insignificant employment effect (both practically and statistically) from the minimum-wage raises supporting the Keynesian model. The most precise estimates were heavily clustered at or near zero employment effects (elasticity = 0).
47% of respected economics professors agree with the following statement, vs. only 14% who disagree: "The distortionary costs of raising the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour and indexing it to inflation are sufficiently small compared with the benefits to low-skilled workers who can find employment that this would be a desirable policy."
Mind you, 14% is the number of professors who claim that the costs outweigh the benefits. The number of professors who claim zero benefits in the first place is going to be far less than that.
And before you claim bias: This economic survey was conducted by the Chicago school, which is the most libertarian branch of economics out of the ones that use actual math.

I said the minimum wage causes unemployment, which you "disproved" in your first wikipedia article (with studies that showed absolutely no details regarding how the study was done) then you sent me the second article that has the majority of economists saying the exact opposite of what you first posted. The one's who disagree seem to be focusing on the word "noticeably" because a 9$ increase in minimum wage (as opposed to $7.25, now) would cause subtle increases in unemployment.

Regarding the "benefits of raising minimum wage" article. I never made a claim that it provided no benefits and I never made a claim about a $9 an hour minimum wage. All throughout history there have been slight increases in the minimum wage with fairly unnoticeable distortionary effects, but there are distortionary effects none the less including an increase in unemployment which you proved in your second article.

Again, more straw men.

>My argument is that you can be a billionaire even if 99% of the population thinks your product is bull shit. I've presented examples of this happening.

No you've said "amway" over, and over, and over again. Evil, Capitalist Amway provides over 21,000 people with decent enough paying jobs and sells nutritional supplements and different types of personal health care products. They don't "steal" money. Bernie Madoff is sitting in prison right now. Keep trying.

>I'm citing actual data and empirical examples. Meanwhile, you're claiming something that less than 14% of economics professors believe as a universal truth in economics circles, and you want to accuse me of living in an echo chamber.

I made no such claim. I made a claim that the minimum wage increases unemployment, which as you proved with your second article that it does.

Please stay on topic.

Also, read this when you get the chance and maybe we can keep this discussion from drifting off into 90 different directions with straw men whenever you can't prove a point you made.

This is good theological justification of the type of ideas that Peter Singer has written about. I'm about half-way through right now, and I gotta say... I'm almost a vegitarian...almost.

> Where can i learn about ethics?

Reading about different ethical philosophies online. Reading books on ethics. Even getting involved in discussions here, /r/askphilosophy, /r/philosophy, /r/smartgiving, etc.

Practical Ethics is the book that has had the biggest impact on the way I reason about ethics. Before that, whereas I saw that reason could help us identify contradictions in our ethical views, I didn't see how any particular ethical philosophy had a solid ground to build its conclusions from beyond coming "from the heart" as you said. This book was the one that gave me hope that we can do better than mostly guessing when picking our starting point.

However, I'm still an ethics noob and there's a lot more for me to read before I can have a very substantiated opinion on what is best.

> How do you KNOW what is right or wrong?

I doubt we can know with 100% certainty. We can't empirically test our meta-ethical beliefs, but we can still apply reason to it, like we do with many other aspects of our life to try to work out the truth.

> Does it really just come "from your heart"?

I assume by this you mean from our intuitions or subconscious? I think that's where most ethical decisions are made from, but it probably shouldn't be entirely from there. The more we learn in general, the more we realize that our intuitions provide rules-of-thumb at best, but can often be wrong. For instance, it seems unintuitive to me that planes can fly, or massive ships can float. So if I really want to know the truth about the world, I don't think I should rely only on my intuitions. Plus, thought experiments like the trolley dilemma show that our ethical intuitions can be contradictory.

> Do you carry the same beliefs that your parents have implanted?

No, but I would expect this to be a major factor, just as it is for people's beliefs about anything.

> Have you learned from an institution of higher education?

No.

Sounds like a decent start. If you haven't already read Peter Singer's Practical Ethics, I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy. Based on the road you've set for yourself, I think you would really, really like to hear the philosophy of a guy who's spent his entire life thinking about this.

There are a couple ways I envision this conversation could go and I don't know which you'd prefer (if any)

1. I respond to your direct comments
   
2. We investigate what you seem to believe
   
   I'm going with 1 since 2 is more personal and only partially on topic.
   
   > How is this done without defining the parameters for morals and ethics?
   
   This was defined up front as in the context of utilitarian ethical system. If you don't subscribe to a utilitarian ethical or moral framework, then this won't be convincing. That is independent of the fact that you used the word human for something that Singer wouldn't use the same word for. One is a human on a biological categorization level, the other is a different classification that has to do with moral status. Using the same word for both would be confusing and lead to miscommunications.
   
   > This is a value problem that's a trick question
   
   No its not. It is an extreme hypothetical meant to clarify what you believe. From there you investigate what lead to your decision. If your answer is they have the same value, I have a follow up question to tease out what you mean by that (or if you really mean that). And if it is really true, what the consequences of that belief would be that I (and maybe you) would find surprising.
   
   > Answer: They all deserve to live...
   
   This doesn't answer the question. It says a fair amount about what you believe anyways (no one on earth is qualified, etc) but doesn't answer the question. And how you feel about a situation, generally, doesn't hold a lot of weight by comparison to action. Letting them both burn to death but feeling twice as guilty would not, I imagine, be thought of as the moral thing to do by most people.
   
   > Their high utility is from an unspecified unmeasurable potential, thus judging morality from a potential, not a concrete.
   A concrete answer, is that all of them have the same limitless potential, and to decide someone's potential is murder
   Just like abortion
   
   This is just nonsensical. You have decided that all people have the same unlimited potential, and that the potential matters more than or as much as the actual. And simply deciding someone's potential is murder. There are just so many problems with this statement. I'll list a few:
   
   
3. Not all people have unlimited potential, even if I'm very generous in interpreting what you mean by "unlimited". The brain dead person does not have unlimited potential. The 106 year old does not have unlimited potential. Certainly their potential is different than that of a newborn child.
   
4. Using "potential" as the measure of the importance of a thing has ridiculous consequences. The old arguments of condoms destroying potential futures is a classic. But even things like people not living up to their potential would be morally wrong. Is it unethical to be lazy? Or would it be unethical to give up on your own dreams in favor of your family member's dream? How do you compare two "unlimited" potentials? How do we maximize for the most moral good in the "potential" regime? It would seem that maximizing the number of humans would maximize the pool of potentials. Should we create breeding factories to accomplish this? Is rape justifiable as it has the potential to create a child?
   
5. Deciding potential is murder? If two people come into the ER after a car accident, both are dying, and the Dr makes a judgement call as to which he has the best chance to save, did he murder the other person? When college admission boards choose who to accept or give scholarships to, did they murder those they decided had less potential? Job interviews? Guidance counselors? If a parent requires one student to work so the other can go to school, murderers?
   
6. How does one know what is right and avoid murder if both decisions are bad? This is why I asked the fire question. Situations exist where two people's lives are at stake, and you can save 1, but not both. And no decision results in death of both. This is actually not entirely rare in pregnancy.
   
7. How does someone know when potential exists? For example, if you believe that human level intelligence AI is possible, how do you know what machine AI will result in this new AI? (this assumes you think a human level intelligence AI would have moral standing, if you don't think this that is yet another interesting tangent).
   
8. Can someone be forced to give up autonomy in all cases to maximize potential for others? Forced kidney donations? Forced bone marrow donation? Forced organ donation on death? Forced egg and sperm donation?
   
   This response has gotten quite long. Please feel free to respond or not, or we can delve into your beliefs. I'm not personally a staunch utilitarian, so I'm mostly providing the argument as I understand it. If you find the argument interesting but don't want to argue on the internet, I would suggest you either read
   
   

• Singer's book or
  
• take a perusal through the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
  
• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-ethics/#IdeAppEth
  
• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/
  
• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/grounds-moral-status/

"Justice: What's the right thing to do?" by Michael Sandel is a good book for an overview of different approaches to ethics.

"Practical Ethics" by Peter Singer is the one that really first made me think there's good reason to pick a side.

Ethics for dummies.

Absolute morality:

There is exactly one set of rules by which God expects you to live, and if you do that's good and if you don't that's evil.

This approach suffers from the following problems:

1. God is unchanging, the Bible doesn't rewrite itself, so those rules are eternal, unchanging and incapable of improvement. To illustrate this,
   
2. God is a genocidal psychopath. He doesn't care about large-scale suffering and thinks nothing of killing or otherwise punishing innocents. He condones punishment by proxy and appreciates human sacrifice. Aspects of God's behavior as presented in the Bible strike most sane people as intolerable and incompatible with a respect-worthy moral standard.
   
   This is a bit of a conundrum: because Christian apologists inform us that our sense of morality is God-given. If our God-given sense of morality tells us that God is an asshole, something must be wrong.
   
   As a result of this, Christians all over the world cheerfully ignore most of God's absolute morals as set out in the Bible. This raises the interesting question: what gives them the authority to override God's alleged word? If societies agree that socially evolved morals are "better" than those in the Bible, then where does that leave God and his unchanging, absolutely authoritative word?
   
   

   Consequentialism:
   

   
   A majority of sane people, even those who pay lip service to God's rules, apply a follow a Consequentialist ethic: if your contemplated action is likely to harm someone, or do more harm than good, then don't do it! If you could do something to make others (and maybe yourself) lead a better, happier life (even if only a bit) then give positive consideration to doing that thing!
   
   As a start, it's really that simple. This principle allows people to talk about the pros and cons of any contemplated action, and to make, in a flexible and universal manner, an informed decision about whether an action should be undertaken or not.
   
   There is some devil in the details, and the basic idea of Consequentialism has a number of branches, the best known of which is probably Utilitarianism. The thing to note is that different schools of ethical thought may lead to different conclusions for difficult moral dilemmas, but they mostly reach a consensus about the big things: murder is bad, as is slavery, rape, discrimination and so on.
   
   Philosophers of ethics write books about this stuff. They are widely ignored by the American public because simple-minded religious folk think that the Bible is a suitable source of moral instruction.
   
   My recommendation for an educational and thought-provoking secular treatment on ethics is Peter Singer's Practical Ethics.

If you really want to lose your mind at how bad it is, read this book. It’s insane what they’re legally allowed to get away with.

https://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Out-Politicians/dp/0547573146

Regarding your 2: there are five different scandals linked on that linked page alone, just from the time Bill was President. There have also been many scandals she's faced since that time. You don't consider that a problem, seriously? They say that whenever you see one cockroach you should conclude that there are several nearby. So what then should we conclude when we see several cockroaches, if not that there's an infestation?

I can see three main possibilities: either she is an innocent person and keeps getting accused of illegal actions due to the worst luck in the universe, or there's a far reaching conspiracy focusing on manufacturing false claims against her specifically (much more often than against any other potential target), or she is guilty but calls in favors and destroys relevant evidence in order to get away with things she shouldn't be able to get away with.

Which seems the most probable to you: a corrupt politician getting away with it, a powerful conspiracy against a politician existing but somehow failing over and over and over again to get rid of her, or someone innocent of all wrongdoing repeatedly facing scandals for absolutely no reason?

If you don't think it's a big deal when politicians break laws in order to make themselves and their friends money, I'm astonished. Corruption is the ultimate form of rent seeking, and the proximate cause of highly extractive institutions. Additionally, when someone who's corrupt is in power, they'll tend to bring other rent seekers in their wake. They are likely to sympathize with their friends promoting special interest groups, rather than to dispassionately evaluate the costs and benefits of policies for the average citizen. I think the laws that we do have are permissive enough as it is. I'd much prefer a candidate who seeks to strengthen and broaden these laws in order to give government policymakers good incentives, over a candidate who prefers to weaken them, circumvent them, or break them.

The cattle controversy is the one I'm most familiar with. She got a hundred fold return shorting the cattle futures market during a time when the cattle futures market was rising. Expert economists, using a model "stated to give the hypothetical investor the benefit of the doubt... concluded that the odds of such a return happening were at best 1 in 31 trillion." Whatever the justice system might or might not require, I don't need any more evidence than that. An exact description of how she did it seems unnecessary, in my view, when such an implausible outcome occurring without corruption is essentially impossible. I am very much inclined to think that if she were a normal person, rather than a rich white ex first lady who has lots of friends and knows lots of secrets, one of these scandals would have landed her in jail by now. Politicians are corrupt all the time, and get away with it all the time, and she shows every possible sign of being typical in that regard.

I am not saying that because she is corrupt, she's automatically worse than any other possible candidate running for the presidency. I'd prefer Clinton to Trump, certainly, and am essentially indifferent between her and Sanders. However, I do think that it's shameful to our legal system that someone like that is allowed to walk free, and shameful to democracy in general that she's the best candidate our electoral system has managed to produce for us this year. It has become mainstream for people to mock and insult the Republicans for having Trump leading the polls, and the Republicans deserve it, but if the world made sense the Democrats would be receiving similar insults too, and just as frequently, but they are not.

It's not just Hillary I think is corrupt, though, lest you think this is all coming from a place of partisan bias. Karl Rove belongs in jail too. As do many other "respectable" people who've helped guide our country, in both the major political parties, whose names are too numerous and controversial for me to list here.

Male 23 last year of university graduating in a Computer Engineering degree

http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Man-Corey-Wayne/dp/1411673360
Its basically a cross between a basic book like "Bang" and "The way of men". PUA crossed with some more serious/relevant messages about masculinity and purusing goals
http://www.amazon.com/Way-Men-Jack-Donovan/dp/0985452307

I have been in only one serious LTR. Girl broke my heart. I spent 1 year without touching a woman and wallowing in my own pity because the LTR cheated. I had a serious health issue that kept my bedridden for a long time. Other than that, I am just getting started with TRP and realizing my value in the sexual marketplace. So in short; fairly inexperienced. Just getting started. Thats why I am posting this topic

Well I guess that means I should just keep spinning plates till I get someone valuable. And if not, fuck marraige

1. The Way Of Men.
   This book changed my life. Im sure anyone on this sub will recognize themselves and the situations Donovan writes about.
   
   
2. Anything by Robert Greene.
   How to become powerful, seductive and master yourself.
   
   
3. Meditations.
   This book helped me overcome my fear of death, which made me give less fucks. Because in the end, nothing matters.
   
   I dont have anymore than that at the moment, but i would suggest reading biographies of great men. Right now im reading Seven Pillars Of Wisdom, T. E. Lawrence(of Arabia)s first hand account of the Arab uprising during the First World War

I highly recommend The Way of Men by Jack Donovan. One of the best books of this sort.

Sex

The Way of Men – Jack Donovan***
Sperm Wars – Robin Baker
Sex at Dawn – Christopher Ryan
Why Men Rule – Steven Goldberg
The Manipulated Man – Esther Vilar
Is There Anything Good About Men? – Roy Baumeister
Demonic Males – Dale Peterson
The Essential Difference – Simon Baron-Cohen
The Mating Mind – Geoffrey Miller
The Red Queen – Matt Ridley

****

Government

Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers – Tom Wolfe
Public Choice: An Introduction – Iain McLean
On Government Employment – Foseti (blog post)
Yes, Minister – TV Show

****

​

Now with added cancer!

Snapshots:

1. This Post - archive.org, [megalodon.jp*](http://megalodon.jp/pc/get_simple/decide?url=http://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/6qq0qw/disabled_man_who_is_suing_taylor_swift_wrote_a/ "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!"), snew.github.io, archive.is
   
   
2. https://www.amazon.com/Making-Legal... - archive.org, [megalodon.jp*](http://megalodon.jp/pc/get_simple/decide?url=https://www.amazon.com/Making-Legal-Daughter-Complete-Stranger/dp/1520441509 "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!"), archive.is
   
   
3. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art... - archive.org, [megalodon.jp*](http://megalodon.jp/pc/get_simple/decide?url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4012828/Utah-man-sues-Taylor-Swift-agents-stonewall-efforts-make-music-her.html "could not auto-archive; click to resubmit it!"), archive.is
   
   ^(I am a bot.) ^([Info](/r/SnapshillBot) ^/ ^[Contact](/message/compose?to=\/r\/SnapshillBot))

Bon, vu que tu as besoin d'être pris en main. Je cite Lauren Southern :

> "Oh, and another problem I have with Hitler? He fawned over Muslims more sycophantically than Justin Trudeau. Bibi Netanyahu was right to point out that Hitler decided on the Holocaust partly because Middle Eastern Muslims told him they didn’t want Jews expelled into the region.“

Blamer les musulmans pour l'holocauste, on fait difficilement plus islamophobe dans le genre. Surtout que ça provient de son bouquin au titre méga subtil : "Barbarians: How Baby Boomers, Immigrants, and Islam Screwed My Generation" (Source : https://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Boomers-Immigrants-Screwed-Generation/dp/1541136942)

C'est assez islamophobe pour que tu investisses du temps dans cette vidéo ou tu as des excuses toutes prêtes pour miss journaliste américaine du canada ? https://youtu.be/VUbxVfSqtt8

That's the liberal position, yes.

If you are interested in this topic and are willing to entertain a serious and secular defense of traditional marriage, the likes of which you will never be exposed to without seeking it out, here's a read:

https://www.amazon.com/What-Marriage-Man-Woman-Defense/dp/1594036225

Your views on marriage have been informed by pop culture. You can do better than that.

There are several verses on the topic that make it clear where the Bible stands. Since people get funny about the OT, let's just look at NT verses.

http://www.witnessfortheworld.org/homont.html

I'd also recommend you read What is Marriage? and Correct, Not Politically Correct. The "Correct" book is a really short read and has a useful Q&A section in the back. What is Marriage is more academic but still a great read. Interestingly, neither relies much on the Bible to make their convincing case for marriage.

Ironic, since Noam Chomsky apparently considers himself an anarchist, and wrote a book called, "Chomsky on Anarchism."

http://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Anarchism-Noam/dp/1904859208/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324305240&sr=8-1

There's also a collection of some of his writings/interviews on libertarian socialism: Chomsky on Anarchism.

And his essay: Notes on Anarchsim

You would like "The Manipulated Man" by Esther Vilar. She basically blasts women for being infantile jerks who trade access to their vagina for material support.

https://www.amazon.com/Manipulated-Man-Esther-Vilar/dp/1905177178

>Interesting point of view. I would say not having the right to vote and being considered “property” is oppression, but I can see why you would think otherwise.

Then men have just as much right to complain too, since most men in the west couldn't vote until the mid-19th century at the earliest, especially in the UK, where we couldn't vote until 1918, just a decade before most women could. Also, women might have been considered property but least society doesn't still treat you like a disposable utility. There was never much equality in the world, until recently. In fact, there still isn't.

>I don’t agree “protection” is the correct description.

It was in those days.

>It seems you don’t have a full understanding of why the feminist movement began in the 19th century, because there genuinely were unequal rights and women were seen as lesser than a man

When did I say they didn't have less rights? All I said was the movement was not entirely pure from the start. True equality was never their final goal.

>legally women are equals, which is what the movement achieved

And much more than that, of course.

>I would be happy to delve deeper into your perspective of the topic if you are willing to share links or names of texts.

This and this are good places to start. I also encourage you to read this to learn more about how women have more or less manipulated society to their liking and how men (especially those in power) will often betray their own gender to bow to the demands of women. I think you'll find these books very interesting and eye-opening.

>Also, I’m not sure what you mean by “today’s morals” because morals are timeless. There are different philosophies, so of course you may disagree.

What is considered "right and wrong" throughout history changes is what I'm saying. You can't apply our standards to the past. I'm sure people in the future will look back in horror at things we don't even consider to be bad today.

As for Women who support or at least understand MGTOW I'd assume the two would be

Esther Vilar of The Manipulated man : https://www.amazon.com/Manipulated-Man-Esther-Vilar/dp/1905177178


and Dr. Helen Smith Of Men on Strike : https://www.amazon.com/Men-Strike-Boycotting-Marriage-Fatherhood/dp/1594037620


It's going to be harder to find sources that rationally argue against MGTOW because the typical arguments against MGTOW tend to attack mens sexuality , sexual abilities( incel / virgin ) , or tend to call men who do not subscribe to traditional male gender roles cowards and similar emasculating claims to evoke an emotional response .

The most common arguments against MGTOW are probably going to be listed as arguments in support of men marrying .

one question: you leave the kids in the car with engine running?

and. awesome. those are great books and good for you overall. don't let her twist you in "The manipulated Man" ( https://www.amazon.com/Manipulated-Man-Esther-Vilar/dp/1905177178)

don't punish the kids though, they may like your routine.

get them ready and skip the rest of the "nice guy" stuff.

>Oh so you’re sexist against your own gender? Do you just say this stuff to make yourself look better than most women?

@ u/roccoseinfeld - May I recommend a book to you?

It's called: "THE MANIPULATED MAN"

It's author is: ESTHER Vilar

https://www.amazon.com/Manipulated-Man-Esther-Vilar/dp/1905177178

Thanks for the recommendation!

Link to Amazon for others:

https://www.amazon.com/Manipulated-Man-Esther-Vilar/dp/1905177178/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=%22the+manipulated+man%22+from+esther+vilar&qid=1557272009&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

https://www.amazon.com/Manipulated-Man-Esther-Vilar/dp/1905177178

Try this; https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/745489624?utm_medium=api&utm_source=custom_widget

Then this; https://www.amazon.com/Manipulated-Man-Esther-Vilar/dp/1905177178

Message me if you want more!

I was under the impression the manipulated man was the sidebar article. Is this the book you recommend?

Not believing the CIA/mass media/whoever != believing Trump.

Here's something you should probably read.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0055PJ4R0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Not a well known book outside of the UK I think but brilliantly simple and impactful. Has been a cornerstone in my view of media along with Manufacturing Consent and Propaganda. Once you've gone through those you'll probably be more inclined to focus on your own life.

Disgusting. Also far too common. Further reading : Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent
Here

Very related and, frankly, required reading: Manufacturing Consent

If you truly want the full answer, buy https://www.amazon.com/Cuckservative-How-Conservatives-Betrayed-America-ebook/dp/B018ZHHA52

I listened to it on my commute to work. Totally opened my eyes.

Wikipedia gives no citation for the heretic's ethnicity. His ethnicity is noted in the Foreward to this rudely named book.

https://www.amazon.com/Cuckservative-How-Conservatives-Betrayed-America-ebook/dp/B018ZHHA52

Starting? It started with the SWP. As usual it's not mainstream, but it's not new either.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whats-Left-Lost-Liberals-Their/dp/0007229704/

> It is bad for the world. The US is fucking amazing, Europe is spineless and China doesn't give a fuck.

True

> Unfortunately, I think the US' golden age is over, and the world doesn't know what its got, until its gone.

You might be right, but I think this is a matter of popular perception. The US golden age as far as the US being loved does seem to be waning. As far as it's influence and power is concerned I think it's still strong. Much of the anti-Americanism (and anti-westernism) in the world is due to conspiracy theories but also partly to blame on leftists and I am a leftist/liberal just so you know.

This anti-NATO protest in Chicago is one example of what I mean.

I recommend watching this interview with the British journalist Nick Cohen:
Part 1 & Part 2 on his book "What's Left: How the Left Lost its Way"

At least Tony Blair doesn't have the western liberal guilt that many have...

Another part to the perception of western decline not just American is the rise of other big economies like China, India and Brazil.
Osama Bin Laden even said something like "we have to bleed the Americans". GW Bush's war strategy was forceful and huge in order to show American power but it was too expensive and hurt the economy. Exactly what Bin Laden wanted.

Obama is also part of this perception because of the way he talks. He wants to end American exceptionalism, which sounds like a fair thing to do but is ultimately a dangerous thing. He doesn't seem to me to believe that America is a leader in the world anymore.

> Politics still is a dirty game, and it has to be. The US and the UK can easily be called terrorists. They have done horrible things, and it sounds Machiavellian, but there are definitely times when the ends justifies the means, if you want rapid, more reliable results.

I agree with what you say here but I don't agree that the US and the UK can easily be called terrorists. They do not meet the definition of being terrorist states or state sponsors of terrorism. I don't think you can make that equivalence.

> That is the problem with democracy.

I agree. Another problem with democracy is the belief that if you give people free elections that they will choose wisely. Another problem is people misunderstanding democracy and believing it means majority rule. Yet another problem is trying to spread democracy without spreading secularism. The United States forced a constitution on Japan after WW2 and the Japanese people have barely changed it since and look how great their country is. So that proves you are right when you imply that an iron fist has to be used sometimes. I don't think that a kind and reasonable dictator is such a bad thing.

> And I liked Ron paul in the beginning. He was kind of adorable. But all that Gold standard/Austrian school/Mises shiz was just silly. Before you worry about a potential presidents stance on abortion, you have to look and see if he has a basic grasp of economics.

Haha yeah! He wants (i'm not sure if this is still his position) to shut down the US central bank and believes this will somehow improve the economy!

> It is illegal to serve as governor while being an atheist in more than 10-20 states. Half the country doesn't believe gays should be able to marry. They don't think prostitution or drugs should be legalized. The US has to take care of itself. It is the only civilized country without socialized healthcare. The jail situation is incredibly depressing, especially for the black population.

I don't see why a country like the US can't fix it's domestic problems while still having a strong foreign policy. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

> Your problem is that you care on an emotional level maybe.

Of course I care on an emotional level but I don't think on an emotional level.

> Being in the UK, I assume you are Indian or Pakistani?

I'm Egyptian and moved with my parents and sister to the UK when I was 4 years old.

> Not an isolationist. First you have to love yourself, before you can love others.

Agreed. I don't think your an isolationist btw.

I have to admit, I didn't put much effort into this post but I did read all of your post carefully.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Whats-Left-How-Lost-its-Liberals-Their/0007229704

"From the much-loved, witty and excoriating voice of journalist Nick Cohen, a powerful and irreverent dissection of the agonies, idiocies and compromises of mainstream liberal thought.

Nick Cohen comes from the Left. While growing up, his mother would search the supermarket shelves for politically reputable citrus fruit and despair. When, at the age of 13, he found out that his kind and thoughtful English teacher voted Conservative, he nearly fell off his chair: 'To be good, you had to be on the Left.'

Today he's no less confused. When he looks around him, in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, he sees a community of Left-leaning liberals standing on their heads. Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam that stands for everything the liberal-Left is against come from a section of the Left? After the American and British wars in Bosnia and Kosovo against Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansers, why were men and women of the Left denying the existence of Serb concentration camps? Why is Palestine a cause for the liberal-Left, but not, for instance, China, the Sudan, Zimbabwe or North Korea? Why can't those who say they support the Palestinian cause tell you what type of Palestine they would like to see? After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington why were you as likely to read that a sinister conspiracy of Jews controlled American or British foreign policy in a liberal literary journal as in a neo-Nazi rag? It's easy to know what the Left is fighting against – the evils of Bush and corporations – but what and, more to the point, who are they fighting for?

As he tours the follies of the Left, Nick Cohen asks us to reconsider what it means to be liberal in this confused and topsy-turvy time. With the angry satire of Swift, he reclaims the values of democracy and solidarity that united the movement against fascism, and asks: What's Left?"

https://www.amazon.com/Hegel-Short-Introduction-Peter-Singer/dp/019280197X

i read this in less than a day i think. pretty informative considering how concise it is.

A few places you might think of starting with:
Gary Gutting has some fairly accessible stuff on french philosophy.

Peter Singer has written books on Hegel and Marx that might be helpful.

Peter Singer's very short introduction on Hegel was a good starting when I had to read about Hegel.

Hegel's really a fan of protestantism....which will shortly become apparent to you. He's also really interested in the french revolution...so that might give you some ideas. If you have any specific questions I can probably help. I found Peter Singer's introduction to Hegel pretty helpful and concise. You can probably find a pdf floating around somewhere on the internet.

On Hegel in particular, I would recommend Hegel: A Very Short Introduction or the more scholarly An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History.

sorry! but i got amazon links :)
https://www.amazon.com/Think-Compelling-Introduction-Simon-Blackburn/dp/0192854259 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0815300557/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me= https://www.amazon.com/dp/0133457982/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me= https://www.amazon.com/Challenge-Dragons-Dove-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B00ZGROCUQ https://www.amazon.com/Auditing-Based-Approach-Conducting-Quality-Audit/dp/1305080572

I'll let some of the other people on here direct you where to dig in and answer your questions more directly, but this was by far the most compelling introductory book for me: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Compelling-Introduction-Simon-Blackburn/dp/0192854259.

I can't recommend it enough to begin, and from there you can branch out with what you find enjoyable

There's a few issues with Peterson's approach to philosophy. The foremost is the extent to which he pretends to be an expert in philosophical issues without actually having well-defended philosophical positions. His pragmatism, for instance, wouldn't pass muster in a graduate class on pragmatism -- and University of Toronto has some leading pragmatist scholars that he could talk to about the subject. This is unfortunately typical of Peterson's approach. His original commentary on Bill C-16 was ignorant and ultimately misled the public. His commentary on dominance hierarchies is also speculative, outside his ken, and misleading.

So while it's great to make philosophy more public there's plenty better people to do it and plenty better ways to do it. Simon Blackburn is a great example of a well-regarded philosopher who offers informed, accurate, work to the public in an accessible way. Dan Dennett is also stand-out example of a great philosopher who does great professional and public work. Or, also from the University of Toronto, there's Joseph Heath, who is now one of Canada's foremost public intellectuals on political and economic subjects.

Contrast that with Peterson's extremely polarizing and error-prone approach. I'd be glad to have fewer Petersons and more Heaths or Nussbaums.

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is pretty much an encyclopedia of trans.

Essay time! This and this are kind of like the primer essays for 'so you're questioning, now what'. They answer a lot of questions about the experience of gender dysphoria and how it is through someone's life as well as help to reframe the situation in various ways, would strongly recommend.

Books wise, I know Whipping Girl gets recced around a lot - whether you're MtF or FtM, it has a lot to offer and is pretty good. Gender Outlaws is another great read that is pretty current / up to date in terms of what it offers and has a ton of perspectives on the situation that you might find handy. I would also highly recommend Trans Bodies, Trans Selves as a great resource to pursue.

Edit: Couple more! Check out The Genderbread Person for a quick handy look at the different ways to think about gender identity and what it means, and if that interests you then you might also be interested in the accompanying book, Guide to Gender.

Full disclosure: I have not read any of these books. They are all in my Amazon Smile wish list :) Also, some are specifically for transgender issues, but some are geared toward the client or LGBTQ community. You can read them and integrate the information to support your practice.

• Gender Quest Workbook
  
  
• Handbook of Counseling and Psychotherapy with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Clients
  
  
• Counseling LGBTI Clients
  
  
• Nurturing Queer Youth: Family Therapy Transformed
  
  
• Handbook of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity in Counseling and Psychotherapy
  
  
• Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working With Gender-Variant People and Their Families
  
  
• Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community

Sure, susans.org is a huge forum with allies and partners and trans people of all stripes.

This website is part of the Silvia Rivera project who is a rather well known leader in the community, since Stonewall, who died of cancer.
https://srlp.org/resources/trans-101/

There’s tons of trans vloggers you can go to. Most but not all have a 101 video, and/or talk about their experiences being trans. Here’s a list:
https://blog.feedspot.com/transgender_youtube_channels/

There’s a number of authors you may look into as well, here’s some books:
https://www.amazon.com/Whipping-Girl-Transsexual-Scapegoating-Femininity/dp/1580056229
https://www.amazon.com/Redefining-Realness-Path-Womanhood-Identity/dp/1476709130/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543615079&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=janet+mock&dpPl=1&dpID=5179e6QMxzL&ref=plSrch
https://www.amazon.com/Surpassing-Certainty-What-Twenties-Taught/dp/1501145797/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1543615079&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=janet+mock&dpPl=1&dpID=511ZZslW8TL&ref=plSrch
https://www.amazon.com/Transgender-History-second-Todays-Revolution/dp/158005689X/ref=pd_aw_sbs_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=158005689X&pd_rd_r=0ddc8e87-f4eb-11e8-8ad5-2179f688e965&pd_rd_w=dZYLz&pd_rd_wg=l40fZ&pf_rd_i=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=926ebe02-3236-40c6-ac63-01ad178f498a&pf_rd_r=7XK0K0TEGTZS8SNQ9YMP&pf_rd_s=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=7XK0K0TEGTZS8SNQ9YMP
https://www.amazon.com/Trans-Bodies-Selves-Transgender-Community/dp/0199325359/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_of_15?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0199325359&pd_rd_r=0ddc8e87-f4eb-11e8-8ad5-2179f688e965&pd_rd_w=mqDub&pd_rd_wg=l40fZ&pf_rd_i=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=57b46099-d750-4d74-83ee-63ad64b310a4&pf_rd_r=7XK0K0TEGTZS8SNQ9YMP&pf_rd_s=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=7T7APJ7MA85RWVJHJW5T
https://www.amazon.com/Shes-Not-There-Life-Genders/dp/0385346972/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_of_17?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0385346972&pd_rd_r=0ddc8e87-f4eb-11e8-8ad5-2179f688e965&pd_rd_w=mqDub&pd_rd_wg=l40fZ&pf_rd_i=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=57b46099-d750-4d74-83ee-63ad64b310a4&pf_rd_r=7XK0K0TEGTZS8SNQ9YMP&pf_rd_s=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=BNNAHM1QDG52M4D25XX2
https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Outlaw-Men-Women-Rest/dp/1101973242/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_of_20?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1101973242&pd_rd_r=0ddc8e87-f4eb-11e8-8ad5-2179f688e965&pd_rd_w=mqDub&pd_rd_wg=l40fZ&pf_rd_i=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=57b46099-d750-4d74-83ee-63ad64b310a4&pf_rd_r=7XK0K0TEGTZS8SNQ9YMP&pf_rd_s=mobile-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=WC57YE4ZTSS8XPR20CRY

How old is she?

I haven't read it, but this looks interesting: Trans Bodies, Trans Selves

Or, if you want to go for clothing, opaque black tights are easy to fit, go with everything, have a place in all but the butchest wardrobes, and nobody ever has too many.

You're awesome.

Trans bodies trans selves is a pretty good resource for trans folk and allies alike. There is a lot in there and can be a bit dense but it's really informative. https://www.amazon.com/Trans-Bodies-Selves-Transgender-Community/dp/0199325359

Straight up, you need to tell him you love him, you care about him, and that you’ll be there to support and accept him whatever he decides. You can’t control what he does, but your love and support will mean a lot to him. It’s important that you demonstrate that you’re truly willing to listen to him and understand him, rather than telling him what you think he needs to do without truly understanding what he’s going through.

A couple more things:
I noticed in one comment you doubted he could be trans because he had been sexually attracted to women in the past. This tells me you may not actually know much about the trans experience, as gender identity and sexual preference can be entirely separate from each other. (Plus, he’s still quite young and it’s possible that he hadn’t yet figured that part of himself out yet.)

If you haven’t already, you ought to read over the APA’s page on transgender people:

https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/transgender


I also highly recommend you read one or both of these books to familiarize yourself better with trans issues and the trans experience.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199325359/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0231157134/

(At the very least, download the free samples through the Kindle app and read through the first couple chapters.)

Also, resist the urge to make this about yourself. Im not sure why you gave details about your career, salary, and romantic life, but please don’t use those facts to guilt or shame your brother. It’s an unkind this to do and it won’t help your relationship with him. It’ll only make him feel worse.

Finally, try to understand how challenging and scary it would be to come out as trans. No one chooses to do this because it’s easy or fun. As cis straight guys, the world is kinda built for us; our experience is totally the norm. For trans people, not only are they different than 99% of the population, but they’re routinely stigmatized and ridiculed but large swathes of society. Imo, it’s pretty fucking brave to come out as trans.

Anyway, good luck, man. My little bro is also in his early 20s and struggling to figure things out. Just try be a good brother and help him move forward in a positive way 💪💪💪

The best book ever I think for trans is "Trans bodies trans selves" http://www.amazon.com/Trans-Bodies-Selves-Transgender-Community/dp/0199325359
Its kind of like the bible of transition.

If you think he is still suicidal there is the Trevor line http://www.thetrevorproject.org/section/donate?gclid=COKv-OPRxsQCFdcSgQod5mkAdA
There number is 1-866-488-7386 and you can call text or chat with them.

The following sub reddits are good r/ftm r/asktransgender r/transeducate and r/TransCommunity

For his parents http://transparenthood.net/

Sorry I don't have more for you. I know he's family to you and Im sure you would never consider otherwise but thank you for helping him. Thank you for taking the time out to prepare. The next year is going to be really hard, probably the hardest in his life and he's going to need every bit of support from everywhere he can get it.
While I'm not FTM I am MTF and if you or he want to talk or need some general pointers Im happy to help just shoot me a pm.

Definitely get Tom Ferguson's book then. Sadly, I haven't found a pdf of it online but your library or Amazon should have it. He has a number of articles that should be interesting. In short, he explores how the opportunity cost of voting causes political systems to be dominated by moneyed interests. As labor organizes, it becomes a moneyed interest and is able to get into the political system, which affects the composition of the parties. I should be able to snag his scholarly articles if you can't get them through your university or wherever. He spends some time talking about Europe too, so you should be able to get some useful info for making comparisons.

I'm afraid I don't have much on China, probably because unions are illegal and thus quite small and powerless.

> It's a big government that has been purchased and is currently being run by big corporations.

The corporate form is relatively recent (4, 5 centuries?) so let's generalize it to "the rich."

The problem is, if you study history, governments have pretty much always been associated with the rich. It is an institution that is either created by, or controlled by the rich, or in cases where the government is imposed by those who control military force, the guys who control it in very short order become "the rich" and use their control of government to make that state of affairs permanent.

As far as corporations are concerned - don't forget how corporations are created. By a State Charter. I.e. corporations are entities created when the government bends the rules and exempts some rich people from liability laws for some of their investment/business activities.

So there is a case to be made that government supporters are ultimately responsible for the problem of corporations.

> Big corporations that Ron Paul wants to further remove regulations from.

How did those corporations get so big? Who controlled the government when it enacted those regulations? So what purpose do those regulations really serve?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Rule-Investment-Competition-Money-Driven/dp/0226243176

> Just as thinking the problem is only democrat or only republican caused

I don't think that. The vast majority of you liberals or Democrats think that. That is a big part of the reason why I yell at you.

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1i6ac5/wounded_soldier_writes_letter_about_being_forced/cb1mwdd?context=3

> thinking Ron Paul the deregulatory is the solution shows that you just aren't paying attention.

Of course he's not "the solution." But his campaign in 2008 and 2012 were probably the best efforts to back, to make things better.

Because corporate/Wall Street scam #1 is imperialism.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/

And a guy who is speaking out against that, in front of Republican audiences, is pure fucking gold.

> Why do you think Ron Paul is the only "crazy" the media allows to have even a small voice?

The media has to maintain the illusion we're a free country with a free media. So they can't simply ignore a movement of a couple million people. It's the same sort of stuff they do with #OWS or anti-war rallies. They can't completely bury it, so they either play down the numbers (i.e. anti-war rallies with hundreds of thousands of people made to look like it was "only" 50 thousand) or portray them like crazy kooks (Ron Paul, #OWS).

http://www.businessinsider.com/jon-stewart-ron-paul-media-video-2011-8

I humbly suggest you read Winner Take All Politics, or if you're a voracious reader: Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems. These will free you of some fetters.

This is a really difficult question and people disagree, you could also ask the fine people over at r/asksocialscience. More philosophically, Michael Huemer has written a book on Ethical Intuitionism. My own thought is that if there need to be philosophical arguments for it, it cannot be said to exist innately, though social science may also return different answers from different studies. As I said, this is a difficult question that different people have different opinions on in the philosophy world.

Ah good. But you've got an MA, no? Whereas both mine are undergrad and in subjects I don't care about (study science, they said. Commit crimes against the lower mammals. Study law, they said. Hang out with lawyers. Become a lawyer, do paperwork. What a dumbass.)

Yeah, I've got R&P. I just ordered The Groundwork earlier tonight. I ordered Practical Ethics yesterday, actually as well, I thought that was supposed to be the Singer? I'll get the other two when I get paid.

Also have you read Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism? Someone told me it was the best defence of moral realism of recent times.

If you would like a broad overview of metaethical theory that presents the various viewpoints in a fairly simple to understand format, while also offering extra material covering more complex aspects, see Michael Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism. He does have a moral objectivist thesis in the book, but he covers all the various viewpoints very fairly, and he has a special talent for breaking complex arguments down into simple chunks. I think his argument is weakest against moral nihilism, but he demonstrates fairly conclusively that subjectivism is untenable.

>I am the first to say that libertarian authors have frequently relied upon controversial philosophical assumptions in deriving their political conclusions. Ayn Rand, for example, thought that capitalism could only be successfully defended by appeal to ethical egoism, the theory according to which the right action for anyone in any circumstance is always the most selfish action. Robert Nozick is widely read as basing his libertarianism on an absolutist conception of individual rights, according to which an individual's property rights and rights to be free from coercion can never be outweighed by any social consequences. Jan Narveson relies on a metaethical theory according to which the correct moral principles are determined by a hypothetical social contract. Because of the controversial nature of these ethical or metaethical theories, most readers find the libertarian arguments based on them easy to reject.

>It is important to observe, then, that I have appealed to nothing so controversial in my own reasoning. In fact, I reject all three of the foundations for libertarianism mentioned in the preceding paragraph. I reject egoism, since I believe that individuals have substantial obligations to take into account the interests of others. I reject ethical absolutism, since I believe an individual's rights may be overridden by sufficiently important needs of others. And I reject all forms of social contract theory, since I believe the social contract is a myth with no moral relevance for us...

~ Huemer from Problem of Political Authority. (The book argues in favor of anarcho-capitalism, but will also give you a strong foundation for minarchism)

His moral philosophy is intuitionism. I also highly suggest his other book Ethical Intuitionism - it's a great intro to metaethics and spurred my interest in philosophy to begin with.

If you can't afford either, he has some chapters over at his faculty page.

It asserts a moral realist position (objective moral facts) on the basis of our intuitions - essentially common sense morality (see: GE Moore, and WD Ross). It is a respectable academic philosophy (as opposed to Objectivism) and has recently seen a resurgence.

Here is a good summary of what Huemer's approach lends itself to

I come in from David Friedman's angle: Here's his Amazon review of Huemer's book Ethical Intuitionism:

> Like another reviewer, I started out agreeing with Huemer's basic claim, having concluded some forty-five years ago that the intuitionist position provided the most satisfactory explanation of normative beliefs. I read the book in part in the hope that he could provide better arguments than I had come up with, in particular a better rebuttal of what I view as the most serious challenge to our position. Unfortunately, he doesn't.

> He does do a very good good job of demonstrating that ethical intuitionism is a defensible position and offering arguments to show that most of the alternatives, including ones that are much more widely accepted, are not. But he does not provide an adequate response to the one challenge I am concerned with, the view that combines ethical nihilism with evolutionary psychology.

> The claim of that view is that there are no normative facts, that nothing is good or bad and there is no moral reason to do or not do anything. It explains our moral beliefs, the intuitions that Huemer views (and I view) as imperfect perceptions of normative facts, as explainable by evolution--they were beliefs that increased the reproductive success of those who held them in the environment in which we evolved, and so got hard wired into their descendants.

> That approach challenges intuitionism in two ways. First, it explains the evidence, my ethical intuitions, on the basis of facts of reality I already believe to be true. Once we have one explanation there is no need for another. Second, it raises the question of how, if there are moral facts, we could have acquired the ability to know them, since at least some of them would presumably have led us to modify our behavior in ways that reduced our reproductive success--make us less willing, for instance, to slaughter the men of a neighboring tribe and take their women.

> Despite these problems, I have not yet abandoned my current moral position, in part because the alternative position fails to answer the questions I want answered, indeed implies that they are unanswerable, that there are no actual oughts. In part also, I fail to adopt the nihilist position because I am unable to believe it. That inability is psychological, not logical. I cannot actually believe that there is nothing wrong with torturing small children for the fun of it or murdering large numbers of innocent people, both conclusions that follow from the view that nothing at all is wrong or right.

I differ from Friedman in that I'm not unable to believe that there is nothing wrong with torturing small children for fun--I'm fine with taking the moral nihilist position.

When I use moral language I am talking about my values/preferences.

Still, I think Huemer's moral intuitionism comes very close to what I value and I still think it's useful to have such a system of ethics.

> It is entirely permissible in logic to hold that something can neither be proven nor disproven, this is the entire reason that we come up with new axioms to add on to our old ones in mathematics.

It might be permissible in logic, but that doesn't mean that there aren't propositions that are either true or false.

> Assuming a strict dichotomy of truth -- and further extending that to provability -- is a fallacy.

I don't know about provability and how that's relevant here, but I don't think that assuming that a proposition like "I have two hands" is either true or false is a fallacy in any way. You might argue that the proposition is somehow not truth-apt, or that there's not a fact of the matter about how many hands I have, but that would be an extremely hard argument to make.

> While it appears that there can be no argument for hard determinism based within the author's definition of "rational discourse", that does not on its own serve as a proof that it is false.

Of course there can be. You deny one of the premises and then provide your own argument for hard determinism.

> The meat here is in the question of whether hard determinism is possibly true, not MFT specifically, but assuming that choices are possible in premise 1 already assumes that hard determinism is false. So the author gets away with technically not begging the question while also already assuming the entire meat of the argument in one of the premises.

He addresses this in Objection #1, especially BQ2 and the last two paragraphs.

> What we must be interested with primarily then is their argument for the first premise, since that's where the actual meat is hidden, and that appears to me to be merely a pragmatic argument, and thus not actually demonstrating proof of veracity.

He doesn't make any 'deep' arguments for P1, because the fact is that there are not many people who are willing to deny it. If he still doesn't "believe that there exist these different senses of 'should'" as he writes there, then I guess the first part of his defense of P1 is his whole 2007 book https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Intuitionism-Michael-Huemer/dp/0230573746 and the second part is so obvious that what he wrote in the free will paper should be enough.

I think you might still be under the wrong impression that this is supposed to be some kind of a mathematical proof, and that the premises must then be a priori true with 100% certainty, but that's not how philosophical arguments work. Typically, all you would need to accept a premise would be to believe that it's more likely true than false. And this doesn't make the argument "practical" in any way.

>Well, what's your argument for the "maybe not"? Where else would you propose moral intuitions come from?>

I personally wouldn't make any argument for it yet as I'm not informed enough to, but I plan to read a few books on the topic in the coming months. Have you ever checked out this article?


>we probably find a case where your emotional response/moral intuition can be shown to be a bad reference for value judgments. Or would you disagree?>

I wouldn't disagree. But again, I'd like to look a little more into the issue.


>I don't think that's a good thing, but it shows me how my moral intuitions/emotions/empathy doesn't reflect the reality of what's right and wrong because I know the pig is every bit as morally relevant as a dog.>

No, I think you're right actually. I'd probably get extra upset if I read that someone was abusing a white bulldog. And that makes sense, but not a lot of sense.



>Usually when people talk about ethics/morals they're talking about intentional choices to do some sort of good. This is a bit of a tangent, so probably no important. Just thought I'd mention that.>

I was kinda joking about the vultures and rats. I don't think they can be ethical like humans can be. That said, we're learning more about animal cognition all the time and I think we still have a lot more to learn. Have you ever read this article before? That and the other related SEP articles about animals are certainly worth checking out.



>Pulling the lever is what saves more people than simply leaving it, right?>

Right. A lot of people belittle this thought experiment but I think it's fun.

>So you'd argue that the conductor shouldn't save the several people on the tracks at the expense of the one fat guy or whatever?>

Right. And I think you phrased it right by saying shouldn't save. It boils down really to what one thinks about doing vs allowing harm. I think a consequentialist would say the difference between the two isn't morally relevant, right? If so, I understand where the consequentialist is coming from, but I might disagree. Again, I'm giving opinions about things like this when I shouldn't be, not having done my due diligence by reading more into ethics.

>Cute... In a hideous sort of way!>

That's the English Bulldog for ya. The English have a weird sense of humor.

>I haven't really thought about non-cognitivism specifically, but I have thought about moral anti-realism. It seems like non-cognitivism is a subset of that.>

There are some differences. The biggest being that moral anti-realism is a cognitivist metaethical theory and non-cognitivism theories like Emotovism are, obviously, non-cognitivist moral theories. I don't know if you require this, but I'll copy and paste something here for you:

>The cognitivist argues for two claims. The first is that when someone makes a moral claim they are expressing a belief. The second is that moral claims can be true or false; this is part of cognitivism because beliefs are the sort of thing that can be true or false. Philosophers call the potential for a claim to be true or false truth-aptness . Because beliefs are thought to be descriptions, cognitivism is sometimes called descriptivism.>

>Potential misunderstandings • Cognitivism is not the view that moral claims are true, since it is quite coherent for the cognitivist to hold that all moral claims are false (see Chapter 3 ). This is a common mistake and it is best avoided by remembering that cognitivism is a view about truth-aptness and not about truth.>

>Non-cognitivism The non-cognitivist argues that if a person makes a moral claim they are expressing a non-belief state such as an emotion: for example, to say that “killing is wrong” is to express disapproval towards killing. Put crudely, it is as if you are saying “Boo! Killing!” Consequently, because expressions of approval or disapproval are not the sort of things that can be true or false, the non-cognitivist thinks that moral claims are not truth-apt in the way that the cognitivist thinks moral claims are truth-apt.>

>Potential misunderstanding • Non-cognitivism is not the view that moral claims are about our own mental states. For example, it is not the claim that “killing is wrong” really means “I disapprove of killing”. In fact, this would be a form of cognitivism, which asserts that when we make a moral claim we are describing a mental state, in this case my disapproval of killing>

>Error theory in morality derives from three plausible views. The first is cognitivism, the view that moral judgements express beliefs and aim to describe some sector of reality and are consequently truth-apt. The second is non-realism , the view that there are no moral values that correspond to our moral beliefs. The third is that truth involves correspondence to facts. These three views lead to the radical conclusion that moral claims are systematically and uniformly false.>

>Moral error theory is a radical position. It is the view that all these statements are false : • Abducting and torturing children is morally wrong. • Providing famine relief to starving families is morally good. • Locking people in a church and throwing petrol bombs through the window is evil. • It is morally right to save the boy trapped in floodwaters. The error theorist would be quick to remind us that he is not saying that it is right to torture children, bad to give money to charity, wrong to save a boy trapped in floodwaters. For he argues that there is no moral truth at all.>

Moving on now.


>I think there is also factual evidence for morally relevant values. Those values being, as I mentioned before, positive and negative mental experiences.>

I think, but don't quote me on this, that another way of saying this is moral properties can be reduced to natural properties, and by "natural" philosophers mean the subject matter of the natural sciences, which include psychology.

Moral psychology would be an interesting project to look into.





>Here's a little thought experiment: Suppose we lived in a universe with no positive or negative mental experiences. So no suffering, no depriving another of happiness, no ability to be distressed or stressed. All mental experiences (if they existed) would be neutral. Could morality or ethics still exist? You couldn't hurt or help anyone. I'd take the position that it couldn't, there would be no morally relevant way to affect anything.>

I mean, I think that sounds certainly plausible.



>since we naturally will value our own positive/negative mental experiences, if we're being objective we couldn't discount another individual's positive/negative mental experiences. To be consistent, we'd have to value them similarly to our own. To place value on our mental experiences and discount another's, even though the experiences are comparable would be irrational. I don't think that helps with the "should", it just works with a motivation that already exists. There's no traction on people that aren't committed to being rational in the ways I described.>

Right. The only thing to my mind at this point is to say -- one ought to be rational. But I couldn't give you a decisive reason right now why we ought to be rational. As Walt Whitman said defiantly, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." He practically made a (rather benign) ethos out of that statement.

Actually successful peaceful, non-violent protest surpassed violent protest during the 1950s.

>Success Rate: Violence 1990s ~22%, 2000s ~12%; Non-Violence 1990s ~51%, 2000s ~66%

Erica Chenoweth proves this point within her book Why Civil Resistance Works which uses a quantitative model (p<.05, n>140) to state that,

>"nonviolent campaigns facilitate the active participation of many more people than violent campaigns, thereby broadening the base of resistance and raising the costs to opponents of maintaining the status quo."

Just because a person is born in poverty within the United States does not mean they have to be in poverty for the rest of their lives. Likewise, a country born in violence can turn away from violence to work for peaceful turns. Such is the case of the United States.

As for your, "get done without necessary violence," Chenoweth finds that violence actually hurts the users' causes. Most violent actions causes backfiring from their opposition.

You should read her book or at least listen to one of her Online Discussions.

Read one fucking book you illiterate numbnuts: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Civil-Resistance-Works-Nonviolent/dp/0231156839

A good place to start might be Why Civil Resistance Works. The writers touch on a number of points, but the most relevant to your question is this: looking at a number of movements that aim to effect social change, they find that non-violent movements often achieve greater results. They theorize that by eschewing violence, they open the doors to greater participation and attract a wider variety of 'recruits' than a similarly-minded but violent group might.

So, land of the free really doesn't look so free these days. I've worked alongside more professional police in the Congo and Lebanon, but America, your country seems to get more terrifying for the law abiding citizen everyday.

What percentage of your population do you expect to be abused, assaulted and violated by unprofessional, trigger-happy, power-hungry-tripping "policemen" (and yes, I use quotations, because they are really thugs with guns who persistently fail to follow your country's legal framework and clearly show no regard for violating your ever preached about Constitution, which supposedly makes the USA the "greatest country" on Earth) before mass citizens will march on Congress?

I ask this as someone who genuinely cares for the common man, woman, and child. But, I cannot understand how you can have such a strong Occupy movement against the banks, yet when it comes to your civil liberties and personal rights, there appears to be no form of mass response other than rioting (which isn't the answer either).

There's a REALLY great book on civil resistance which I and many of my fellow journalist friends would strongly recommend you read, and consider applying. Check it out from your library and I promise, you'll feel drastically more informed over how effectively individual communities, towns and cities can stand up to abusive authorities and successfully alter the outcome in their favour.

I hope at least some of you pick this book up, and pass it along to your concerned friends.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Civil-Resistance-Works-Nonviolent/dp/0231156839

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0231156839/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522596259&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=why+civil+resistance+works&dpPl=1&dpID=41BhSdDV3kL&ref=plSrch

>Their conversion just proves that despite the gift of intelligence, one is nevertheless susceptible to irrational beliefs.

How is it irrational when these people gave rational reasons for their belief in the truth of the Christian religion? Check out any of their books/writings. Are Edward Feser's The Last Supersition and 5 Proofs irrational? What about Chesterton's The Everlasting Man and Orthodoxy? What about Alaisdair Macintyre's After Virtue?

>You said he wasn't a Christian yet. Did he accept Jesus as his savior? That is the requirement for salvation from what I know.

Looks like your only idea of Christianity is Protestant Christianity (in fairness to Protestant denominations though, many of them are nuanced in their views on this issue and would disagree with the assertion that only Christians are saved). The Catholic Church which was founded by Christ himself disagrees, and so do the other apostolic orthodox churches (Eastern Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox).

>What other ways would this be?

I quoted official teaching, didn't you read it?

>You know this how?

Because they themselves shared their reasons for converting/believing in the truth of Christianity (for non-converts) in their talks, books and writings? How else dude?

>What's this evidence that others converted over?

A lot -- philosophical, scientific and historical evidence.

Philosophical: The traditional cosmological arguments (given by the great thinkers of the Western philosophical tradition -- Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides, Aquinas, Leibiniz, etc) for the God of classical theism, the argument from consciousness, the moral argument and others.

Science: The Kalam Cosmological argument, the fine-tuning argument, the argument from biological teleology, and the argument from the laws of nature.

History: the argument from Jesus' miracles, the historical case for the Resurrection, Catholic miracles, and the religious experiences and mystical gifts of countless Christian saints. I lay this out these arguments briefly in this post.

>Because of this outright lie and string of labels thrown at me:

Nah, my assessment is self evident from what you wrote. A silly absolute statement like "no Christian ever believed in his faith on the basis of reason and evidence" is extremely telling...especially given that you doubled down on your erroneous views after being given abundantly clear evidence.

>You espouse nothing but poor reasoning

You can't espouse poor reasoning. You can however espouse an idea supported by poor reasoning. Assuming this is what you meant, I still haven't done it. You have no examples for how my arguments rely on poor reasoning, you just keep insisting that they do. This is due to your own reliance on specious reasoning.

>You're an apologist. You've chosen that position and it's an ugly one.

Sigh.... You know what an apologist is right? Lets use the term in a sentence... "The christian apologists tried to defend their beliefs using reason, thinking that belief in god could be found through logic." Hmm... Maybe a definition would still be useful.

Ya... I'm not an apologist. I'm not arguing in defense of a belief. I'm arguing against a belief in moral realism. You, my friend, function as the apologist in this debate. Please stop using words without knowing how to use them.

>My morals are quite measured and I do not follow them blindly, with faith. I quoted this because this is all you do. You make stupid and baseless attacks because you have no defense.

Watch this: "My belief in God is quite measured and I do not follow him blindly, with faith." Just because you use reason to justify things after the fact does not make the original assumption true, or any less "faithful."

You seem to have a complete lack of knowledge when it comes to moral theory and what is possible through moral theory. Sam Harris, while an interesting individual, and right about many things, is fundamentally wrong when it comes to what science can do with regard to morals. Not in the sense that his moral system is untenable, but rather in the sense that you can't get his moral system strictly through scientific study—which he claims we can. Assumptions must be made before you can even begin the study of well-being and suffering, and even more must be made in order to say that you should promote one and avoid the other.

A person's insistence on the existence of universal objective morals is best termed as a FAITH. There is no evidence of universal objective morals, and they are fundamentally unscientific entities in the same sense God is—even if we wanted to, we could never find evidence of them. At best they are commonly assumed entities—like God is for most people.

And I repeat, because you seem to think I am some sort of moral heathen, THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT MORALS ARE USELESS OR THAT WE SHOULD LET PEOPLE DO WHATEVER THEY WANT BECAUSE THERE ARE NO OBJECTIVE MORALS. Your feelings about me being somehow deficient are the same feelings a religious fundamentalist would have toward both of us due to our lack of belief.

That you think a bit of pop-science is somehow "important" for me to read is laughable. If what you know of morals comes from that book, I feel sorry for you. I understand that many atheists will praise anything that comes from the "canon" writers on atheism like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, however, being a fan of someone does not make all of their work good, or even relevant. At best, Sam Harris is simply endorsing the naturalistic fallacy. At worst, he's willfully ignorant of what the naturalistic fallacy is, and simply wishes to push his view as a "counterpoint" to religious morality.

Since you so kindly left me a link to a book, allow me to do the same, by linking you to the most important books in moral theory for you to read, some of which argue directly against me, but at this point the idea is to get you educated, not to get you to agree with me:

Alisdair MacIntyre — After Virtue

Nietzsche — Beyond Good and Evil

Nietzsche — The Genealogy of Morals

Kant — Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Aristotle — Nicomachean Ethics

G.E. Moore — Principia Ethica

I've done my best to find the best editions of these books available (I myself usually default to the Cambridge editions of works in the history of philosophy). You may also want to check out some Peter Singer, along with Bentham and Mill, if only to know what it means to be a utilitarian. After that, read John Rawls, because he'll tell you one reason why utilitarianism is so controversial in ethical theory.

I hope to hear back from you about the results of your studies. I figure you can easily find pdfs of these books (though perhaps not the same editions I linked) somewhere online. Given about a month or two to read them all (I'm not sure how much free time you have... maybe more like three months) you should be up to speed. Hopefully I'll hear back from you after the new year. At that point, I don't expect you to agree with my view on ethics, but I at least expect you will understand it, and be able to argue your own position somewhat more effectively than you are at the moment. If nothing else, think of this as a way to learn how to "stick it" to people like me.

Maybe by then you'll have gotten beyond the whole "I'm taking my ball and going home" disposition you seem to have when confronted with someone who's better than you at debating ethics. I can only hope.

If you take ethics seriously at all, do this for yourself: study the shit out of ethical theory.

>I have not yet encountered this problem.

You mentioned computers before so I'll use them here as an example:

My computer, in front of me now, is meaningful in that it is meaningful to me. It's meaningful to you, too, in an abstract way because I'm using it to transmit this message. It allows me to access stores of information I could never have dreamed of.

Now, imagine a nuclear apocalypse. 95% of the world's human population dies. Most knowledge of the post-industrial and indeed industrial world is lost to history.

I live near DC so odds are my area will be pretty radioactive; it'll be hundreds of years, if not more, before the area is habitable and longer still before it is excavated.

Imagine, then, that the descendants of the survivors of this apocalypse, generations later, find my poor laptop. It will have no meaning for them, because they have no use for it. Similarly, were I to go back in time to, say, 1500, my computer would have no meaning for the people of that time, because they have no use for it.

My computer has meaning in that it has meaning to its user. Purely extrinsic value, there. Humans, however, we possess something innate. No one knows really what to call it - some say it's a soul, some would say it's consciousness, some would call it free will - whatever it is, we don't understand it at all. But we pretty much all agree that a human has innate value, period.

So, to say that I am to God like my computer is to me is demeaning to that innate whatever-it-is, don't you think?

NOTE: the above is a restructuring of a thought experiment presented in the introduction to Alaisdair MacIntyre's After Virtue which, if you haven't already, is a dense but phenomenal work and totally worth the effort.

>I see no problem with that.

Me either :)

>Can you come up with something that would?

I didn't today - ain't life fun like that? I don't think you need one meaning, all the time, forever. Meaning can change as we do. I'm not the same as I was before I met you, or before I turned 25, or before I turned 16, etc. You're not the same, either. Why should your "meaning" be so permanent when "you" are not?

>Why must it? Without God it seems that we are just chemical bonds.

I agree with you, it seems like we're chemical bonds. But I'm not a monist - there's something else there. We don't understand consciousness, not even a little bit. We don't know where it comes from, what it is, whether my dog is conscious in the same way I am and if not, then whether she is conscious at all. We just don't know.

On a personal level I still haven't decided whether the field of Noetics is doing really, really interesting scientific work or really, really interesting voodoo, but suffice to say it's really, really interesting (to me, at least). Check it out if you get a sec!

But what I said was, given that human life does have meaning and given that there is no God, then the meaning of human life cannot come from God, and must come from human life.

>Make note, I'm just a high schooler. I don't have any significant experience in academic IR studies, and I get most of my information from books, magazines, and journals. To be honest, I'm a little fuzzy on theory


I was the same in high school, trying to self-teach. If you have the opportunity to take a college intro-IR course it clears up sooo much. If you did it like me, you are teaching yourself out of order and context, and in a way that biases strongly towards some things and not others. Anyway, if you can't take an organized class, try to pick up a book on theory and that starts at the basics. I haven't read it yet, but if you like Realism then The Tragedy of Great Power Politics is supposedly excellent. Likewise, The End of History is the go-to Liberal book. Haven't read that either yet, so someone correct me if I'm way off-base with these recommendations. There's also Constructivism as the new thing, but I'm not really familiar with it. Anyways, getting theories down more helps a ton, it definitely changed my views on whether or not certain wars were good/bad ideas. But from your post you seem to have a good grasp on things, so IDK if this advice will help that much.


(^ this isn't related to your question, I just thought it might be helpful)


Anyways your question is basically Liberal Vs Realist it seems. A liberal of the Neoconservative (Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, ect.) branch would say Saddam violated the liberal order first, and now the newly democratic Iraq has removed the threat. Iraq will join the other democracies and only attack dictators til there are none left and we have world peace. (this is really dumbed down, but you get the point)



Other less militaristic liberals (the Clintons, Woodrow Wilson especially) would say that that was an expected occasional break-down in the liberal order, and that liberal institutions for the most part prevent this sort of thing from happening more often, as it would if there was no UN or WTO ect. In their eyes, if Bush were ever put to international court and tried then it would be proof of the liberal order's success. The liberal order includes international free trade, which liberals say makes war unprofitable, and so they say, unlikely.


Realists (George HW Bush, Nixon, Kissinger) would agree with your middle paragraph, that the 'global order' is a manifestation of American hegemony, and that liberal institutions are set up to maximally benefit the USA, which is why other powers become revisionists; Iran/China/Russia does not feel it benefits from a US-led order (the WTO, World Bank, ect), and wants to set up an new order that maximizes their own power instead.


So its depends on who you ask, there is no real consensus here. For what its worth, I think you are dead on about the 'liberal order' really being the 'American order', and like you said, its mostly been a good thing.

To understand the failure of the foreign policy of the Obama/Clinton foreign policy one should read

https://www.amazon.de/Why-Leaders-Lie-International-Politics/dp/0199975450

https://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Great-Power-Politics-Updated/dp/0393349276

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

As you said you saw the usual classics I'll skip over Hayek, Hazlett, Milton Freedman, Orwell, ect

1.A very interesting read on America's Economic History. Not econ theory, this is the history of our economy crushing it for over 200 years. Will give you the faith that America's best days are always ahead of us as long as we remain capitalist :

https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Wealth-History-American-Economic/dp/0060505125

2.The best book on Foreign Policy I've ever read. It's a realist take on internation affairs which is what we are finally back to under this admin.

Nation's will work in thier own self interest, armies need to take territory to win wars, you need a great economy to have a great military, China must be confronted, ect:

https://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Great-Power-Politics-Updated/dp/0393349276

Seconded on Elements of Style. Also, try reading authors who are known for straightforward and concise prose. It's only coming to mind because I was a political science major, but John Mearsheimer is great for this- his chapters precisely follow the "tell you what I'm going to say; say it; summarize what I just said" mantra.

I really really like Gensler's book. The proof system he uses is extremely intuitive and easy.

Check out Harry Gensler's Introduction to Logic. He is a really good writer - and everything is very clear.

> I told you I believe in an objective morality.

So you say.

> In your mind does the First Amendment consist of special
> exceptions provided for a group of offensive talkers?
> Protections for gun owners apply to everyone, the fact that you
> don't own a gun doesn't make you not protected for the same
> reason that you not saying things that are offensive doesn't mean
> that the first amendment doesn't apply to you.

See this is the problem, you think we are talking about the constitution.

This is about a bill that will hopefully prevent the extinction of elephants. But only if people can keep their eye on the ball. Only if every little special interest group doesn't get to put in their little ammendment to make it "better".

> Prove right now objectively that the golden rule is true.

Here's an introductory text book on logic which contains a proof of the golden rule. I'm sure this is better than anything I could come up with:
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Logic-Harry-J-Gensler/dp/0415996511

> I can easily prove that it is faulty and subjective. I like to be cut, therefore I can cut other people.

How smart you are. Its difficult to believe that so many people over so many years of human history couldn't come up with your simple yet irrefutable proof.

> Name some regulations that have been removed due to being ineffective.

The prohibition act of 1919 comes to mind.

>> Surely the people that have written this bill have spent more time thinking about what might work than the NRA minions of reddit

> Why would you assume this? Because you agree with it?

No, because it makes more sense that bill takes longer to write than it does to write a reddit response. Although this thread may yet prove me wrong.

> Your idea of injustice is just what everyone else calls LIFE.

how cute

>Taxes pay for military bases and hardware. By your rationale, I should either be able to take the nearest nuclear sub out for a ride or I should get money for not being able to do that.

not for riding but you ought to be able to opt out of something like a nuclear weapon program. this is called direct democracy and it has been proven to work.

>The reason you shouldn't continue is not because I'm picking words. You shouldn't continue because you have a horseshit argument that you clearly cannot back up

i have backed up all my arguments.

you on the other hand is not making much sense

I suggest you read this book

>http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Logic-Harry-J-Gensler/dp/0415996511/

Short Intro to Hegel by Peter Singer
http://www.amazon.com/Hegel-Short-Introduction-Peter-Singer/dp/019280197X

I know you don't want any Huemer facts...but I thought it was cool that Stuart Rachels wrote a back cover review for Michael Huemer's book on Ethical Intuitionism.

I had that Elements too, though unfortunately I'm in the same boat as you so no recommendations. Just...please don't dogmatically adopt ethical theory that leads you to the conclusions you want to be true, m'kay? (cough Ethics of Liberty)

[And there just so happens to be a well research book on this very topic.] (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Civil-Resistance-Works-Nonviolent/dp/0231156839)

Sure, an insurgency movement can be pretty effective at thwarting the attempts of an invading army. However, they don't have a great track record, when compared with mass non-violent movements, for bringing about any sort of society that most of us want to live in.

Edit: To clarify my point, I don't think it is a very accurate to compare insurgency movements to the reason that many people in the US cite for the reason to have their firearms; the ability to stop the government from becoming more authoritarian. There is a lot of academic literature on insurgencies, social movements and revolutions. Having read a lot of the literature on social movements and revolutions, I can't remember a single peer reviewed article or book that can show that access to firearms is a particularly important variable in the success of a revolution or social movement. If someone can point me to that literature, I would be happy to read it.

<== has a BA in International Relations

If you really want to get into International Relations, the LKY School of Public Policy isn't very highly-regarded in the field. NTU's RSIS is far more respectable. Main reason is: Kishore Mahbubani of LKYSPP is a prolific huckster who spouts a lot of BS in order to drive sales of his own books.

And then there's the issue of your reason for wanting to pursue this Masters. You need to ask yourself on what you really want to get out of it, because admissions committees are going to pay a lot of attention to your reason for making them bother to read your application in the first place.

There's also the problem where you don't seem to know a lot about IR. If you don't, this beginner's guide is very effective at covering what undergrads usually go through in a semester-long Intro to IR course.

For more detailed reading, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics presents one of the dominant theories of International Relations and according to my very biased opinion, the one which represents what our global order moving towards in the next couple years.

Read those two at the very bare minimum, then you should have a fair idea if you're keen on this path. If reading those two makes you bored, then forget it, because you'll be reading a lot of this kind of material.

Yeah, but there would be different issues at play, as well. There would be the whole issue, of European states looking at one another, or one European state looking at a non-European state, (i.e. Greece and Turkey) and possibly suddenly saying to themselves "I'm actually not 100% sure about that state's future intentions. I'd better make sure I'm not a paper tiger."

Slippery slope may ensue.

And it is that - in Mearsheimer's theory, that is The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (1992). (updated edition published 2014)

Start with these two:
https://www.amazon.com/Afghanistan-Graveyard-Empires-History-Borderland/dp/1605981893/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1496177236&sr=8-5
https://www.amazon.com/Forever-War-Dexter-Filkins/dp/0307279448/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1496177260&sr=8-3

Read this one to understand America's behavior: https://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Great-Power-Politics-Updated/dp/0393349276/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496177330&sr=8-1

Update with a simple read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2015%E2%80%93present)

End with this: https://www.amazon.com/Our-Latest-Longest-War-Afghanistan/dp/022626565X (on my kindle TBR list, but it's gotten good reviews from reputable publications, which is key when reading any sort of history, unless you're interested in becoming one of those looney right-wingers or bat-shit lefties).

Here let me show you how a conversation works.

Person 1: This is that way

Person 2: No, this appears to be that way, but you're very statement contradicted what you said in the first place:

Person 1: Okay I'll show you why it's not a contradiction (OR) hmm maybe I was wrong.

You stated that Iran is an Islamic state that implements Sharia.

You said "Iran has executed women for attacking their rapist why can't you admit that Islam if not encourages but influences these actions"

I said: This can't be true, because the woman would not be able to attack her rapist if the Sharia was implemented, because the rapist would already be dead!

At this point you either: admit that Iran isn't practicing the Sharia properly, or you point to evidence that the rapist was put to death and thus never assaulted.

You're just jumping from topic to topic. How do you expect a conversation to ever end then?

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Logic-Harry-J-Gensler/dp/0415996511

It doesn't and I didn't. I would recommend you to read this.

Another fair point. So, a clip here, so you don't even need to leave Reddit.

>...

>#Our Argument in Brief

>To orient readers, let me summarize the claims we defend in our book.

>Marriage is a human good with its own structure, like knowledge or friendship. The present debate is not a debate about whom to let marry, but about what marriage (the human good that the law has reasons to track) really is. Two answers compete for legal enshrinement.

>The first, driving the push for same-sex marriage, is that a certain emotional intimacy makes a marriage. But as our book shows, this answer can’t coherently distinguish marriage from companionship, an obviously broader category. So it gets marriage (the human good) wrong.

>The second view of marriage begins from basics. Any voluntary form of community involves common action; it unites people toward common ends in the context of commitment. And in these respects, what sets marital community apart is its comprehensiveness: in (1) how it unites people, (2) what it unites them with respect to, and (3) how extensive a commitment it demands.

>First, marriage unites people in their bodies as well as their minds. Just as your organs are one body by coordinating for the biological good of the whole (your survival), so a man and woman’s bodies unite by coordination (in sexual intercourse) for a biological good (reproduction) of the couple as a whole. No other activity makes of two people “one flesh.”

>Second, as the act that makes marital love also makes new life, so marriage itself is uniquely enriched and extended by the bearing and rearing of children, and the wide sharing of family life.

>Third, because of its comprehensiveness in both these senses, marriage alone requires comprehensive (permanent and exclusive) commitment, whatever the partners’ tastes.

>The stability of marriage, so understood, best ensures that children will know the committed love of those whose union brought them forth. This gives them the best shot at becoming healthy and happy people, which affects every other social good. That is why every society with the merest ambition to thrive has socially regulated male-female sexual bonds: to shore up the stabilizing norms of marriage, on which social order rests.

>If marriage is redefined (in law, and hence in public opinion and practice) as simple companionship for adult fulfillment, then, for reasons to be explained, it will be harder to live by its norms and urge them on others. And this will harm the social goods that hook society into regulating marriage in the first place.

>Besides defending these claims, my coauthors and I answer the most common objections to the historic view of marriage. And we show how society can uphold that view without ignoring the needs, undermining the social dignity, or curbing the fulfillment of same-sex attracted people.

>#Misreadings

>...

I end the clip at that point from this article as this is a succinct presentation of their book, What Is Marriage?

How is that a "straw man"? For it to be a straw man fallacy, 123 would have to be involved in some kind of debate, which he is not. 123 has only made a simple statement, distorted slightly by sarcasm but still easily interpretable.

A straw man takes the form of "well you people think A, which is absurd because XYZ", when in fact nobody has been claiming A. That's a straw man.

Absolutely nothing about what 123 did is a straw man fallacy. Absolutely nothing about what 123 did is any type of fallacy. He called out Noam Chomsky, who is in fact an humanist, for not having spoken up on the situation.

> In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population.

-- Noam Chomsky


> The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power and if I didn’t betray it I’d be ashamed of myself

-- Noam Chomsky


> Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

-- Noam Chomsky

> The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.

-- Noam Chomsky, ibid

Nah, guys with my mindset have been around for decades before that cringeworthy subreddit was created.

The Way of Men by Jack Donovan.

Note that there is this vast MSM apparatus pushing an alternative narrative? A different description of what is going on? One that fits much better with your mental image of how the world works?

That's right. That is why it is there. It is there precisely to induce that false narrative, theories of how the political system works.

It is indeed true that folks who do not adhere to "mainstream" ideas of how the political system works might be... insane, and wrong. But it is virtually certain that those who do adhere to the mainstream view are... brainwashed cretins.

Because political systems never work the way the internal propaganda tells the sheeple it works.

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Rule-Investment-Competition-Money-Driven/dp/0226243176

@KubrickIsMyCopilot, Your argument is bad and you should feel bad. It's clear that you haven't read "Why Civil Resistance Works," which is the book that this article is based on, or you wouldn't be making this argument. The authors looked at data from the last 100 years of both violent and nonviolent conflict, which is what led them to the conclusion that nonviolent civil resistance is 2-3x more effective than violent resistance. They provide case studies of both violent and nonviolent revolutions that illustrate their hypothesis for why this is the case. Put simply, violence is barrier to entry for most people. Violence as a political tactic appeals primarily to a very small slice of the population, mainly men ages 16-45 years old who are willing to physically harm other people (this is actually a very small proportion of the overall population). Nonviolent resistance is able to incorporate people from all demographics of the population, including men who aren't willing to hurt others, most women, civil servants, artists, intellectuals, academics, clergy, etc. (i.e. the people who typically make up a movement). Here's where this gets really important: every revolution that engaged 3.5% of the population on a sustained basis was victorious, though many were succesful at a lower rate of participation. But that means if you get to 3.5%, then you win, according to the data. Here's the kicker: no violent revolution made it to 3.5%. You see, violence narrows the range of people your revolution can appeal to, so if you can only target males b/w 16-45 who're willing to hurt people for political purposes, let's be generous and say that's 10% of the population. That means you have to get 1/3 of them to participate in order to win (i.e. 3.5% out of 10%). However, if your movement instills nonviolent discipline in its leaders, then you can target up to 100% of the population (demographically), meaning you only need to recruit 1/30 to guarantee victory (3.5% out of 100%). Nonviolence is 2-3x more effective than violence when it comes to victory, but as a recruitment tactic, it's 10 times more effective.

Here's the author's TED Talk which lays all this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w

Here's a link to the book "Why Civil Resistance Works": https://www.amazon.ca/Why-Civil-Resistance-Works-Nonviolent/dp/0231156839

P.S. The historical reference to the Nazis is also fallacious. For example, look up the history of the White Roses (or watch the movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days). The German population became more susceptible to electoral campaigns focused on "law and order" due to the street brawls breaking out between Nazis and communists. Violent resistance was a precipitating factor in Hitler's rise to power.

Well everything is a shade of grey. But generally the more violent, the less successful. I'm getting my info from this book FYI. Good read overall.

There have been pretty effective nonviolent movements though. The Velvet Revolution was pretty fricken nonviolent.

Different context of course.

Books? Here ya go.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0029166500

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0226243176

http://www.paulstreet.org/?page_id=32

http://mises.org/document/1223

Ok, so you just chose not to count all those previous CPUs, and built your argument on top of that.

You need one of these.

Speaking of political science, I'd like to recommend a couple of books to my liberal friends here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0029166500

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0226243176

That should drive a stake through the heart of the fraudulent scam and marketing/propaganda lie that is modern American liberalism.

And liberalism doesn't work. Never did.