Jamie Kennedy Experiment: “So it’s Not Even About Money”

This is hilarious. A girl thinks she and Jamie are pranking her boyfriend. The guys turn the tables.

See also: Hilarious: Next Time on Lonny

Commented on a Story on Mysticism and Rain

I commented on a report that tribesmen in northern Mindanao are doing mystical rituals to “appease nature” and prevent rainstorms.

My comment: “It is better drainage systems, stronger structures, and effective communication, that the provinces need to better deal with rainstorms. These tribesmen should throw away their mystic beliefs, and instead embrace reason, science and capitalism.”

Besides my writing for TOS and other publications, I’ve been doing a lot of commenting lately on websites. I think more pro-freedom people should go out of their way—within the context of their life (time, priorities, etc)—to firmly and politely advocate for reason and capitalism.

Ayn Rand on Self-Determination of Nations

“The right of “the self-determination of nations” applies only to free societies or to societies seeking to establish freedom; it does not apply to dictatorships. Just as an individual’s right of free action does not include the “right” to commit crimes (that is, to violate the rights of others), so the right of a nation to determine its own form of government does not include the right to establish a slave society (that is, to legalize the enslavement of some men by others). There is no such thing as “the right to enslave.” A nation can do it, just as a man can become a criminal—but neither can do it by right.

“It does not matter, in this context, whether a nation was enslaved by force, like Soviet Russia, or by vote, like Nazi Germany. Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). Whether a slave society was conquered or chose to be enslaved, it can claim no national rights and no recognition of such “rights” by civilized countries—just as a mob of gangsters cannot demand a recognition of its “rights” and a legal equality with an industrial concern or a university, on the ground that the gangsters choseby unanimous vote to engage in that particular kind of group activity.

“Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the non-existent “rights” of gang rulers. It is not a free nation’s duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses.”

HT: The Ayn Rand Lexicon

In addition, and this bears an underscore:

“This right, however, is conditional. Just as the suppression of crimes does not give a policeman the right to engage in criminal activities, so the invasion and destruction of a dictratorship does not give the invader the right to establish another variant of a slave society in the conquered country.”