It’s only where the expression of ANY of them violates rights that, on those points, they MUST be stepped on.  Even ISLAM is on this same plane, except in its still unreformed state.  Unreformed, Islam must be totally destroyed; reformed, it, like Christianity, would be acceptable and on the same plane. 

Islamists say that, by the Koran, that can’t and won’t be done.  Fine.  They and/or moderate Muslims must do it anyway, even if it means rewriting the Koran and everything coming from it, then make it stick, by force, if needed.  That’s where reformers can come to the gvt. if needed and expect help. 

Without reform or the attempt at reform, gvt. must wipe it out by all necessary means.  That would violate nobody’s rights.  It would protect everybody’s rights.

But, even then, I don’t think it’ll bring substantive results, meaning, legislation and court decisions establishing the system of laws needed.  I think the big boys just won’t have it nor will the people demand it. 

I think the educational effort must go to the level of stating and explaining the real nature of the present lopsided situation: CRIME, by criminal plans established and enforced by people who might or might not know or think it’s crime and might not really have criminal minds, but they and everybody else need to be intellectually convicted, publicly, about it.  It’s not law and government.  It’s crime.  Doing it under cover of the guise of law and government doesn’t change that, not even when done by elected office holders.

The element of crime, of initatory force, must be gotten into people’s heads before they’ll see the morality involved.  Then, MAYBE they’ll push to set things right thru the needed system of laws, if, subsequently, they’re still continuously pushed, intellectually, to push for it.

Ultimately, if people just won’t get movin’ and won’t get out the RIGHT vote, then, something’s gotta give some other way, sooner or later.

I’d like to know what anybody thinks about this.  I can explain more, but I’ll wait, for now.

Do we really have to redefine “Marriage”?

I truly think our “political leaders” knew, in 1979, all that Reza Kahlili has said.  Ayatollah Khomeini’s 120 pg. book, Islamic Government, was published in the U.S., translated to English by the Joint Publications Research Service, in 1979.  Khomeini makes it quite clear; you don’t have to read the Koran and think from that.  Our “leaders”, instead of defending the U.S., have sat and watched those regimes form and become stronger and, perhaps, have acted to help, not hinder, them.  I’m not sure there’s any reason we shouldn’t call them treasonous.

The problem with saying that coercive organizations would not exist
in a free society is that when America was mostly
a free country, unions *did* exist, caused by the rise of Marxist
philosophy and some occasional deplorable abuses by employers.
Neither the violations of rights perpetrated by the unions nor the
violations of rights perpetrated by these very small numbers of
employers were dealt with by the government as the rights violations
they were, sometimes because of bad philosophy and sometimes because
of corruption or bad government policies.  So I take as my conclusion
that yes, even in a free society, organizations dedicated to violence
to achieve their goals will exist.  The question becomes then, can an
employer require prospective employees to join such an organization as
a condition of employment, and the answer is no.

A job is not a “right” of an employee.  But neither is a job�
the “property” of the employer.  A job is a *contract*
between two people.  There are certain things that are properly
enforceable in a contract, and some things that are clearly not
enforceable.  You can think of examples all day, but one obvious one
is that an employment contract cannot demand that each employee rob a
bank and bring the loot to the employer as a condition of employment.
What’s wrong with that, if it’s voluntary, I hear from my libertarian
friends?  Because it drops the context of what a contract actually
is.  A contract is both an agreement by two people about a mutually
beneficial trade, but also it is an agreement that the government is
charged with enforcing.  One can’t enter into a contract that has as
one of its conditions the violation of someone’s rights, since then
the government would be charged with enforcing the violation of
someone’s rights instead of protecting rights.  So no bank robbery as
a condition of employment.  The case is somewhat more subtle with
hiring only people who belong to the Mafia and pay money to the Mafia
Don out of their paycheck.  [This is the exact case of unions, and you
must hold this in your mind when you think about this issue].  Paying
dues, or lending material support, to a criminal organization or an
organization primarily dedicated to crime, is also a crime and would
be so in a free country.  So this employment contract would not be
enforceable in the courts.  How then would it be enforced in reality?
As it *was* enforced in the late nineteenth century: with a club or a
knife or a gun.

The Mafia analogy may strike some people as bizarre, since some local
unions have evolved into peaceful trade associations these days, and
many individual rank-and-file union members, some of whom I know, are
fine people. [No union bosses are fine people].  This apparent
benevolence of some unions today is because they are backed by an all-
powerful federal government, who wields the club for them.  But make
no mistake, the union bosses, like the Mafia Dons, make their true
nature evident when any of their precious government-supported special
privileges are even minutely threatened.  Look closely at what
happened in Wisconsin last year, all of the violence and intimidation
(threat of violence) that was perpetrated by unions in response to the
very mild reforms proposed by Gov Walker.

So, is right-to-work the ideal end state?  Of course not. Only a fully
free society with laissez-faire economics is.  But don’t make the
libertarian mistake on the one hand and say, “any voluntary contract
is fine” while dropping the context of what a contract is, or make the
better-is-the-enemy-of-perfection mistake either, as Ari does, and think that right-
to-work is some sort of violation of employers’ rights.  There’s not
an employer in the country (except maybe GM) who would impose a closed
shop if they had a choice.  In reality, right-to-work is a lifeline
thrown to drowning producers that will help keep them above water
until a more radical cultural change permits real reforms, such as the
repeal of the Wagner Act.  Plus, most importantly, it is something
individual states can do to lessen the reach of the federally-imposed
bureaucracy-union complex without federal legislation.  This alone
makes it worth supporting.  And since the moral is the practical, we
see that right-to-work states are doing better in both manufacturing
(heavily unionized to the point of destruction in closed shop states)
and local and state government finances (also heavily unionized) than
their counterparts.  Compare Virginia to Michigan.

Right-to-work is a good, pro-freedom interim step that can and should
be supported by all Objectivists and advocates of a free economy.