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In another thread we were discussing Islamic doctrines. In order to make my point I cited some passages from the Quran. One of the other people active in the thread replied that they were afraid of me, apparently because I had quoted the Quran and had therefore been "radicalized" somehow and was some sort of "threat" to the LGBTQ community.

Really? And they honestly expected to be taken seriously?? One wonders how they can get through the day without piddling themselves constantly. Somebody needs to lay off the Kool Aid and get a life. It should also be pointed out that attempting to play the "victim" card in a situation where no one has been victimized makes one's position even more farcical than it would be otherwise.

The first thing to point out is that while lawyers can drone on for hours about the laws that relate to the use of force by civilians, the actual principles involved are quite simple. Ultimately they are derived from Biblical law which is why I, as a conservative Christian, am bound to obey them. In a nutshell I can only use physical force to defend myself from an actual attack by somebody else, or in order to aid a relatively defenseless person who is being attacked. That’s it. It doesn’t matter how much I dislike somebody or disagree with what they’re saying. If they’re not actually attacking somebody I don’t get to use physical force against them. So, if you don’t want to be afraid of me, then don’t go around assaulting people. You won’t have anything to worry about.

It should also be pointed out that I have made abundantly clear in my postings on the subject that LGBTQs have the same rights that everybody else does. That necessarily includes the right to life. This means that neither I nor anybody else has the legitimate authority to hunt down LGBTQs in order to harm/maim/injure/kill them “just because”.

However, it should also be pointed out that as a conservative Christian I am called to stand for God’s moral law. In standing for God’s moral law I can only use persuasion and argumentation. I do not have the legitimate authority to attempt to force anybody to do anything (except to stop physically attacking other people). Thus after having made my point by saying that people should not engage in homosexual acts because such behavior is sinful, then there really isn’t too much more I can do. Trying to convert hard core (dis)believers on the other side is usually an exercise in futility. I am also not a fan of beating dead horses any more than actually necessary. However, if for whatever reason somebody finds that simple moral argument more than they can bear, I have two alternative suggestions for them. The first is that they change their behavior as necessary such that they can live their lives with a relatively clear conscience. The second alternative is that they figure out how to grow a spine. While in context I would prefer that people chose the first alternative, either one would be a substantial improvement.

I should also comment that trying to draw some sort of “moral equivalence” between conservative Christians who are attempting to use persuasion and argument in order to support God’s moral law and what the Islamic fundamentalists are doing by executing homosexuals in job lots only serves to show that the person making that argument doesn’t know what “moral equivalence” is. There are incredibly significant differences between simply stating a position that some people find disagreeable and slaughtering people.

Last but not least attempting to control a debate by shutting down the other side, using the mechanism of falsely accusing them of inciting people to violence, only serves to indicate that the person making that argument is even more biased/prejudiced than the person they are trying to shut down. In spite of my various disagreements with LGBTQs, I have never argued that they should be silenced.

In another post on another thread a gentleman who described himself as a "staunch Democrat" took me to task for (among other things) being a "fake Libertarian" because of my stance on "Homosexual rights". At that time my response was simply that we would have to agree to disagree. There were several reasons for that.

The first reason is that I doubt that Mr. Staunch Democrat and I will ever be able to convince each other of anything. However, that is not the reason I am now responding. There are other people on this board who may be unfamiliar with what it actually means to be a Libertarian, and hopefully by giving a serious reply to Mr. Staunch Democrat they will be suitably enlightened.

The second reason is that I did not want to derail that particular thread with what was a sidebar issue.

Last but not least, I felt I owed it to the moderators (who do not always see eye to eye with me and vice versa), not to start something that could devolve into a flame war when they were not present to deal with the situation as they saw fit. However, the moderators are either now on duty or will be shortly, and I don't have to worry about derailing the thread that I just started.

Let me begin with tongue firmly in cheek suggesting that there is an extent to which turning to a "staunch Democrat" for instruction in Libertarianism is sort of analogous to asking a Jihadi Imam for advice on how to hold a Bar Mitzvah. Even assuming that the Imam tries to give you the best answer that he can based on what he knows, there are some things he is going to get wrong simply because there are important nuances he was never instructed in or does not properly understand.

I realize that there are people on this board who would take me to task and or disbelieve what I was saying if I were to suggest that the sun was going to rise in the east tomorrow morning. Nevertheless, having been a member of the Executive Committee for the Libertarian Party of Alachua County Florida for several years I have this feeling that I might just know something about what it means to be a Libertarian. Even though I am no longer formally associated with the Libertarian party I also feel I have something of a duty to try to make sure that what they stand for is properly presented.

Libertarians, as is true of any political party, have several different groups within their ranks. One of these groups I will refer to as the "old school" Libertarians. These people are by and large die hard followers of Ayn Rand, take their objectivist philosophy seriously, and are essentially atheistic in outlook. Though I would be tempted to argue that in some cases their objectivist philosophy is their religion. Regardless, given a situation in which various people are doing various things on their own property that don't harm other people and don't damage anybody else's property then the old school Libertarians couldn't care less what was actually going on. From that perspective then Mr. Staunch Democrat might appear to have a point. Old school Libertarians could be interpreted as being supportive of "homosexual rights". Given that I have made posts that argue against certain interpretations of "homosexual rights" then I would appear to be in conflict with that.

However, like the Jihadi Imam trying to figure out what this Bar Mitzvah thing is all about, there are some things that Mr. Staunch Democrat was either never told about or doesn't understand. I will keep it simple and boil it down to three main points.

First, in order to become a Libertarian you have to pledge that you will never initiate the use of force. They are dead serious about this and it forms the core of their beliefs and the policies that they attempt to get implemented. Note that this is most definitely not the same thing as being a pacifist. A pacifist would never use force under any circumstances. But from a Libertarian perspective, once somebody has initiated the use of force against you, you are not only free to but actually encouraged to use that level of counter force you need to solve the problem.

Second, all government action is viewed as being based on force. Don't believe me? Just stop doing something that the government mandates you do (like pay your taxes for instance). Eventually the government will get around to sending people with guns to force you to comply or else. Which is an initiation of force that Libertarians are sworn not to undertake.

Lastly, old school Libertarians are good philosophical debaters (and I mean that in multiple senses of that term). Among other things it meant that they were actually more interested in having an objectivist philosophical debating society than they were in forming a viable political party. For another, they would never accept the argument that the ends justify the means especially when the means is the implementation of government programs and by extension, initiating force. Hence it is literally true, and I am dead serious about this, that old school Libertarians would not create government programs to save their own lives.

Now, what does all that have to do with "homosexual rights"? Quite simply a lot of what the current "homosexual rights" movement is all about has nothing to do with being left alone to cavort as they want to on their own property. This is especially true in light of the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision and subsequent actions that have been taken by various different homosexual groups. What the Supreme Court has essentially done is legislate from the bench (something they are Constitutionally prohibited from doing) in order to effectively establish a new "religion" (which the Federal government is prohibited from doing) in which homosexual marriage must be permitted or else.

Old school Libertarians would go into borderline frothing at the mouth hysterics over the government forcing people to do things that they didn't want to, especially where issues of conscience were concerned. While they might on some level agree with "homosexual rights" and or "homosexual marriage" they would never countenance the use of government force to implement anything, even something that they might potentially agree with. Given that Mr. Staunch Democrat's government policies that he might like to see implemented literally can't happen without the initiation of force by the government at some level, then Mr. Staunch Democrat would never get the support from old school Libertarians that he thinks he might.

The newer Libertarians are slightly different in outlook. A lot of them are former Republicans who wanted to become part of a political party that took minimizing government as a serious goal. They aren't anywhere near as hard core objectivists as the old school Libertarians are, and they are usually more socially conservative in outlook. They too would oppose a lot of what is taking place under the rubric of "homosexual rights".

So, if you want to talk about people being left alone to do things on their own property that don't hurt other people or damage anybody else's property, then yes, Libertarians would be in with that. If you want to talk about using the force of government to compel people do things that they wouldn't otherwise normally do, Libertarians (both types) would fight you tooth and nail. But as a democrat in general can't take a dump without creating government programs to regulate the amount of water the toilet uses per flush or the specific type of treatment that the sewage has to undergo then there isn't a whole heck of a lot of support that he can expect from Libertarians.

First of all let's see if we can have this discussion in at least a vaguely calm and rational manner such that Chris Lambertz doesn't have a cow when he comes in on Monday morning. I realize that may be something of a stretch, but I think there's at least a fighting chance that we can pull it off. I also realize that at best only a few of the people on this board are likely to agree with my analyses. Regardless, some of the points I am going to raise are ones that I have not seen discussed before and I would like to get reasonable feedback on them. So if I can get some intelligent responses to this sans name calling I would appreciate it.

There is an extent to which various labels can get in the way more than help. But there is also an extent to which trying to have certain types of discussions without resorting to them can result in much space being consumed simply trying to define what it is that one is talking about. It will not come as a shock to most people on this board that I would describe myself as a "conservative". But there are various types of "conservatives" and not all of them are in agreement as to what it is that should be "conserved". So, it might help people if they knew that I was coming from the background of having been active in third party politics since the early 1990's. At various times I have been active with either the Libertarian Party or the Constitution Party. I would consider myself to be a "paleo" conservative who is much closer to Ron Paul or Rand Paul if I had to identify a "mainstream" politician that I would associate with.

Coming now to Trump, the topic of this discussion. There is an extent to which I would be "neutral" with a slight negative bias against him. At least part of the reason for that is Trump is going for the Republican nomination and I'm not a Republican. Neither the Libertarian Party nor the Constitution Party have had their conventions yet, so I don't know who their presidential candidates will be. Trump won't really factor into my analysis of who I'm going to vote for until the conventions have been held and I can compare and contrast the candidates who have been selected. If Trump makes that cut then I will look at him more closely than I have to date.

Some of the things that Trump has said I like, and some of the things that he has said have given me pause. The problem from my point of view is that Trump isn't a real "conservative". He understands business well enough, but he doesn't seem to understand the Constitutionally limited role of the Federal government anywhere near as well as I would like him to.

But there's potentially more going on than that. I am also something of a conspiracy theorist and I don't think it would shock that many people if I suggested there were one or more groups of "insiders" trying to rig the governmental and economic systems of this country in their favor. For lack of better terms I will define two of them as being "outside" insiders and "inside" insiders. The "outside" insiders are the ones most people know about and or could identify readily. These are largely the various different sorts of elected pests we have infesting the Congress, the Senate, and the Federal government in general. The "inside" insiders tend to operate more or less behind the scenes and use the "outside" insiders to advance their agenda(s). Think of the Koch brothers, George Soros, and others of that ilk. It is by definition not always obvious who belongs to that group and what they are up to is subject to much speculation. It is arguable that at least some of them are working at cross purposes to one another.

How this relates to Trump is that he has obviously been successful enough in business that he could potentially have a seat at a meeting of "inside" insiders. It should also be noted that at one point in time he explained away his connections to Bill and Hillary Clinton by stating that as a business man he bought politicians when he felt he needed to and Bill and Hillary were simply two of the ones he had paid off. Well, potentially give Trump some credit for honesty, but he also just admitted that he fit my definition of an "inside" insider. This gives me pause.

The second thing that has me somewhat suspicious is we all KNOW the media HATES Trump. How do we know this? The media makes sure that just about every waking minute on umpteen different television and radio programs we are bombarded with negative stories about Trump. Either that or interviews with other presidential candidates where the media is trying to get them to react to something Trump said. But consider that reverse psychology may be at play here. The "establishment" (both groups of insiders) know that they are on the "outs" with the electorate in general. What better way to channel this resentment against the "establishment" than by having the media hammer on an "inside" insider who's been a member of the club all along and portray him as a true alternative to the "establishment"? After all, as both Ron Paul and Rand Paul can attest, if the media really hates your guts/doesn't like your message you will NEVER get enough coverage to make a difference.

But a lot of that is supposition on my part. It is also true that Trump is something of a media mogul in his own right and he could have some of the mainstream media by the contractual short hairs. They simply can't ignore him like they could Ron Paul and Rand Paul and get away with it. So if they can't ignore him they smear him. Why? Come back to one of my previous points about the possibility that various insiders may be working at cross purposes to one another.

The stereotypical "inside" insider comes from a multi generational mega wealthy family that has so much money it has essentially become meaningless. All that really counts then isn't money, it's power. Such an individual is concerned only with increasing their own power to the best of his/her ability, and doesn't fear any consequences because within limits they are unknown and they believe that their mega wealth will protect them. These are the sorts of people who are at the root of pushing for things like the New World Order and a One World Government (NWO/OWG). Which if implemented according to the designs I have seen would effectively turn the entire world into a totalitarian hell hole run by faceless bureaucrats who are responsible, if they are responsible at all, only to people pulling strings from behind the scenes. But in order to do that they have to gut modern nation states as we know them and that most specifically includes America.

In this view of things Trump may simply be acting in his own enlightened self interest. He realizes that the NWO/OWG pipe dream can never actually be implemented because there are too many players in too many countries who will gleefully go along with weakening America as part of the plan and then reneg on their ends of the deal. Thus increasing their own power at the expense of those pushing for the NWO/OWG. To the detriment of everybody who had been caught up in that or was unfortunate enough to be living in a country that their own elites decided to throw under the bus. Trump could be the point man for "inside" insiders who have come to realize that if they gut the nation state that is their own power base, nobody else is going to have any use for them. So Trump crafts a "populist" message that he knows will appeal to a large percentage of those voters who rightfully feel they have been disenfranchised and goes about trying to get himself elected president in order to attempt to fix the problem.

Maybe. I honestly don't know. Trump could be channeling John Hancock in an honest attempt to fix some of the more serious problems we've got. Or he could be something far darker. My jury is out and my analyses are spinning in circles like a dog chasing its tail.

Hope everybody has a happy holiday.

There have been a bunch of things happening lately that have been getting my goat. There are so many interconnected problems that I am not sure where to begin. I find myself in the position of the person who when asked what time it is tells you how to build the watch. Unfortunately many of these issues can not be addressed with short sound bites. That is largely because in order to explain why a sound bite or slogan is invalid one has to do more than just shout a counter slogan or sound bite. In many cases one cannot really determine why a specific argument is generating so much heat without stepping back to look at the much bigger picture that the area under contention relates to. When one does that one usually finds that people are disagreeing about that specific point because it is symptomatic of how their world views differ from one another. But without addressing the larger issues all one can do about the point in question usually involves generating more heat than light.

I suppose the first place to start is by considering the question, what is law? There are several ways this question can be answered. One of the more popular ways that this has been answered throughout history is that the law is whatever the government says it is. Every tyrant, despot, dictator, leader, oligarch, monarch and all their various assorted henchmen will agree unanimously on this point. I suspect that there are even people active on this board who might give their knee jerk assent to this proposition without thinking about it. That’s all well and good if those people want to live as somebody else’s dog. Or perhaps they entertain the idea that they want to be the master holding everybody else’s dog leash? Regardless, that’s not the system I would choose to live under, and that’s not the way the system here is supposed to work.

So, what’s the system we’ve got here supposed to be all about? In order to deal with that one has to go back into history and look at what happened. I know there are many people who cannot be bothered with history. There are words which can be used to describe such people which are not pleasant. I will simply point out the quote attributed to Santayana that “those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it” (or words to that effect). I will comment that history does tend to repeat itself, and over the past couple of millennia the price has been going up each time it does so. Last but not least, I will note that one can’t even figure out whether or not things are getting better or getting worse unless they have enough of a background in various types of historical data to be able to plot a trend line.

With that in mind, let’s look at what the people who played a major role in creating our system said that the role of government should be.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

For those who are not familiar with such things those are the first two sentences of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. According to that government’s job is to help people protect their unalienable rights and government’s just power comes from the consent of the governed. From this it follows that if the government takes powers that the people have not consented to that such use of power would be unjust.

So, is there a way to determine which powers government can justly exercise? In this country that’s supposed to be determined by the Constitution. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and any statute, rule, regulation, whatever, must be in agreement with it in order to be valid. There are multiple Supreme Court decisions affirming that statement, and indicating that unconstitutional statutes, rules, regulations, whatevers, are void from their inception, not from the date of the decision so branding them as unconstitutional.

But given that last is the case then who gets to decide whether or not something is unconstitutional? The Supreme Court? That is normally considered to be standard operating procedure. But that overlooks a very important point. The Founding Fathers had been under British jurisprudence where things were governed by an unwritten constitution. They had multiple problems with that. So for their country they created a written Constitution. That way the average man on the street wouldn’t need to rely on the court system to figure such things out for him. He would just be able to read the Constitution for himself and come to his own decision as to whether or not the statute, rule, regulation, whatever he was being subjected to was actually valid. If as a result of this little exercise a large enough percentage of the population decided that the statute, rule, regulation, whatever, was in fact unconstitutional and refused to obey it, and or refused to vote to convict people of violating it in jury trials; then it was effectively nullified regardless of whether or not the Supreme Court ever actually ruled on it. No lawyer need be consulted. This is one of the more important examples of the consent of the governed being required as the basis for government action.

So, in what is arguably the most egregious case in U.S. history, we recently had 5 out of 9 Supreme Court judges legislate from the bench to redefine what marriage is in this country. This is totally unconstitutional on its face for multiple reasons. The first is that the power to legislate has been granted exclusively to the Congress. Therefore the Supreme Court does not have the legitimate authority to legislate anything. Neither has any portion of the federal government been given the Constitutional authority to regulate marriage. Last but most definitely not least, by acting in an area that had long been held to be the province of religion, the Supreme Court had just effectively established an unnamed national religion where homosexual marriage is valid. And if all that were not enough, in Kentucky upwards of 70% of the voters there had voted to amend the State Constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. So the consent of the governed in Kentucky and in other States where similar amendments had been made to their State Constitutions just got thrown out the window by the judicial fiat of the Supreme Court. But without the consent of the governed there can be no just exercise of governmental power.

However, in this case, there is actually an even more important matter to consider. It would not matter if all 9 Supreme Court Justices, all 435 Representatives, all 100 Senators, the President, the Vice President, all the federal government Department Heads, all the members of the American Bar Association and even an overwhelming majority of the American people were proclaiming that something was law. From the standpoint of traditional Judeo Christian religious beliefs there is no power on this earth that has the legitimate authority to override God’s Moral Law. Period. End of discussion.

When confronted with a situation where God’s Moral Law is in conflict with the statues, rules, regulations, whatevers of some earthly government the only recourse left to the sincere believer is to determine what level and kind of resistance they will offer. Period. End of discussion.

Now to consider the case of “marriage equality” on its face it will first be observed that for all practical purposes it is the intellectual and logical equivalent of saying that “2 plus 2 equals 5”. I will note first of all that the ancient Greeks who were no strangers to homosexuality and were definitely familiar with the concept of marriage would never have countenanced “homosexual marriage”. They would have viewed it as being logically absurd. And given that ancient Greek culture was seen as being especially acknowledging of homosexuality one could not simply brand them as being a bunch of foaming at the mouth raving homophobes.

Then the Romans came along. They had been left with an incredibly difficult task. But they managed to rise to the occasion and succeed. The Romans actually turned out to be more perverted than the Greeks. And even the Romans did not countenance homosexual marriage. I will state furthermore that I am totally unaware of any civilization level culture in any location at any time from earliest recorded history right up to a decade or so ago that would ever have countenanced homosexual marriage.

Now, if all we were dealing with was a small minority of silly people marching around proclaiming the intellectual and logical equivalent of “2 plus 2 equals 5” and then going home to perform whatever perverted acts turned them on, I really wouldn’t care that much. Also if all we were talking about was homosexuals desiring to have a “church wedding”, then God knows that there are more than enough apostatized and damnably heretical so called “Christian” churches that any homosexual “couple” anywhere should be able to find a place where they would be welcome to make a mockery of God’s sacred institution of marriage in something that resembled a Christian church. And again if that was all we were talking about I really wouldn’t care that much. God Himself will permit people to engage in acts which will result in their burning in hell for all eternity. Given that is the case then it makes little sense for me to get either overly concerned about that or even attempt to prevent it somehow.

Unfortunately for everybody concerned events of the past few months have shown that what was actually intended was far more of a serious problem than that. We have seen florists, bakers, restaurant owners and other service industry providers in several different States subjected to legal action and fined out of business. Not because they were totally and completely refusing to serve homosexuals and or other minorities under any circumstances. Not because they were being active on the forefront of attempting to oppress homosexuals and or other minorities. But simply because when they were asked to provide services for a homosexual wedding they stated that their religious beliefs prevented them from taking any part/having any role in such a ceremony.

Given that I have made clear above that for any sincere believer civil disobedience/passive resistance to statues, rules, regulations, whatevers that violate God’s Moral Law is mandated there should be no surprise at all over that sort of response. Indeed, a case could be made that the homosexuals in question were actively seeking out people who they knew in advance would be likely to be unable to provide services for their weddings for the sole purpose of subjecting them to court action when they refused. Thus what is at stake is not a question of a tiny minority of silly people attempting to do perverted things on their own. It is a question of the extent to which sincere believing Christians can be persecuted because they can not in good conscience go along with whatever the latest legal fashion that violates God’s Moral Law happens to be. In which case we are talking about setting in motion a train of events which has the potential to tear the country apart at the seams.

As if all of the above were not controversial enough, there is even more burning thermite and molten lava that needs to be played with. It is quite common for homosexuals to loudly proclaim that, “I was born this way”. By portraying themselves as helpless victims of genetically miswired genetalia/sexual desires they go on to claim two additional things as a result of that. The first is that they can not be held to be responsible for their actions. The second is that they are exactly the same sort of minority as any racial group would be.

The general rule though is that the more loudly a liberal shouts something, the more likely it is to be false. This is no exception. There is no valid scientific evidence which supports the homosexuals’ claim. In order to demonstrate this I will briefly look at two lines of evidence. The first is that it can be demonstrated that a person can change their sexual orientation over time by exercising a certain amount of will power and effort. But if that is the case then homosexuality has just been demonstrated to be something that isn’t genetically hardwired because it can be changed.

The second and more conclusive piece of evidence has been offered by identical twin studies. If homosexuality were either hardwired or the result of a significant genetic component, then it should be almost impossible to find instances where one member of a pair of identical twins was homosexual and the other was not. At the very least one would expect under those circumstances that if one member of a pair of identical twins was homosexual, the observed probability that the other twin was also homosexual would be well above 50%.

Well, identical twins have been very intensively studied through time. This is because observations about what things they have in common and what things they don’t can provide the sorts of insights into human genetics that you simply can’t get in any other way. Some of these studies have covered thousands of pairs of identical twins scattered over a dozen or more countries for time frames spanning decades. In some cases the twins were raised together, in other cases they were raised separately. While there was some variation in the observed probability that one homosexual twin would have a sibling who was also homosexual, the highest probability that was actually observed was … 14%. Thus the claim that there is a significant genetic component to homosexuality fails the test most likely to demonstrate that claim beyond a shadow of a doubt. Thus homosexuals are not “born that way”. Thus they have no claim that they cannot be held to be responsible for their actions. Thus they are not a “racial” minority.

It would be remiss of me if I did not mention the good news before I ended this rant. Because it can be demonstrated that homosexuals are not helpless victims of genetically miswired genetalia/sexual desires, then they can change. They do not have to burn in hell for all eternity. Their sins can be forgiven and they can have the same hope of salvation that any other person who becomes a sincere believer in Jesus Christ would have. But there are certain steps that must first be observed. They have got to decide that they want to change. They are going to have to earnestly and sincerely repent. This means that they have to admit that they were wrong and stop engaging in homosexual activities. They have to do their level best to live the remainder of their lives in accordance with God’s Moral Law. If they do those things, publicly announce that Jesus Christ is their Lord, and believe that he was raised from the dead then God will extend saving grace through their faith and they will be able to enter the kingdom of heaven just as anybody else could.

Words have meanings. These meanings can change depending on the context. So for purposes of clarity I will define what I mean by using certain words in this essay. The American Heritage Dictionary lists several different definitions for the word “insane”. The definition that I will be using is a more colloquial one that defines “insane” as being “very foolish: absurd”. To make my case I will be focusing on absurdity.

The definition of absurdity that I will be using is a rather rigorous one that comes from formal deductive logic. In formal deductive logic, one of the ways of testing a hypothesis is to incorporate it into the collection of axioms and theorems that one uses to define one’s field of study. Then by rigorous application of the rules of logic one reasons until one obtains a contradiction, “A and not A”. If one can do so one has applied the technique of Reductio Ad Absurdum to demonstrate that the hypothesis being tested must be false. Therefore its antithesis must be true. It is also understood that the axioms and theorems that one is using to define one’s field of study have over time been tested by numerous other workers in the field and found to be self consistent.

Note that another way of phrasing “A and not A” would be to say that “not A is A”. Yet in the news recently we have had two people who clearly do not belong within certain categories loudly proclaiming that they do fall within those categories. “Not D is D” and “not E is E”. One has been lionized, the other has been demonized.

It is interesting to note that when one examines the categories in question that one is dealing with things that are hardwired into the individual’s genetic makeup. That makeup was fixed into every cell of the person’s body the instant their genetic code was formed when their father’s sperm fertilized their mother’s egg. Therefore there is no logical reason why the two people should have been treated differently.

But while the genotypes of the people in question are fixed, their phenotypes can be altered. In one case this required extensive hormone therapies and surgical intervention that would have been unconscionable and likely impossible a century or so ago. In another case all that was needed was a change of hair styles and some tanning lotion.

Yet our culture has just applauded the person who got the surgery and excoriated the person who had the unmitigated gall to change their hair style and their skin color. Why? In both cases we are dealing with people who are arguing as loudly as they possibly can that their feelings about themselves should trump their genetic makeup. Logically there is no difference between the arguments being advanced by the people in question.

But there is a reason for the differential treatment. And that reason is ugly. The reason deals with various ideologies that must be advanced at any cost without regard for formal deductive logic and reason, the harm that will be done to the people in question, and last but most definitely not least the harm that will eventually be done to society as a whole. In the cases in question some people have determined that they can make the right kind of political hay by embracing the one person and disowning the other. So have the ideologues determined, so has it been done.

In formal deductive logic reasoning until one obtained a contradiction, or an absurdity if you will, was a means to an end. The absurdity was what was used to invalidate the hypothesis that was being examined. The current debates raging on the subjects being examined start with either embracing or rejecting the absurdity depending on whichever appears to best advance one’s ideological cause. Hence they are the antithesis of reasoned/logical debate.

Having said that which needed to be said, and having demonstrated that the arguments being considered hinge on abandoning either rationality, consistency, or both; I will now close. I see no need to attempt to debate those who begin their argument by embracing logical absurdity. That automatically invalidates everything that flows from that position. Such an attempted debate could only succeed in generating intense amounts of heat with very little light.

I fully expect that I will at the very least get seriously flamed. So be it. I will only note that if one doesn’t like what they see in a mirror, then they might want to consider the remote possibility that the person holding the mirror might not be to blame.

After decades of exhaustive research about all things kobold I have finally been able to gather together everything that is good and worthwhile to know about them in one location.

This is my attempt at a warforged conversion based solely on the race builder rules from the Advanced Race Guide of the PRD. Other people may have done it before, and perhaps done it better. For me it was a fun way to kill time and perhaps capture as much of the flavor of the warforged as I could while still keeping it "light" enough to be welcome in a "normal" setting. Crunch first then comments.

Scout Golemnoid
Type: Outsider (Native) Ties to positive energy plane 3 rp
Type: Half Construct 7 rp
Thus we have an Outsider (Native, Construct)

Size: Small 0 rp

Base Speed: Normal 0 rp

Ability Score Modifiers (mixed weakness) -2 rp
STR -2, DEX +2, WIS +2, CHA -4

Languages, Standard 0 rp
Starts knowing Common only. Bonus languages for high INT are Dwarven, Elven, Gnome, Draconic, Celestial, Goblin, Orc

Racial Traits:
Defensive: Lifebound 2 rp
Senses: Darkvision - rp

Total: 10 rp

Battle Golemnoid
Type: Outsider (Native) Ties to positive energy plane 3 rp
Type: Half Construct 7 rp
Thus we have an Outsider (Native, Construct)

Size: Medium 0 rp

Base Speed: Normal 0 rp

Ability score modifiers (weakness) -1 rp
CON +2, WIS +2, CHA -4

Languages, Standard 0 rp
Starts knowing Common only. Bonus languages for high INT are Dwarven, Elven, Gnome, Draconic, Celestial, Goblin, Orc

Racial Traits:
Defensive: Lifebound 2 rp
Senses: Darkvision - rp

Total: 11 rp

Scout Golemnoids use random height and weight tables for male gnomes. Compute weight as normal then multiply by 1.2

Battle Golemnoids use random height and weight tables for male elves. Compute weight as normal then multiply by 1.2

Starting Ages
Adulthood: 1 year, Middle Age: 175 years, Old Age: 263 years, Venerable: 350 years, max 350 +4d% years.

Scout Golemnoid comments first, then a slight digression to cover battle golemnoids.

That the type should be "half-construct" was a given. The question became what to make the other half. If the other half was something biological then one was essentially creating some sort of cyborg. While people could do that if they wanted to, it did not fit with the flavor of warforged so I rejected that approach. The type of Outsider seemed to be the best fit. I selected the positive energy plane as the location where the life force for the race was drawn from as the end result was clearly different from binding an elemental into a suit of armor. Thus one gets an Outsider (Native, Construct).

Size was selected as "small" in keeping with the "scout" version of the warforged the golemnoid was supposed to be emulating. I made the speed "normal" at 30 feet per round because scouts who can't keep up with one's main force when it moves, or move rapidly enough to effectively shadow the force they are supposed to be tracking, are of limited utility.

Ability score modifiers of mixed weakness with -2 rp was chosen for the metagame reason that one had to take minuses somewhere to keep the race playable at normal levels. As far as the standard in game commentary on this would go:

STR -2 because they are small creatures and simply not designed to lift and carry that much or to exert that much brute force.

DEX +2 because they're supposed to be scouts/skirmishers and they need a DEX boost to make their use of missile weapons more effective. Especially given that they wouldn't want to close.

WIS +2 because their life force was drawn from the positive energy plane, and also because it helps them be more aware of their surroundings.

CHA -4 because golemnoids really don't relate well to people, and their immobile face masks and synthetic form of speech make it almost impossible for them to convey emotion normally.

Language ability was chosen as standard. They're not linguists so they don't qualify for that. They don't have their own racial tongue so they don't qualify for Xenophobic. Thus you end up with the standard language ability and only Common as the base language. The bonus languages for high intelligence characters (Dwarven, Elven, Gnome, Draconic, Celestial, Goblin, Orc) are those of races that they could be working with, languages useful for studying arcane or divine lore, and a couple of languages of races they might be used against.

The defensive racial trait of lifebound was chosen because given that they can't be raised or resurrected you don't want them bleeding to death too easily. The defense boosts that trait gives against negative energy attacks come from their ties to the positive energy plane.

They get darkvision as a freebie because they're outsiders.

The only real differences for the Battle Golemnoid are the size and the ability score modifiers. The -2 to STR went away because they're medium size. The +2 to DEX got shifted to a +2 to CON because these are going to be front line troops and they have to be able to take damage. The +2 WIS and -4 CHA are for the same reasons the Scout versions have them.

Unlike Eberron Warforged the Golemnoids heal normally and wear armor. Where true Warforged would have total immunity to some things, Golemnoids usually just get saving throw bonuses. The main advantages Golemnoids have are their 60 foot range darkvision and being light enough in rp costs [10 and 11 points] that they should be useable in a standard setting. A true Eberron Warforged would probably come in somewhere between 20 to 30 points at least.

While Golemnoids can and will wear armor when they think they need it, they don't usually wear clothes per se. They don't have anything they need to be modest about. They do need to carry things with them though. So there are harness and pouch arrangements available for them to hold stuff with places to attach weapon sheaths and holders to.

Golemnoid harness and pouch arrangement, can be worn over armor if desired:

Medium Size: 5 gp, 4 lbs
Small Size: 5 gp, 1 lb

These should be free for a starting golemnoid character.

Height and weight figures were chosen to make them smaller/lighter than Eberron Warforged (and thus able to wear standard gear for their size). Aging effects on Warforged in Eberron had not been totally disclosed the last time I checked. So I basically had them able to start in their respective classes after 1 year of intensive training, and then gave them "Elven" life expectancies as their partial construct nature would arguably make them less affected by the passage of time.

I'm trying to get active again after a several month absence and have to use a smartphone to do so. The problem I am having is that while I can create a new alias in terms of setting up a new name and avatar, I can neither enter any text in that describes the new character nor view the text that I had entered long ago for already existing aliases. Is there something simple I'm overlooking or is this some sort of glitch between this site and smartphones? I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S4 with the latest operating system update as of this weekend.

Maybe this has been covered elsewhere, but I was wondering if it would be possible to implement the [code] [/code] tags for the board so people could post table formatted data without having it get all scrunched together.

Here's the general scenario for discussion. A rogue who does not have the quick draw feat has just finished a successful melee combat with one of the party's opponents. The rogue's next round comes up. He had been holding his morningstar in a two handed grip, but now decides he would like to throw something at somebody. In order to accomplish this he is going to have to do three things. The first is to change his grip on his morningstar from a two handed grip to a one handed grip with his off hand simply holding his morningstar. As he is not using the morningstar to attack anything I don't think that there should be any penalty associated with what he does next. The second thing that the rogue has to do is to draw one of his throwing weapons. We know from the rules that requires a move action. To then actually throw the weapon that was just drawn requires a standard action.

So, to shift the grip on a melee weapon, then draw a throwing weapon and actually throw the throwing weapon will take at least one full round (move action + standard action for the last two parts). But what type of action would be changing the grip on the melee weapon? If it's either a free action or a swift action then there is no problem, the rogue can do everything he needs to do in one round. But if it's a move action then the rogue is going to have to take longer than one round to do that.

My personal bias is that changing one's grip on a weapon would likely be a toss up between either a free action or a swift action. However I would be interested to see what other people have to say on this. It is one of the frustrations of working with the DnD combat system and 6 second rounds that "real life" examples and experimentation don't always work that well, otherwise I'd just say it's a free action and be done with it.

There is a 1 point evolution for eidolons available called "Mount", which lets eidolons be used as combat mounts. I think that makes perfect sense, but if one is going to open up the possibility of using eidolons like normal "animals" (at least in some respects) then I think that there is another 1 point evolution that should be available:

Draft Animal: The eidolon is properly formed and skilled to be used as a draft animal for pulling plows, carts, wagons, etc.. While this evolution does not provide the harnesses and other gear that are needed to actually hitch the eidolon up to something, it is formed so that it can make use of the standard equipment that would normally be used for a draft animal of its size.

In another thread AdAstraGames is putting up Ranger builds for comment and criticism. He is basically looking at getting the most out of ranged weapon specialty builds. Some of his ideas have been interesting, and ranged weapon specialty builds are most definitely a viable option for Rangers. However, my own personal biases run somewhat differently, and after a while I figured that if I was going to spend time critiquing his builds then it arguably behooved me to put forth one of mine and give him (and others) the chance to throw some rocks in return. :-)

The build that follows is my attempt at a “general purpose” build that can do both melee and ranged combat reasonably well. The obvious drawback of this is that while it doesn’t have any glaring weaknesses, neither does it have any one particular spot where it really shines. It would have to try to take out the ranged weapon specialists by engaging them in melee and attempt to take out the melee weapon specialists by engaging them at range. Also, the attempt to do justice to both ranged and melee feat chains means that it doesn’t acquire some abilities until rather “late” levels. The potential upside is if you’re going to be playing with a constantly varying group of characters then this build has a reasonable chance of filling whatever niche any particular party needs filled at any one time, and doing it well enough to hopefully avoid a TPK because there was either no “meat shield” or nobody who was good at ranged attacks.

This build is based only on material available from the Core Rulebook. Eventually when I get some of the other books I might get fancier, but for right now this character looks like he will do what I want him to.

Human Ranger, Archery Combat Style, Favored Enemy: Humanoid (Human)

STR 14 [5pts]; DEX 14 [5pts] +2 [Race Mod] = 16; CON 12 [2pt]; INT 13 [3pts]; WIS 14 [5pts]; CHA 10 [0pts]. 20 pts total

Skills: 6 ranks base + 1 INT MOD + 1 Favored class +1 human = 9

Trained skills: Climb, Handle Animal, Heal, Perception, Profession (Bounty Hunter), Sense Motive [NC], Stealth, Survival, Swim

[NC]= Not a class skill

Projected feat progression: LF = Level feat, HF = human feat, CS = combat style

1. LF = Two Weapon Fighting, HF = Point Blank Shot
2. CS = Precise Shot
3. LF = Two Weapon Defense
4. Ability increase DEX 17, further ability increases go to STR
5. LF = Rapid Reload Light Crossbow
6. CS = Rapid Shot
7. LF = Combat Expertise
8.
9. LF = Double Slice
10. CS = Far Shot
11. LF = Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Two Bladed Sword
12.
13. LF = Power Attack
14. CS = Improved Precise Shot
15. LF = Improved Two Weapon Fighting
16.
17. LF = Two Weapon Rend
18. CS = Pinpoint Shot
19. LF = Vital Strike
20.

Starting Gear and Encumbrance:

Light Load: < 58 lbs, Medium Load < 116 lbs, Heavy load < 175 lbs

Gear (150 gp to spend):

Traveler’s outfit (free) 5 lbs
Morningstar 8 gp 6 lbs
Handaxe 6 gp 3 lbs
3 daggers 6 gp 3 lbs
6 darts 3 gp 3 lbs
Light crossbow 35 gp 4 lbs
30 bolts 3 gp 3 lbs
Scale Mail 50 gp 30 lbs
------- -------
111 gp 57 lbs

Note: Scale Mail: Armor bonus +5, Max dex bonus +3, ACP -4, spd 20 ft, weight 30 lbs

Some of the reasoning behind the gear and feat selection is that there is only so much space for junk that one can carry on the human/humanoid body. If one is going to end up carrying a double weapon then one is likely not going to be able to also carry either a longbow or a heavy crossbow. So, may as well make a virtue of necessity and go for either a light crossbow or a short bow from the beginning. I decided on the light crossbow for its extra damage and range, even though that meant I was going to have to burn a feat to be able to get rapid shot.

Having decided on a light crossbow I then needed to pick between either exotic weapon proficiency: repeating light crossbow or rapid reload: light crossbow. I decided on the latter as that would not restrict me to using a more expensive weapon that could only fire 5 times before I would have to take a full round action to reload it.

Another problem is that this character is going to be somewhat mobility challenged until he can eventually get a mithral breastplate.