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To: Tom who wrote (1439)	3/20/1998 12:02:00 AM
From: ----------	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2951

Yeah, Tom. If you saw 300 Greeks in those cute little outfits now days, people would think it was a "gay pride" parade. <bg> Doug

To: Tom who wrote (1439)	3/20/1998 4:40:00 AM
From: synchro	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2951

OFF Topic Wrt: Self-Sacrifice as a Virtue I plead ignorance to what the heck happened at or what is Thermoplyae (I assume it's a very hot, unpleasant place), so you would have to enlighten me on that. But... Tom, please do not slander the Allied heros who died in WWII by attributing their actions to self-sacrifice. If they did not fight, they would be in danger of living under the tyranny of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan and have their way of life taken from them. If that is not enlightened self-interest, I don't know what is. A military draft would have been totally unnecessary in WWII; you would have enough people fighting to preserve their OWN freedom. Think about the great man-made disasters that inflicted the human race. Each one has a cynical leader urging others to self-sacrifice and a willing group of self-sacrificers all in the name of the "Greater Good". To wit: Hitler and Nazism: go sacrifice for a "purer" race; Lenin and Stalin: go sacrifice for a communist utopia; Mao and his Great Leap Forward/Cultural Revolution: go sacrifice for a stronger China and a "better" society (in the case of the Red Guards, go waste 10 of your most productive years of your lives in the wilderness and kill and eat your political enemies). And on a slightly smaller scale, the Japanese youths wasted during WWII who suicide-slammed their fighters into the U.S. warships in the name of their holy Emperor. This is the true legacy of self-sacrifice; such is the dispicable history of altruism. Have you really wondered about the true nature in a human transaction of altruism? You have a giver and taker of allegedly good intention. The giver demands gratefulness (either now or posthumously)--after all, he sacrificed himself for YOU! The taker, if he does not feel gratitude or don't understand why the giver sacrificed for him, can only feel guilt, resentment and self-hatred. There is no human dignity in the transaction; the giver and taker are not equal men. They are in a master-slave relationship, a sick co-dependency--the need of the giver to feel superior, the guilt of the taker because he did not earn what was given. The only equal, dignified human relationship exists when humans beings are allowed to freely trade--when they exchange something for something. One does not owe another person anything. No guilt, no gratitude, no coersion, no robbery, no pious ideals, no political movement. I have something you want, you have something I want, then let's trade for it. And what is the only system that allows for this? Why, it is that selfish economic arrangement called capitalism-- a system of of private property ownership protected by a rule of law