Christopher Hitchens (5/6) on Ken Starr, Religion, Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan (1996)

April 5, 1996 http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.... Watch the full program: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/08/christopher-hitchens-and-byron-yo...

Kenneth Winston Starr (born July 21, 1946) is an American lawyer, a former federal Court of Appeals judge and Solicitor General who is most notable for his tenure as Independent Counsel while Bill Clinton was U. S. President. Starr was initially appointed to investigate the suicide death of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster and the Whitewater real estate investments of Bill Clinton. The three-judge panel charged with administering the Independent Counsel Act later expanded the inquiry into numerous areas including an extramarital affair that Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky. After several years of investigation Starr filed the Starr Report which alleged that Bill Clinton had lied about existence of the affair during a sworn deposition. The allegation opened the door for the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the five-year suspension of Clinton's law license.

Starr currently serves as the President of Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Murray S. Waas (20 December, 1961) is an American freelance investigative journalist known most recently for his coverage of the White House planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and ensuing controversies and American political scandals such as the Plame affair (also known as the "CIA leak grand jury investigation", the "CIA leak scandal", and "Plamegate"). His articles about such matters have appeared in The American Prospect, The National Journal, Salon, and The Village Voice. Waas also comments on contemporary American political controversies in his personal blogs Whatever Already! and at The Huffington Post. An "instant book" on United States v. I. Lewis Libby which he edited, with research assistance by Jeff Lomonaco, was published by Union Square Press (an imprint of Sterling Publishing) in June 2007.

Ayn Rand (born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum; February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 -- March 6, 1982), was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, Rand immigrated to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway in 1935--1936. She first achieved fame in 1943 with her novel The Fountainhead, which in 1957 was followed by her best-known work, the philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged.

Rand's political views, reflected in both her fiction and her theoretical work, emphasize individual rights (including property rights) and laissez-faire capitalism, enforced by a constitutionally limited government. She was a fierce opponent of all forms of collectivism and statism, including fascism, communism, socialism, and the welfare state, and promoted ethical egoism while rejecting the ethic of altruism. She considered reason to be the only means of acquiring knowledge and the most important aspect of her philosophy, stating, "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."

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[michaelchristopherj]

@unfad1ng I'm sorry but your fucking mistaken. Socialism has nothing to do with freedoms, in fact most socialists are on the libertarian side. It means workers control the means to production. Period.

[bertiethetoupee4]

@hugoegbert79 He is not a socialist but still a Marxist, in his own words. I don't think he became a warmonger - he simply has a Jeffersonian attitude to foreign intervention: that intervention is necessary to destroy fascism, whatever face it has. You may, and perhaps quite rightly, disagree with him on Iraq, but his motives for supporting it are good.

[metallitech]

@michaelchristopherj Nothing to do with freedoms? You cannot collectivize people like that without them loosing freedoms.

[belzondium]

"I think we just did this... I had the impression we went through this a couple of minutes ago"

[graciehunterII]

@bertiethetoupee4 All quite true. Unfortunately, we (the USA) have become the Fascists.

[michaelchristopherj]

@unfad1ng Exactly. What does that have to do with restricting of freedom?

[unfad1ng]

@michaelchristopherj

It means collective control of the means of production.

[TheGreatDeciever55]

@hugoegbert79 do you consider his support of the iraq war warmongering? please elaborate...

[unfad1ng]

@hugoegbert79

well thaths a relief.

I dont like socialism its to much control and to little freedom

[hugoegbert79]

@unfad1ng He's not a communist, he's a socialist. There's a difference. And he's not a socialist anymore anyway, hasn't been for about ten years now (around about the time he became a warmonger).