Bio

I'm a 21 year-old Goldwater conservative.  I graduated high school in 2008 with unremarkable grades and proceeded to college, where I will graduate with as a History major in May.  I have been a junior level manager at a painting company since high school, and I will be getting married in the Spring.  I will also commission as an officer at the same time in the US Army and go into the Armor branch, where I hope to become a Cavalry Scout platoon leader. 

I'm a compulsive military history book reader, and enjoy maintaining an arsenal of personal firearms.  After my military career, I wish to go into writing. 


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Byron Horatio's Profile

Byron Horatio
Name:
Byron Horatio
Hometown:
Cleveland
Joined:
Jul 17, 2010

Recent Comments

Byron Horatio
Michael Labeit: Byron, you mentioned earlier that you were pursuing a career as a combat arms officer. If this is true, you'll learn to hate people, especially while deployed. Love too, certainly. But I'd question the Christian premise of universal love before I'd proceed to examine hatred. It seems your estimate of hatred depends upon whether or not it conforms to the proposititions of Christianity. But then again, why have you chosen the Christian framework to begin with? I don't think "Because I subscribe to the Christian worldview" suffices. It would seem odd to endure military training, with its morbid humor and incessant urging to kill other people with perfect zeal and efficiency, in order to graduate still with the conviction that hatred per se is indicative of moral deprivation. · 13 hours ago

That's correct.  Though, as I've stated before, I am not religiously inclined nor a Christian.  I do not accept the idea of universal love.  I used the Christian framework for this question because it was the religion I grew up with, and the one most people on Ricochet ascribe to.  

Byron Horatio
Michael Labeit: I don't think Jesus' ethic of universal love (love God, love others) can harmonize with hatred of others. If you love someone, then you do not hate them (love and hate are contradictory). I wonder therefore how Christians cope with such a constraining moral code. Personally, I view hatred as a potential, positive source of motivation. It gets one out of bed, as Hitchens would say. I don't love everyone; I reserve a special hatred for murderers, rapists, Islamic facists, many politicians etc. I think many people I hate should even be dealt with violently, e.g., Islamic terrorists. Some people should have their behinds handed to them, forcibly, and we should like it. · 1 minute ago

That's more or less where I fall on it.  Hatred is destructive only if you hate good things.  If you hate freedom, gender/religious/political equality, then your hatred is bad.  If you hate people who blow up children, I don't see where the moral offense is being committed, because that hatred will be positive if it inspires you to stop that barbarity.

Byron Horatio
Katie O: Loving your enemies doesn't mean having warm cuddly feelings for them though right? It means desiring what is good for them. We are perfectly just in thwarting and punishing evil. · 1 minute ago

I understand this in the micro.  I don't hate anyone that I actually know personally, except for some criminal teens who had beaten me up when a young kid.  We are implored to not hate our personal enemies; our competitors at work, rivals, relatives, etc.  But I don't understand how one is to apply this to the Kims and Assads of the world.  

Byron Horatio

DrewInWisconsin

 

I came into the Prager show just as he was finishing up talking about this, and thought "Man, I would have liked to hear his arguments!" Can you summarize? · 17 minutes ago

Yeah, he's touched on it before.  And I believe that was the first time he's devoted an hour to the issue.  Here is an article he wrote that pertains to it from several years ago.  To sum it up, "You can't fight evil unless you hate it."  And in his show, he said that he does not restrict it to simply evil acts, but to their perpetrators as well.  Basically, he doesn't understand how one can hate murder, rape, and genocide without hating the people who engage in those things.  How is one supposed to feel towards the grunts of the Taliban if not hatred for everything about them?  

For my own part, I concede that Biblically, you are all correct and I cannot in my search find condoning of hating evil individuals per se.  To me, "hate evil" seems to imply that.   
 

Byron Horatio

Fair enough, but how does one hate genocide without hating its perpetrators? Likewise rapists and murderers?

Byron Horatio

I guess the key distinction I'm making is not about whether to hate sinners. Indeed, we would hate everyone. But can one be a consistent Christian if he hates monstrously evil people who murder and commit genocide?

Byron Horatio

This is a boneheaded decision I see a lot of businesses make. Apparently the law firms are not immune. As if a GPA or school is any measure of work ethic or competence. I hope to own my own painting business one day, and I'd immediately look with suspicion on people from " top schools" or "top of class.". I've been through college, so I know how worthless most of it is.

Byron Horatio

Very glad to hear. I'm a a Polophile...Polephile? Despite its sad history, it is a decent and clear-headed nation.

Byron Horatio

Afghanistan has not been run like a proper colonial exercise.  Had we done that, we might have kicked out the Taliban in 2001 and claimed our laws the law of the land, ending the chattel condition of women, abolishing child marriages, and protecting the several dozen remaining non-Muslims.  Instead, in the State Department's wisdom, we established a Sharia-compliant Islamic Republic where rape victims are put on death row, converts shot, homosexuals stoned, and women treated like they always have been.  

The problem is not that we are "attempting to force our customs" on other cultures.  That's laughable.  If only!  We haven't even bothered trying that!  Had we done so, in the British Empire's spirit, Afghanistan might have been different.  Needless to say, I think nation-building is a waste.  

Byron Horatio
TerryW:  One of the problems in the US today is that not enough people have served in the military—look at the current and past 2 presidents.  For those of you who “say” you are serving or have served and speak out against the draft I bet you are NOT a combat arms type…most likely a support type person.  A draft would keep our military supplied with high caliber personnel who would do the job.  If they can cut it, we discharge them. 

Are you ex-military?  Just curious.  I have never met ONE active military member, combat veterans and support, who thought conscription was a good idea.  Why?  Because they'd be the unlucky ones put in charge of people who had fundamental contempt for the military and for their superiors.  It's hard enough managing people who have volunteered.  Also, I am in combat arms, and have nothing but contempt towards the idea of conscription.  

@ Mendel (#38)

I joined for love of country and out of hatred for the jihadist menace.  If pay was reduced to minimum wage, I would not leave.  I feel no similar sense of purpose in the civilian world. 

Byron Horatio

Jimmy, I have no wish for their to be an amendment, but ideally, I think it should be a privilege based on either taxes or military service. I keep thinking of de Tocqueville's alleged line about how democracies would only last until people realize they could vote themselves money. I'll keep the Constitution just as it is, but if another republic is ever bickering about how to organize itself on Mars someday, I'll put my two cents in.

Byron Horatio

Jimmy, That's not what I meant at all. But strictly as a theoretical, I think a nation would be less likely to get into such a morass if there was some sort of requirement for participating in democracy. More reasonable would be that if you don't pay income taxes, you can't vote for people who legislate taxes. Military service would just be something similar to a tax or property requirement. It says nothing of a person's worth or value to society.

Byron Horatio

Absolutely opposed to the draft, though if the country were invaded, we must do what we must to survive, and I'd support conscription.  I have been partial to Heinlein's argument for some time that while conscription is a bad thing, certain citizen rights should be earned rather than entitled through some sort of military or defense service.  In his book, you pay taxes and don't have to join the military, but you can't vote unless you serve.  

Byron Horatio

I'm a 22 year old and technically a conservative...though I am more in line with the 19th century British Gladstonian Liberals. I was a naive factory setting liberal until about 16 when I got a real job. Been a reactionary ever since.

Byron Horatio

I don't understand why any of you people put up with such public indecency. I went to two major league baseball games this year where there were obnoxious youths in my section. I walked up to their row, screamed and cussed at all of them, and the noise interference stopped dead. I recommend everyone do it. Disrupters tend to be loud but cowardly, and deserve public derision. Evil only triumphs if good people do nothing.

Byron Horatio

I feel little sympathy for the dead in this case. Any action aimed at halting Iran's attainment of the bomb, assassination included, is pretty much fine by me. It is a case of choosing the bad over the worse options. We...or our friends...are gunning people down like gangsters in Tehran...cringeworthy...but worse than Iran attaining the bomb? Hardly. It is a sick and twisted regime that needs to be destroyed. One day its leaders will meet a similar end to Mr. Roshan, by our hands or their own peoples'. Interestingly enough, I listened to an interview of Reza Khalili last night, the anti-regime defector who spied on the Revolutionary Guard for a decade for us. His tone turned almost gleeful when the assassination was mentioned.

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