Pased should be “passed; “write my reports with a dictionary” – what reports? What is the context for this sentence? It’s also possible that you should actually be using past tense, having WRITTEN reports with the HELP of a dictionary.

“office help with my grammar”? I assume you mean Microsoft Office, which should be capitalized by the way, but that’s also a terrible way to learn English grammar. Partly because computer programs do not have understanding of a little thing called “nuance”, and partly because MS Office is, in fact, sometimes wrong in its spelling and grammar corrections.

You write “so Im told” – kudos on actually knowing to capitalize the I, but you’re missing the apostrophe that a contraction REQUIRES in English.

Likewise you are missing the apostrophe in “doesn’t” – in BOTH uses.

You should write it as “doesn’t mean I have mastered” as you are speaking of a hypothetical present tense possibility, not a definite past tense situation.

It’s spelled “language”, not “lenguage”. I’m guessing, given the word “lengua” being smashed in there, that a Romance language is your native tongue (I’ve taken some Spanish courses, and in that language at least, “language” is “lengua”, and I would assume due to Latin roots, that other Romance languages would be rather similar). Which explains some of the awkwardness, as English is, despite a lot of cognates, not terribly grammatically similar to a lot of the Romance languages.

Have you ever run across the phrase “she understands, but she doesn’t comprehend”? It’s a Firefly TV series quote, and I think it really, really applies here. See, those are two words with such a very subtle difference in meaning – as a nonnative speaker, it’s not even likely you’d think of them as anything other than synonyms. But they are not. Not really.

You can “understand” something… but to truly COMPREHEND? That takes a lot more.

For instance, I can “understand” basic, polite Japanese and Spanish at times, enough for a nice, pleasant conversation if I’ve been particularly diligent at practicing it… that doesn’t mean I’m ready to fully experience and comprehend “Don Quixote” or “Tale of Genji”, in their original languages. I probably never will be, but I certainly won’t just from a handful of years of formal schooling.

There are nuances you will NEVER learn in school; you only learn them from being immersed in the language, and at times, in the culture. For instance, you seem baffled that people use “liberal” and “conservative” in GASP! A different way than you would! That… that it may not even be GASP! Literal!

Yet if you were raised in American culture, you would understand that those two words, sad as it may be, are merely code words for political leanings, almost personalities, in fact; that self-described “conservatives” fall in with authoritarian moral positions, are often anti-government and anti-tax, pro-gun, anti-sex, usually anti-abortion but pro-”abstinence”, pro-death penalty,and often from heavily religious backgrounds… which sometimes include a certain amount of sexism and racism to them, that they feel that Justice is more important than being nice, and are more likely to have a black and white worldview, are more likely to follow NASCAR and Pro Wrestling than they are opera or figure skating, more likely to live in the south or midwest, more likely to discount global warming, and much more likely to vote Republican by today’s parties; self-described “liberals” are more likely to diverge wildly in opinions, but typically vote Democratic party, are pro-gay, often not anti-abortion, often anti-death penalty, anti-war, anti-sexism, anti-racism, and pro-social services, more likely to believe in Fairness over authoritarian views, more likely to support a strong federal government (so long as it doesn’t try to control people’s sex lives and the like), more likely to want to help out in other countries’ poverty and disaster relief efforts and the like, more likely to persue college education, more likely to live in the Pacific Northwest, certain portions of California, or the Northeast, and in favor of multiculturalism, environmentalist efforts, and the arts.

All that is implied in ONE WORD. It isn’t just a political philosophy- you’ll notice they aren’t consistent with literal meanings of the words for instance – but that is what they will conjure up in the minds of Americans.

Likewise, when someone calls themselves a Feminist, you seemed to assume the word has only one meaning in English, but… it doesn’t. There are a wide variety of groups and individuals who have been called or call themselves Feminist, there are at least three major “waves” or eras to it, and there are proto-Feminist movements such as the Suffragettes (who achieved the vote for women in the US)… there is a whole history you are not aware of, partly I think, because you just weren’t raised in the culture that WE are thinking of in terms of Feminism. You also hilariously equated it with Ayn Rand’s philosophies… I say hilariously, because Ayn Rand is almost universally popular only with “conservatives” as far as philosophy goes, and yet, Feminism is considered a “liberal” position, to the extent that “conservative” extremists have been known to use pejoratives like “Feminazi”.

There is an entire swath, in both philosophy and politics, of what are called “dog whistles”; words that seem to have one meaning on the surface, but have coded meanings to others.

You don’t know enough about the culture to pick up on dog whistles; even a lot of NATIVES don’t. Yet you are accidentally stumbling right into dog-whistle heavy topics, without realizing in some cases what you are actually saying to your audience.

I know it’s tempting to communicate when you first get “good” at a language; lord knows I felt the same way about Spanish and Japanese! But you need more than “good” conversational skills to be able to debate politics and philosophy and ideologies with people from a different language and culture from yours. You need not just an extraordinary level of linguistic fluency, but also a high level of cultural fluency, and you just have yet to exhibit either of those two things, but most especially the latter.

For one, a good number of Feminists don’t just believe in “individualism”, they also believe in fighting for OTHER PEOPLE (mostly women and girls), simply because those people are disadvantaged by society; in other words, in altruistic attempts to help others (think: efforts to reduce rape, or reduce poverty with microloans – something that sounds capitalistic, sure, but is NOT Objectivist).

In contrast, in The Fountainhead, Rand literally writes of characters who devote their lives to altruistic social work… AS BAD. As wasting their potential at best, and at worst, of secretly trying to undermine individuality by, say, not really agreeing that people should be assholes to whomever they want. There is literally no character in that entire book who devotes their life to helping other people, who is not portrayed as either a villain or a pathetic waste of space. In the meantime, the main character literally rapes his love interest, and this is portrayed as “romantic” because he is going for what he wants! And sure, you can make the argument that Dominique is just kinky and that thus it was really consensual, and I can buy that… but it still implies that there is something heroic in sexual violence, as if a “real man” TAKES from women, rather than, you know, not being an asshole about it. It’s a gigantic, male-dominated Mary Sue fantasy about an architect who wins the day by basically being yes, brilliant but also an antisocial ASS to everyone he meets and being goddamned lucky that like, two people in the world didn’t hate him for it. And I say this as someone who initially loved it when she first read it! It’s still creepy and unsettling the more you actually deconstruct what the story SAYS.

Don’t get me wrong, she could spin a story that was enthralling enough… but her philosophy does NOT WORK in a social species, it only works if everybody is a damned sociopath. Because she literally indicated, in her work, that anything at all that is altruistic, is bad, anything at all that involves somebody fighting for or working for someone not themselves, even if it is voluntary, is automatically bad and leads to unhappiness and charity sucks basically.

Yeah, not many Feminists would agree with Objectivism.

Not saying it doesn’t share some select viewpoints – Objectivists would hypothetically be pro-choice obviously, so a lot of Feminists would agree on that (though not all- Feminists are a diverse bunch and it’s not impossible to be somewhat anti-abortion and still a Feminist) – but they ARE NOT interchangeable. It is NOT “just another manifestation” of Rand’s idealistic, narcissistic vision of “selfishness”.

Likewise, I’m not sure you understand what “Humanism” is either… Humanists by default believe in “human potential” and being all in this together. This holds whether the humanist in question was a Christian or a secular humanist; Christian ones believed that it was only right to aide others and that God gave us magnificient minds that should be properly used, while secular ones have tended to believe that kindness is a good thing and also not derived from religion but from human nature (which, it turns out, is pretty psychologically accurate on the whole).

It also may do you well to know that Ayn Rand was a HUGE hypocrite. She believed that truly awesome people like herself should NEVER be judged for having affairs… then got pissed that her lover cheated on her. She claimed that musical taste was “subjective”… then refused any further contact with people whose musical taste turned out to differ from hers. Yes, really. And guess what? Because of all this hypocrisy, she basically ended up driving away a hell of a lot of people from her life – over really trivial things, sometimes. She caused herself a LOT of issues trying to publicly hold to her “Objective” views that in private she frequently violated with gusto.

Ayn Rand is, suffice it to say, not the best person to model your society on. Or your life on. Or anything other than a Greek-style tragedy on.

You need to study a bit more ABOUT philosophies and ideologies, before you next start spouting off about them. Because you don’t seem to understand what almost any of them are, or mean, or how they’re different from each other, or even in some cases that there is, in fact, more than one version of them.

Exactly how do you expect to protect yourself from invaders, support roads, HAVE property in the first place, or prevent theft, rape, murder and fire, without “taxes”?

Or do you just feel that if people can’t afford to pay tolls on exclusively-privately-owned roads, or to pay for body guards, or fire “protection”, or private tutors, or to have their water hauled by other people, that they should be left to the wolves?

You – yes, YOU – get otherwise free access to police and fire protection (complete with a phone system to conveniently call for help!), paved roads almost all of which are FREE FOR YOUR USE, water mains, even a military to prevent other countries from invading the edges of the territory and a system in place to regulate contracts and also punish those who harm you (including through violation of contracts), and protect your right to live, and be secure in your person and property, and you aren’t completely, utterly lost for a chance at a very basic education just because your parents aren’t wealthy enough to afford a tutor, and also, your meat is less likely to have e. coli in it.

All. Supported. By. TAXES.

Unless you want to give all that up and live in a some postapocalyptic wasteland where only mercenaries and fat cats survive, you can shut the hell up on all this “waaaaah I have to pay my social duuuuuuues” business.

The whole point of civilization, ideally, is to pool a certain amount of resources – not all of it, just some of it – so that everybody has a decent chance at life. JOINTLY. It’s just that nowadays, one of those resources is something called “money”.

This isn’t even just the goddamn social contract we’re talking about; it’s an extension of the very social structure that has kept our species ALIVE for the past few thousand years even when we were almost extinct (there was a population bottleneck at one point, evidence suggests we were back down to a mere 5,000 people at one point before recovering!). Pooling a certain amount of resources for the benefit of the group as a whole, is both instinctive in social species such as ours, and COMMON SENSE, because it damn well works!

Seriously. Stop whining. I pay taxes too – both federal and state – and you know what? I’m fine with that, because it means that if my apartment catches on fire, SOMEBODY WILL COME TO PUT IT OUT WITHOUT EXTORTING ME. It means if I am assaulted or robbed, I can call for help and possibly justice. It means that I don’t have to pay a toll every two feet to drive to work every morning, because that road is FREE, for public use.

People who equate paying a VERY COMPARATIVELY TINY amount of taxes to “stealin’ mah propertah!” don’t seem to understand why taxes exist. This isn’t the feudal era! Those aren’t just going to some greedy king somewhere so he can buy a fancy carriage. They’re going to support the people and infrastructures that support YOU.

And if you disagree, well! Go live by yourself in a forest with no tools and no access to roads, potable water, shelter, etc. and see how well you do without depending on the things your and my taxes pay for…

When I change my mind, I either put the damn thing back, or I give it to a cashier.

The really stupid thing is this is clearly a natural trait that developed of its own accord, because if I try to do that at my work – you know, THOROGHLY recover – they tell me not to waste time fixing everything. So of course, everything is always out of whack in our store, because nobody fixes it, and because nobody fixes it, I guess a lot of customers just shrug and stuff crap wherever’s “convenient” (for them). Meanwhile, one of our competitors? The aisles are COMPLETELY RECOVERED, always. Even in the damn jewelry section. It’s like it’s run by OCD robot librarians, it’s so perfectly organized.

I have to say, the idea that books by the same author, in the same series, must be alphabetical is… kind of silly. I mean, I know it has to be in SOME order, but in cases like for instance, the Dexter series, which are not numbered, or Dresden Files where they’ve stopped numbering it on the covers, it can be really frustrating figuring out what the continuity is. :\ I accidentally spoiled myself for a major event in one of the Dexter books by reading the next book’s flap without realizing I was “skipping” one today. Bugged the crap out of me, because 9 times out of 10 I try to avoid spoilers…

So it’s advertising as a reward, which for a freelancer like myself is really how to have to start… charity projects and film fests and stuff…