oso

People have led happy and productive lives for centuries before Rand. Objectivism can set the context, integrate practices, explain why some things are right, and make it all work so much more smoothly, but it will never substitute for the best-practices. And, these best practices for human happiness are ancient. 
A philosopher might put it this way: man is a rational animal; not just rational, but rational animal. Man has not simply ditched all the attributes that continue to be present in dogs and tigers and deer. Man can be transfixed in headlights, or he can act with violent overkill, or he can grab at something like he's starving now without concern for the consequences of tomorrow. That's all part of being a rational animal (perhaps that should be hyphenated "rational-animal").
Formal psychology is a much younger field than philosophy, and much of it has been useless junk or even politically-motivated cynical malevolence about a human need for power and so on. Too much of it seemed to ignore the rational, and dwell on man as if he were just an emotional animal. However, I think that's changed now. There's recently been quite a bit of work on cognition: the process, the flaws etc. One can read most of this work cynically and conclude: rationality is impossible. However, the right conclusion is that one has to work at rationality consciously, and not just by thinking, but also by developing certain habits, avoiding certain practices, tuning oneself to potential flaws and short-cuts in thinking, etc.
There are a fair number of popular books on this. I recommend "Influence" by Cialdini, "What makes your Brain Happy..."  by DiSalvo, and (slightly more theoretical) "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Kahneman. I'm sure there are many similar books out there, but these are ones I've read. Other self-help books -- that focus on specific topics -- can be useful too.
 

Another reason is the scale of his crime. Men like Thompson and Meigs were evil, but ordinary men who managed to weasel their way into power. If they weren't there to pull the trigger there would have been a hoard of others to take their place. Stadler was the genius who made Project X possible. As Dante explained, Stadler actively evaded knowledge that his science would be used for evil purposes. This is unlike gun manufacturers who reasonably expect that the values they provide to law abiding citizens far outweigh their marginal contribution to crime by people who use their products for evil. A better comparison would be to Erwin Rommel. He's commonly known as humane general for refusing to murder captured soldiers or civilians. In reality, by the virtue of his military genius he contributed more to the Holocaust than any extermination camp commandant.

I would reccomend reading The Fountainhead. Loneliness may be unpleasant, but it's far from the worst thing that can happen to you. As long as some values are possible to you, it's possible to be an Objectivist and in a collectivistic society, it's actually an even greater necessity if you don't want to end up like Peter Keating.

Except for the fact that the UK had worse riots than this one a couple of years ago, and they handled them just as poorly. Same with Norway. Same with France, where riots like this are commonplace.
And except for the fact that for the most part the protesters in Ferguson aren't using firearms, and, of course, neither is the Police.

But, other than that, feel free to use every isolated event coming out of the US as evidence of your childish position for gun control. While you're at it, why don't you complete the circle of absurdity and explain how global warming is also to blame.

You say science has a specific method for dealing with errors. You are presumably defending the scientific method. If you believe in the scientific method (as I do), that is part of your philosophy, in particular your epistomology. You're bringing your philosophy "into it" just as much as anyone else. That is because there can be no science without philosophy.
 
If Objectivism is correct, and at least it's metaphysics certainly is, then yes, reality must agree with it. Other wise, Objectivism wouldn't be correct. If science proves that things can contradict their identities, events can happen without cause, that consciousness is the creator of reality and that consciousness doesn't exist, then Objectivism is wrong. The thing is, the scientific method and it's practise requires that all of those things not be true. Any conclusion that contradicts the axioms of existence can automatically be dismissed since implicit in the practise of science is the acceptance of those basic axioms. The acceptance of the validity of science is philosophy. You can't not bring philosophy into science without pulling the rug out from under it.

A while back I read a book of essays on Ayn Rand and some academic was complaining how she didn't just go the distance and equate words with concepts. (The book contained many other mistakes, wish I remembered the name.) I thought, how ridiculous this is! But then I found the quote: "With the exception of proper names, every word we use is a concept" (aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/concepts.html).
Well, this simply isn't true. Consider the sentence:
 
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
 
"You" is a deixis (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/deixis) and isn't quite a proper name or a concept (okay, this one is nitpicking and You can consider it a proper name if You want to.)
"are... to be... by" rearrange the sentence. It is grammatically equivalent to "Likely, a grue will eat you.". (We can do this deductively without considering the meanings of the words rearranged.) The sentence isn't really about what you are (where "are" is the concept of being).
"a" grue distinguishes it from "the" referred-to-before grue, but the only concept describing our entity so far is "grue". You might say, "but I distingish it from a group," but then realize that you had to say a group. It's just grammar.
 
Similarly, you certainly have concepts about the use of these words. But this does not mean that the words are concepts. I have a concept of a period, and a period aids in transmitting meaning, but it is not itself a concept.
 
Don't go thinking grammar is bound in a well-defined way to meaning, as our very own page (wiki.objectivismonline.net/Concept) seems to. Grammar is a fickle mistress and will confound you at every step.
 
P.S. If you choose a random entry in a dictionary, you will almost certainly find a concept.
 
P.P.S. If you found this post too easy, try and count the concepts in "It would have been done earlier had it not been delayed until later by what he had been doing to it."
 

I think that it is a matter of degree. Mass murder is pure, stark evil that is on another level than Obamacare or even an evil game that can result in the death of innocent people. You could say the same about Obamacare and knockout, but I think they are comparable for the purposes of comparing the two motives. Someone who thinks Obama isn't evil, but that he's simply a misguided do-gooder could fairly disagree. Keep in mind that the cartoon shows Obama punching Uncle Sam. It would be different if it showed him having beaten a random person to death.

This has been blissfully ignored on this board for long enough. Time to talk about it. I guess I gave away where I stand

He was just released on bail (US$1 million) but he's still on trial for murder. And he really doesn't belong on trial for murder, it's a shameful witch hunt by a political appointee.

Alan Dershowitz has been very vocal in his criticism of the prosecution. Here's a small portion of what he had to say: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-05-18/news/31753417_1_defense-lawyer-evidence-fatal-shooting

The implication, of course, being that most of America's veterans are as you described and therefore deserve only contempt. You site Ayn Rand but if would read her essay "Don't Let it Go" you would know how much you disagree with her on the nature of the American people. If you had read the section of Galt's speech on mind and body you would know that she would consider your ideas a surrender of the world to evil.
 
Your "salute" for Memorial Day is disgusting.

Fortunately, there are generally adults present at elementary schools.

Automatic weapons are not necessarily indiscriminate. Police and military use sub-machine guns for operations such as hostage rescues. They use the automatic function to quickly put several rounds on targets, using short bursts of fire. They're really not much different than any semi-automatic weapon in function. One fact that will attest to that is that sub-machine guns have largely been replaced with compact assault rifles, which are used in semi-auto mode.
The reason people don't use the automatic function of assault rifles is actually the inability to discriminate. It's still possible to discriminate, but your ability is reduced, and that is always a bad thing, whether you are a criminal, a law abiding citizen or attempting mass murder. With firearms, the ability to discriminate is always desirable, because you only have limited rounds and you want to be able to discriminate between your target, and things like the ground and walls around your target. If you try using the automatic function of an assault rifle, you will probably waste rounds. It doesn't increase the effectiveness of the rifle in any scenario.

The only time automatic fire is used both effectively and indiscriminately is with true machine guns. These are weapons designed to cover large swaths of area in which there might be enemies, but you don't know exactly where the enemies are. If you knew exactly where the enemies were, you would be better off using semi-auto. The purpose of the machine gun in this scenario is to suppress the enemy's movement and ability to take aim as well as possibly hit the enemy by chance. This is not a purpose that I can see being useful in any criminal scenario short of raising a small army to fight against the government.

Overall, I think any special regulations against assault rifles is completely useless. Restricting sub-machine guns is not justified because they are not particularly dangerous, but do allow people to defend themselves slightly more effectively in certain scenarios. I could, however see regulation of machine guns being kept at current levels because they are not completely benign (when compared to semi-autos) and they don't have any real self-defensive purpose. Once you get into the realm of explosives, gas, bio-weapons, etc. regulation is justified by reasons including, their use at least posing an implicit threat to people in the area or the impossibility of using them for their intended purpose without violating rights as well as their mere storage posing an implicit threat to people in the area.

Accusing someone's belief in an ideological issue of being based on culture is a baseless ad hominem. It's especially worthless when attempting to use it against people who already defy ideological norms by rejecting altruism and embracing a philosophy that prevents education through osmosis. Well, you can't even try to use it against me because I'm a Canadian, who wasn't raised around guns nor around a particularly gun friendly culture. My beliefs on gun control are entirely my own.
As for Ayn Rand's view, it's funny that you start agreeing with her when she expresses uncertainty and basically says "I don't know" and then claim that she is somehow supporting your view. As I’m sure you agree, Ayn Rand can be wrong. The right to self-defence entails a right to do what is necessary to defend yourself and sometimes that will include killing. Also, any right to self-defence implies the right to the means to self defence, just as the right to life implies a right to property. The reason this issue is so cut and dry is that any law that outlaws concealing guns can only possibly affect law abiding citizens because if you plan on concealing a gun in order to rob or murder, then you will never care about the penalty for carrying. As for how to reconcile self-defence with preventing people from killing at whim, first of all, you make killing people at whim illegal. Second, you make carrying in public require a permit, which would only be issued to people without serious criminal records or mental issues and to people who are trained in the use of handguns. It's just the same as how you reconcile productive transportation with preventing people from using cars to kill people at whim. The most important issue here though, is that people are generally good. That's why you don't hear about random hit and run murders. That's the reason why despite the millions of people in America legally carrying handguns, very few commit any crimes let alone senseless murder.
You’re right that if the United States were turned into a dictatorship, gun crime would likely go down but that alone doesn’t justify any of the measures you suggested. Reducing the amount of murders is not the standard when it comes to the justification of government action. The standard is whether a government action violates or protects individual rights. As explained in the last thread, there is no such thing as your “conflict of rights”. When a government takes an action which violates rights, it is always wrong and robbing good people of the right to self-defence is definitely violating their rights. It’s also not a guarantee that dictatorial gun laws will make significant dents in the amount of guns in the hands of criminals in which case everyone is left a soft target. Even if you do somehow manage to eliminate next to all guns (this is me bending over backwards), the people are still left defenceless against the few criminals with guns left, the government, and all crimes committed with knives or bats or fists.
As for changing the culture such that anyone who owned a gun would be looked at as a weirdo, how could you possibly justify that? You would have to make the case that it is inherently wrong to own a gun, for any reason, regardless of how safe and responsible you are. You would need to attack, not only the hobbies of hunting and target shooting, but also the virtue of taking responsibility for your own safety. You would need to attack the idea that a populace ought to be prepared for the possibility that their government will degrade into tyranny. The fact is, the only way to attack these things is by focusing on individual misconduct and it’s impossible to justify a stigma against gun ownership in general because it is possible to own guns responsibly and for good reasons. The American gun culture is rational.
Any middle ground between freedom and banning guns will do nothing at best or quite likely cause more crime. That's because anything short of dictatorial laws, such as the laws you suggested as palatable to Americans, will not do a single thing to prevent criminals from getting guns. Gun control such as automatic weapon bans, the recently expired Assault Weapons Ban, and the recently abolished gun registry in Canada, are examples of gun control that does absolutely nothing but placate liberals and violate rights. Any law that disarms good people can only do harm. The most obvious is creating so called “gun-free zones”, whether they are on the scale of a nation, or a school. All they do is disarm good people, making them soft targets for any predator that doesn’t care about a sign or the law. The massacres you’ve seen in American schools and the rise in crime rates in Australia are the price of being “gun free”. Good people with guns make society safer.

The reason an employer is allowed to create a job is not to provide opportunity to the collective, it is because he has a right to the pursuit of happiness. The role of government is not to ensure equality of opportunity, which is just as corrupt as any other form of egaltaranism, it is to protect individual rights. Equal opportunity still demands the violation of rights in order to force people into distributing the opportunity they create equally and in order to bring down anybody with above average opportunity. It still requires bashing the brains of any genius child in order to equalize his opportunity with any moron child. Gay people, or any other individual or group of people have no claim on the opportunities created by another human being. Those opportunities are his to distribute however he chooses, regardless of whether he happens to make unjust and immoral choices because it's his pusuit of happiness, not the government dictated path to happiness. If you are allowed to violate his rights, you're not just forcing him into not putting up homophobic adverts and forcing him into not being rude, you're also blasting the entire concept of individual rights, which, in fact, are the very source of all opportunity.
Maybe you're right that unchecked rudeness can have dire consequences. The point at which an objective government would put a check on it is when the rudeness turns to force.

You're wrong about the Greece part. We're exactly like them but worse. There are only three major differences. The world has not yet realized that our debt is junk, our debt and inability to repay it is far worse and we have a gun pointed at our own heads in the form of a printing press.

I once had a thought that if Obama won, I could take solace in knowing that at least Obama will probably get the blame for the coming economic collapse instead of Romney. I feel no such solace. I see this election as nothing less than a devastating defeat.

I haven't been following this thread, but just giving it a quick skim I find myself wondering whether the matter can't be resolved by reference to the wisdom of Dr. Flicker:

No, rising to the level of a trusted number two at a transcontinental railroad company. Ayn Rand was showing the great hights to which an average, good man can rise in a semi-free world, but also the fate he faces when the prime movers are removed from society. Eddie's only true failure was his inability to let a world go which was dying despite his efforts.

Your airplane won't fly on the moon. Your car won't drive on the ocean. An Objectivists probably won't be able to achieve happiness living in North Korea. Living by Objectivism will give you the best shot at happiness but there is never any guarantee.