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"AnarchObjectivism" is a contradiction. "Objectivism" refers to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and Miss Rand explicitly rejected anarchy in her philosophical writings:

(From "The Nature of Government" in The Virtue of Selfishness. Link.)
You are, of course, free to disagree with Ayn Rand in the field of politics, but you are not free to use her name (in the form of "Objectivism," which means "the philosophy of Ayn Rand") to promote a philosophy with which she explicitly disagreed. You also should not ascribe to her characters motives that they do not display in her novels (because it would be the same as ascribing to her ideas that were not hers). As can be seen in the conclusion of Atlas Shrugged, when Judge Narragansett (I think, it's been a while) adds his own modification to the US Constitution. This action on his part (which is supported by the other strikers) is explicit endorsement of the idea that a government must exist as an objective monopolist on retaliatory force, enforcer of contracts, and arbiter of disagreements.

On the topic of anarchy, I agree completely with Miss Rand (as you can probably tell). Anarchy is the same as rule by mob, because permissible force is not placed under the sole authority of an objective and restricted body but is permitted to any men who may choose to use it. In an anarchy, anyone could use force to enforce any laws they choose, because it is quite simply rule by brute force (You can say that initiation of force would be inadmissible, but without a government, who would prevent it from occurring? Blank-out). It is far more moral and practical to place force under the control of an objective government than to eliminate the concept of laws altogether and leave men with no objective body to protect them from brutes. I would rather live in a society with the modern American mixed system than in a society with no government, because at least some of America's current laws are objective while the concept of objective law would not even exist in a system of anarchy.

I think the issue of collateral damage in war can be better understood by looking at a comparable concrete involving individuals, because on the whole the principle is the same.

Imagine we have an armed terrorist in a public place who takes three hostages. He holds one of the hostages in front of him as a human shield and places the other two on either side of him. You happen to be carrying a gun yourself. As you draw your weapon, the terrorist sees you. You know he won't hesitate to shoot and kill you, and probably others. However, the only available shot to the terrorist is through the civilian (in this instance you have a high caliber weapon that will allow you to kill the terrorist by shooting through the civilian).

What is the right decision?

It's clear that if you are to act in a self-interested manner, you need to take the shot. Your priority is self-defense against an armed maniac who will kill you and other innocent people around you. It is a tragedy that the civilian will die in this instance once you shoot through him, but it is the only way to save your own life and those of the other civilians around you. This is the same principle that governs civilian casualties in a war. Civilians in Imperial Japan unfortunately had to die when the U.S. went into neutralize the armed threat.

A few things other principles and scenarios in this analogy are worthy of note:

1) The blood of the civilian is squarely and solely on the hands of the terrorist. Even though you pulled the trigger of the weapon that killed him, his death is not your fault. The terrorist forced your hand by coercing you and bears responsibility for the death of this innocent. Because the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary measures for the U.S. to take to neutralize the threat of imperial Japan (a land invasion would have been costly for the lives of American troops, so that decision would have been immoral for government when the bomb remained an effective option), and because the Japanese forced the hand of President Truman by attacking the United States, the blood of those killed in those bombings is on the hands of the Japanese emperor.

2) In our scenario, you probably have time for just one shot before the terrorist is able to fire a shot at you. Because you would be unlikely to hit and would almost certainly die if you missed (and perhaps even if you hit), it would be immoral to shoot to wound the terrorist's exposed leg rather than taking the shot to kill through the civilian. For the same reason, it would be immoral for the United States to have gone out of their way to avoid civilian casualties to the detriment of its ability to win the war.

3) In our scenario, the terrorist has three hostages. Since only one of them must be killed in order to kill the terrorist, it would also be immoral to kill all three regardless. For the same reason, it would be immoral for the United States to have gratuitously bombed Japanese cities after the Emperor offered his surrender. In this instance, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the one civilian right in front of the terrorist, and the other two civilians are the rest of Japan. Civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to die for the U.S. to neutralize a violent, oppressive and irrational government, but once the Japanese surrendered, the U.S. properly did not cause any unnecessary civilian deaths.

I hope this analogy is at least a bit helpful or thought provoking when considering foreign policy issues. Thinking about things more in this way helped convince me to support the strong foreign policies of Dr. Peikoff and Dr. Brook instead of the non-interventionism of Ron Paul and other libertarians.

"AnarchObjectivism" is a contradiction. "Objectivism" refers to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and Miss Rand explicitly rejected anarchy in her philosophical writings:

(From "The Nature of Government" in The Virtue of Selfishness. Link.)
You are, of course, free to disagree with Ayn Rand in the field of politics, but you are not free to use her name (in the form of "Objectivism," which means "the philosophy of Ayn Rand") to promote a philosophy with which she explicitly disagreed. You also should not ascribe to her characters motives that they do not display in her novels (because it would be the same as ascribing to her ideas that were not hers). As can be seen in the conclusion of Atlas Shrugged, when Judge Narragansett (I think, it's been a while) adds his own modification to the US Constitution. This action on his part (which is supported by the other strikers) is explicit endorsement of the idea that a government must exist as an objective monopolist on retaliatory force, enforcer of contracts, and arbiter of disagreements.

On the topic of anarchy, I agree completely with Miss Rand (as you can probably tell). Anarchy is the same as rule by mob, because permissible force is not placed under the sole authority of an objective and restricted body but is permitted to any men who may choose to use it. In an anarchy, anyone could use force to enforce any laws they choose, because it is quite simply rule by brute force (You can say that initiation of force would be inadmissible, but without a government, who would prevent it from occurring? Blank-out). It is far more moral and practical to place force under the control of an objective government than to eliminate the concept of laws altogether and leave men with no objective body to protect them from brutes. I would rather live in a society with the modern American mixed system than in a society with no government, because at least some of America's current laws are objective while the concept of objective law would not even exist in a system of anarchy.

I'm just going to say again what I've said before and what DonAthos also just said:

FredAnyman, have you read Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology? The fact of the matter is, I think we're going to have a hard time continuing this discussion until you've read or re-read it, because there seems to be a fundamental disconnect in that you don't seem to have a strong grasp on the Objectivist epistemology.

And realistically, it is not possible to understand a theory of ethics until you understand the epistemology that serves as its framework. Think of a philosophical system as the Statue of Liberty. Before you can start constructing the outer copper layer in the form of the statue, you have to first build the pedestal and the frame, which are like the metaphysics and epistemology. Then you can construct the outer layer, which is like the ethical system, and then you can add the crown of politics and the torch of aesthetics. But if you try to just construct the outer layer without first building the frame, the statue will crumble the first time its structural integrity is even slightly tested. You have to have a good grasp on epistemology first. And I think most of your problems in this conversation are in dealing with topics that are epistemological, not ethical.

Repairman, I agree with what you said and appreciate the time you obviously gave to what I posted. I personally don't mind good pop music, and even enjoy it, but it doesn't inspire me or stay with me like progressive music does. With a lot of pop music, in fairness, it is intended to be more of a backdrop to a party or to driving in the car, and I think a lot of it does work well for that purpose. But for pure listening experience, it just does not hold a candle to progressive music. But I like good benevolent pop music a lot better than music by those whose attitude seems to be that complexity and ambition in music is a pointless pursuit and intend to proclaim that their three-chord songs are superior to Rush's 2112. While I can understand why people might like the music of some of these bands, like Nirvana, I cannot stomach them because of the attitude expressed by their creators. In the end, though, I tend to agree with your last paragraph about enjoying music at your own discretion.
 
 
 
 
Spiral Architect, metal is probably my favorite genre as well for the same reason, though I tend now towards progressive anything, whether that be progressive metal or rock. I haven't listened much to extreme metal, but I do have a copy of Blackwater Park in transit to me, so I'll see if I can enjoy that.
 
I have yet to see Dream Theater live, but hope to one day, even though it probably won't be the same without Mike Portnoy.

I agree in part with both sides. I think it's possible to lay down in stone judgements of a piece of art's sense of life. For example, I think it's clear to everyone that a feature film whose theme was that mankind is innately evil and will always tend towards violence has a very malevolent sense of life. But I think that while we can judge with certainty a piece of art to be malevolent or benevolent, we cannot make the same judgement of a person based solely on that knowledge. Ayn Rand, of course, appreciated Dostoevsky (whose sense of life was, according to her own description, the opposite of hers) on the basis of his literary merit.

Obviously porn isn't the same as great works of literature and it is art only in the most basic sense. But I don't see why the same basic principle shouldn't apply. We can most certainly judge most mainstream pornography to have a malevolent view of sex. But I don't think we can extrapolate from that judgement the judgement that a particular consumer of it, perhaps one who dislikes the sense of life of such porn but enjoys it just for the quality of sex or attractiveness of the performers(?), has a malevolent view of sex.

I also want again to point out that art is a selective recreation of reality (and porn, as a selective recreation of reality, is art, though it is obviously art with a rather narrow theme and generally of relatively lower quality) and therefore that you cannot draw a line of "rape is wrong therefore watching rape porn is wrong." It's like Howard Roark destroying the housing project. It's wrong to blow up a building that you do not own, but it is not wrong to read a book about it and even to enjoy it when the character does it. Now, it is significant that Roark is established as a sympathetic character who stands for significant positive values in the novel—it is demonstrated that he is not a nihilist. Reading a novel about a nihilist who destroys buildings would be of questionable value, and enjoying the actions of this nihilist would probably be considerable evidence that a person has a malevolent sense of life. I think the similar idea would go for violent porn. I think it would be highly questionable what value one would gain from watching a nihilist rape women, and I think that the person who enjoyed this material probably have some seriously bad premises—though he would not necessarily be acting immorally. However, I have already cited an example of a depiction of violent sex where the aggressor is displayed sympathetically and the overall sequence depicts a positive sense of life. That, of course, is the "rape by engraved invitation" in The Fountainhead. Roark is quite violent towards Dominique in that scene, and in return she is violent towards him. But the scene portrays a benevolent view of sex and still holds Howard Roark in a positive light. And I see no reason why someone could not make a pornographic film that conveyed this same general idea, even if it perhaps was not this well-developed.

I completely agree that the conversations about Rand's personal life get tiring, but I think they are important for the reason cited above (Rand's "and I mean it;" an explanation of their importance, by the way, which I credit to James Valliant).

Notice, by the way, that the LA Times obituary claims that the affair was a deliberate violation of Objectivist principles ("She swore the men and Branden to secrecy, never minding that one of the central tenets of objectivism [sic] was honesty.").

This is why we, as Objectivists, have to study Rand's personal life as well as her philosophy. Our opponents will attempt to smear Rand with their impression of what the affair was, and most people simply won't differentiate between Rand and Objectivism. Now, after the publication of The Passion of Ayn Rand, defenders of Objectivism need to be armed with the details of the affair and the Objectivist principles that apply. In this case, one should reply that Rand did not violate any principles of Objectivism because not revealing personal information does not constitute dishonesty (no one other than Rand's and Nathaniel Branden's respective spouses had a claim to a right to be told about the affair).

"AnarchObjectivism" is a contradiction. "Objectivism" refers to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and Miss Rand explicitly rejected anarchy in her philosophical writings:

(From "The Nature of Government" in The Virtue of Selfishness. Link.)
You are, of course, free to disagree with Ayn Rand in the field of politics, but you are not free to use her name (in the form of "Objectivism," which means "the philosophy of Ayn Rand") to promote a philosophy with which she explicitly disagreed. You also should not ascribe to her characters motives that they do not display in her novels (because it would be the same as ascribing to her ideas that were not hers). As can be seen in the conclusion of Atlas Shrugged, when Judge Narragansett (I think, it's been a while) adds his own modification to the US Constitution. This action on his part (which is supported by the other strikers) is explicit endorsement of the idea that a government must exist as an objective monopolist on retaliatory force, enforcer of contracts, and arbiter of disagreements.

On the topic of anarchy, I agree completely with Miss Rand (as you can probably tell). Anarchy is the same as rule by mob, because permissible force is not placed under the sole authority of an objective and restricted body but is permitted to any men who may choose to use it. In an anarchy, anyone could use force to enforce any laws they choose, because it is quite simply rule by brute force (You can say that initiation of force would be inadmissible, but without a government, who would prevent it from occurring? Blank-out). It is far more moral and practical to place force under the control of an objective government than to eliminate the concept of laws altogether and leave men with no objective body to protect them from brutes. I would rather live in a society with the modern American mixed system than in a society with no government, because at least some of America's current laws are objective while the concept of objective law would not even exist in a system of anarchy.