Miles White

Personally, I agree with this strategy. I've always felt it would be strategically intelligent for "libertarian minded", or conservative politicians, to lay off criticism of certain key welfare programs (in regards to social insurance, vouchers ect.). The sad thing is most of them are just too popular for citizens to give up at this moment in time. There are plenty of other interventions that can be attacked instead, while they're still popular to do so like deregulating businesses, privatizing inefficient services, cutting waste, fraud, and duplicative bureaucracies and the works. Campaigning on those core fiscal issues combined with a platform of common sense civil libertarianism, would by far sound attractive to the vast silent majority in this country. As far as a winning political agenda is concerned, you have to respond to the times.

How does any of this validate the existence of God? You could believe a purple flying monkey with a golden spatula created the universe in a boiling cauldron, but that still doesn't make your belief any more palpable toward the realist, rational minded, individual. You have to go with what your senses tell you about your surrounding environment when trying to understand reality, or else you'll dwindle away into another stupid, sooth saying, barbaric, mystical fool, no matter how original your ideas are. "Intelligent" religious people are still boobs, just to a smaller degree, depending upon how far they lean toward the side of reason/science and away from mysticism/dogmatism.

I've always been fond of the Bourbons, and would've gladly considered myself among them had I of been alive then. It's a shame their ideology has rescinded into such a minority in this current political climate. As for Cleveland, the man was much better than 50% of the politicians back then and a HELL of allot better than 99% of the politicians today.

I would recommend John Derbyshire's weekly podcast. He's a writer for the national review who lacks the religiosity of most conservatives. I find him very entertaining and witty, with a very dry British approach to his humor.

I have reading allot about bureaucratic theory lately (Max Weber and what not) and I was just curious as to what the specific structure of an Objectivist government would be or wether there is even an objective answer to the question. For example I see some Objectivists support government institutions like the CIA and others oppose it. I'm trying to paint a concrete picture as to exactly what the government in a free society would look like.

Why should you care about someone who is your intellectual opposite? What do you have to gain from continuing a conversation with him? How are you not an altruist by making yourself care? Or in other words why should Howard Roark care about Toohey? The title of the post is what should someone feel when they are talking to collectivists, not "someone" in general.

I don't feel for them. I'm not an altruist. I don't care about what other people beleive in, as long as they don't infringe upon my liberty... or have political pull.

Are you saying that my congressman are in charge of literally building the tanks, ships, artillery needed ect. to "produce" a defense for us? Government is not a productive engine. Only the market can build unless the government nationalizes which still requires the worker to work and the innovator to innovate under the condition of coercion. Here's an idea, how about we allow citizens to purchase stock within their own government? You could literally be a shareholder to your own congressional seat. As far as governments obtaining revenue from investments goes I think that would be a much more beneficial idea.

I think George Reisman gets it right at how the structure of our government would look in a fully free society. Oddly enough, if you look back in history, it really wouldn't be much different from the 19th century United States, given the exception of coercive taxes and a national post office.

I would say the FBI is alright if they stick to doing what's proper, which is enforcing the law, but all those other alphabet soup agencies or products of the New Deal is in complete contradiction with the concept of an open government.

Also, a representative government isn't just some bizarre institution that obscurely governs and makes decisions upon it's citizens behave like an involuntary organ that exists for the sole purpose of carrying whatever duty it was created to do. A representative government is the manifestation of the general ethics of the populace, for they are the ones truly in power in a Republic. Even if their only options for politicians were horrible, they could demand better ones if they cared enough to take to the streets and protest for their convictions but they don't. The sad truth is just simply that most citizens don't care about ideas. True intellectuals only encompass a small minority of the general population, the rest are to concern for direct material needs to even care. Our government composed of bipartisan anti-ideological morons could just be a representation of that attitude.

My suggestion? The men of the mind can all become self sufficient farmers, so that they won't even have to participate within the economy and the government would be forced to look else where to commit plunder.

Peter Schiff's rebuttal. If anyones interested.

Frank Lengella? Anybody?

I've been playing the guitar, piano, and bass from my very early days in high school. I've also taken private lessons in music theory from a fantastic teacher named Mark down at Laguna Beach who taught me the fundamentals of theory. That being said, I'm not sure if it is possible to relate music to Objectivism in general. Music as I've been taught, is a repetitive competition between tension and release that is able to manifest itself with human emotion and thus like a romantic novel, becomes a form of art. Since Objectivism is a philosophy and not an emotion, I would say that it would be to vague to classify one form of music for having an "Objectivist sound/feel" to it, but since the Objectivist stance on art is romantic to the glory of man, I would say music that what would appeal most to an Objectivists aesthetic would be something definitely within a triumphant major key of some sort. The specifics as far as chords within the progression, tonality, modes, key changes, genre of music and what not are up to the composer.

Being a Pescetarian (for health/practicle reasons. Not ethical ones) I'd say the bastards can kiss my ass if they don't want me to eat sea kittens. Hell I might even eat them in the portal to Hell known as Red Lobster as a double whammy. To piss off both the bible thumpers and Peta freaks.

Our politically correct dominated culture doesn't help either. What with people being pressured by their peers to accept unearned guilt for NOT voting for a black man. How evil do you have to be in order to want to prevent history from taking place?

I hope thats sarcasm.

I hope thats sarcasm.

Even with Reagans faults, at least for a moment the Republican party actually looked for a while like it was going to succeed at limiting the size of government until Bushs compassionate/neo-big government progressive conservatism became the norm. I do agree that it would be very rationalistic to simply wait around for the "ideal" candidate especially within such a Kantian dominated cultural era, we'd be lucky to even see another candidate come close to Ron Paul again let alone Objectivism. We truly do need a moral revolution before we can hope for a decent political one. I do not doubt that Ron Paul is an infinitely better choice than Mccain or Obama but that's not really saying much by comparison (It's like saying drinking cough syrup tastes better than drinking ones own urine)- it would be a dangerous thing to give a candidate the passing slip simply because they agree with you on the majority of the issues except for a few critical ones. The quantity of issues he gets right doesn't outweigh the quality of issues he gets wrong. Thanks for that. I should've known it was Bastiat.

I don't remember where this quote came from, but somebody once said "the most destructive opponent to a philosophy is not to be defeated but improperly defended." or something along those lines. The point is, Ron Paul earns the most criticism among Objectivist specifically because he comes so close and yet strays away on other issues thus misrepresenting Individualism and basically doing to Capitalism what Bush did to Conservatism; Ruined it! If Ron Paul is going to be the popular spokes person of Lassie-faire, then he better do it right or else he'll give people the wrong impression that'll wind up lumping Objectivists within the kookie, bible thumping, "New World Order" conspirators for at least the next couple decades. I don't think anybody on this forum wants that regardless of how tempting his monetary and fiscal policies are.

I don't think it's nice to make fun of other peoples cultural differences. I'm sure they have a very good reason for placing the right to "ball throwing" above something lame like the right to a speedy trial, trial by jury, double jeopardy, or freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.

I don't really like how the raptor thinks it's a good idea to only pretend to be nice and distort reality for others. A rationally selfish person would be honest as well as egotistical.

I would absolutely vote for him if I lived in Connecticut.