L-C

On the other hand, what legitimate reason could such a person have to not become an Objectivist?

Become as rich as possible.

There are two categories of people in politics: those who advocate the initiation of force, and those who don't.

This is a recurring theme. The businessman is as despised as he is needed.

Equal in effect regardless of cause. Translation (read in Ralph's voice (The Simpsons)): Force force force force force force ... ...

It's not just a checklist, you know. There's more to people than the "cardinal virtues".

How valuable could a family whose appreciation of you depends on irrationality be, to begin with? And certainly after you've discovered that this is the case?

Like Craig Biddle put it, in altruism being good isn't good for you.

Not all things are what they first appear to be. Every bullet leaving your barrel is your responsibility. The outcomes are: 1. You attack, and it turns out he really was a criminal. Hero saves the day. 2. Same, but you misjudged the situation and he was innocent/set up/whatever. You're in deep dung. 3. You walk away, and he turns out to be innocent. Good call. 4. Same, but the crime was indeed a crime. Too bad.

Isn't forward time travel possible, in a way? Not that you'd "pop up" in the future, like some sort of time-teleportation, but travelling really fast might have you age 5 years and the people on Earth 20.

Quote from the book: "The Swedes have demonstrated the power of that form of semantic manipulation Orwell called Newspeak: the changing of words to mean something else. In this way, thought can be directed, and undesirable concepts elimited, because the means of expressing them have been removed." Once again, thanks for the link. This should be interesting.

Extra challenging curricula for giften children is actively discouraged as "elitism". Even if (thinking in terms of "their" system for the moment) it helps everyone. Inequality is practically Satan. There are extremely few real alternatives to public schooling. Thanks for your info about that book, Derek. I'll try to find it, seems like it'd be an interesting read. You know, all my life I've been a loner. And people have ridiculed and criticized me for it. I refused to go against my character, however, and today I am only starting to realize how valuable that has been. I would never have become an Objectivist otherwise. In real life I've hardly known anyone no one who isn't a socialist. My father is the only man I know who has a distinctly un-Swedish sense of life, ambition and values to be achieved, but he's politically agnostic. Altruism and statism is everywhere. Schools, philosophy, language, mentality. I owe much to the Internet for enabling me to find that which I had been looking for but was nowhere to be found.

I can't even talk to Swedish people about many of the issues we discuss here. The words of ethics (in general) and justice are so distorted that we hardly speak the same language. Of course this has a lot to do with the philosophy most people subscribe to, but there's definately a "language barrier" as well. To put it simply, Sweden's ideology is inbedded in its language.

...Since one's resources, including (perhaps especially) time, are limited.

I would be inclined to say that, yes. Thus the term "unconditional love" sounds like an absurd joke to me.

This is something I've only recently begun to realize and work on. I've agreed with Objectivism for years, but ideas are one thing; moral character based on consistent action upon those ideas has taken more time and effort than understanding and agreeing with the ideas ever did. I find it fascinating that I'm understanding and appreciating this ever more clearly. It is so contrary to the Swedish mentality, exemplified by the local saying "free (of charge) is good". But I can really see what you mean and I agree with it fully. This goes for people who steal goods, pirate software or recieve unearned gifts. Look at how they treat "their" belongings. Compare the enjoyment they get out of them to that of people who earn their stuff.

And as a note, the practical consequence for road owners that permit drunk driving would probably be bankruptcy, since most people would refuse to drive there. Lots of people pose "what if" questions about Capitalism, from education to roads, not realizing that Capitalism is the only system that promotes personal responsibility and accountability.

I don't see how elections of political representatives in an individual rights-respecting country (where the initiation of force is banned) constitutes democracy anyway. The term democracy is meaningless if it doesn't enable people to (make the state) violate rights. That's what it's all about.

Imagine there only being one tax, a 5% income tax. Now calculate the savings your parents would've had given the same lifestyle. As they say, oh shi-

I can think of few if any things more conditional than love.

Good thing it wouldn't have to be agreed to. It's written in stone in the Constitution.

But what I was getting at was that the Swedish language is colored by Swedish ideology. There's a reason we don't have a real word for justice. Most Swedes don't acknowledge the concept of justice, apart from their egalitarian view that there is no good and evil apart from equality and inequality, forced or not.

I have to resort to that all the time. Recently I was discussing government force, and there's no Swedish word as all-inclusive as force. Threat/violence/extortion/etc gets old after a few sentences. Seldom does it swing the other way, though there is one word missing from English, as far as I can tell: the verb "to X", as in "I X [my name]" or "They X Tom, Bill and Sarah". QED. And how useful it is as a weapon of philosophical war. Distorting its meaning is even better than removing the word altogether, since it occupies the slot of the real meaning.

I have no major objections to that, given the limited nature of what the elected would be able to actually do.

Pretty much. Right now it's a battle between people who want to violate individual rights in various ways and to various extent. In O-land, it would be about efficiency at one, given, unchangeable task: upholding rights.