Coeus

http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/ I'll just leave this here. I did some background research, and it's very legitimate. We can expect Part 1 of 3 on April 15th, 2011. Enjoy, friends!

Thank you, Maken! I'm only 17 myself, so I can't exactly say I know much about raising a child either. I'm not looking for parenting advice, though. I'm more curious about what her views on how to treat and educate children were. She does discuss the pasts of her characters in Atlas Shrugged, but they seem so overly romanticized and self-taught as to be somewhat unrealistic. It's almost like they were just born with her philosophy instilled in them. Is this her view? Or would an Objectivist argue that there is a certain way you must educate children so that they grow up to be intelligent, intellectual and productive individuals? Also, thanks for clarifying her views on the Feminist movement. I can definitely understand her ideas there on that from her philosophical perspective. I still get the feeling from her books, though, that men and women have specific roles in society. She certainly viewed them as absolute equals in the business world, but at home she seemed to enjoy making Dangy a maid and a cook, rather than giving her some other sort of menial task to earn her keep. She even writes about Dagny enjoying being a cook and a maid for John Galt, in a very subservient, albeit loving way. Correct me if I'm wrong about this, it's just my perception. I haven't read the Rand Lexicon, either, so I'm curious: how can you approach sex from a completely objective standpoint and still derive some sort of emotional value from it? Thanks again for your input. And thank you in advance to anyone else who would like to contribute.

"We're actually going to talk about WikiLeaks. That might be fun!" God. I hate Mike Huckabee. Such an ignorant fool. I'd vote for a Democrat before him.

So, I've read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem and many of Rand's essays. I'm not exactly a stranger to Objectivism at this point. But there are a few things that surprise me that I'm seeing. It is very possible that I'm just misunderstanding though, so I have come here with my questions. I find that I agree with most of her ethics, her epistomology, her metaphysics and her economics. My main issue is with her psychology. 1. She appears to show a preference as to what sort of roles men and women should play in society. She is even quoted as saying (not verbatim) that women shouldn't be president, because it is not in the best interest of a woman's mental health to be in command of a military. She puts men and women on two completely different playing fields when it comes to sex: that a man must search for someone who fulfills him, and proving himself, while the woman is given the opportunity to choose who fulfills her, and give in to his desires (the romantic surrender she called it, I think). This is meant to be a mutual physical and intellectual connection between the man and the woman, but the grounds for which they both start seem strangely unequal. Why can't it be the other way around? Why is it that the man must pursue the woman and not she pursue him? Why is she given the treasure to surrender unto the male? Why doesn't he have such choice? She almost assumes that men want sex all the time, and women govern the bedroom in a healthy relationship. 2. There is a complete and utter lack of children in her writing. She never allows them any appearance in her books, nor does she make even the slightest mention of them in her essays. This concerns me, if Objectivism is to be a philosophy on which we should truly live our entire lives by. How would an Objectivist look upon the task of child-raising? And furthermore, what would be an Objectivist opinion on how best to EDUCATE children? Public education? Private? Homeschool? I am at a loss as how to address this. If anyone could shed some light on either of these issues, I would appreciate it greatly.

I loved how he took her down. As a Jew myself, I am very biased, though not without good reason I should think, against organizations such as Hamas. She stood up, in all her self-righteous glory ready to try and crucify him, and he turned it right back on her effortlessly.

Certainly! I mean, the way way we spend our lunch time is a very strong indication of our moral character as human beings, right? That means everyone is definitely entitled to lunch. We should totally all pitch together and pay for it. Jeez. Some policies make me sick these days. Everyone would like to assume that everyone deserves everything just because people are human, without catching their own redundancies, let alone contradictions. I'm just waiting until the government passes a law stating that everyone has a right to internet or something... Hold up, didn't the US try that recently? And it got shot down? At least SOMEONE in the courts has half a brain left to compute rational decisions.

Life expectancy is not directly related to health care. To some extent, yes, but not absolutely linked by any means. There are a number of other conditions that must be taken into account as well. For example, obesity is a very large problem in America, but that is a reflection of poor judgement rather than quality of health care. In addition, life expectancy is just a number. The equation is very simple; you take the ages that everyone that has died in the country over the past ~10 years and average them all. Such a statistic has no inherent meaning. In addition, you should point towards how much more productive our country is with less government intervention. If you look at all the countries with socialized healthcare, and compare the strength of their economies to ours, you will find America's to be in the lead by far, even factoring in the economical rut we are currently stuck in. If you are going to debate social healthcare, be sure to point out how horrendous increased government control in the private sector is. People like to treat it in a vacuum, but it is very much interconnected with how a government conducts itself and treats its people.

Both the right and left wings have become ultra-statist over the past decade and a half, it's just a matter of where they want more government control. Rather than two separate parties, it's more like two heads of some fearsome dragon, connected to the same body. The "far right" isn't about free-market capitalism at all. Radical conservatives (in the political sense of the word) want less controls on the private sector and more on drug use, religious practice and schools. Radical liberals (again, only in the political sense) want more freedom for religion and drug use, and want to clamp down on the private sector and have it under complete government control. Neither side actually is going to accomplish anything in the end. The radicals at both ends of the spectrum will only cause this country to deteriorate.

The world must wake up and realize the moral and rational contradictions involved in government health care. Everyone talks about how people could be made healthy and longer life expectancy and the like with government funding, but nobody bothers to go deeper. No one asks where that cash will need to come from, and it will have to come from everybody. I will have to pay for another man's health care, a man whom I have never had the chance to judge for myself whether they are worth my savings or not. How is that just? How is that fair, for those that wish to see nothing but fairness between people? This is the beginnings of the government removing conscious, rational thought from the common man, and I guarantee it will not stop here. The greatest threat to those that seek power is logic, and so they will seek to deny it to the people whom they rule so tyrannically. As Ayn Rand said a number of times, history will support me in this. Wherever there is a tyrant, no matter what guise they choose to hide behind, they provide their subjects, their slaves, with not a single, heavy chain, but rather a thousand weak links, each with its own individual lock. The more they are held down, the less opportunity people are given to think. It is not just an uprising that tyrants fear. It is not just a loss of power. They can pass on that power to whomever they please. A simple rebellion can be quashed. They fear the men of the mind, they fear organized, intelligent and rational people. But these great men and women cannot be destroyed like simple slaves; they must be shackled so that they might be manipulated into serving the tyrant. Without the builders, the thinkers, and the innovators there is nothing to rule. It is not thinking that they seek to annihilate; it is free choice. This bill, this "universal health care" is an abomination. It stands, and he who dares call himself our president with his lackeys in Congress beside him, hold it like a banner above their heads, proud that they have dealt such a blow to freedom. They grin even as they realize in the shadows of their minds that this banner is made from the flesh of the free man. They laugh and raise their hands in victory, even as his blood stains them. These politicians they call themselves, Congressmen and President alike, are the tyrants of our age. The free man is that which they loathe; choice is that which they cannot comprehend; logic is that which they fear. And from that hatred, that ignorance, and that terror, they realize they must turn to destruction. They claim so righteously that they stand for helping people, and making everyone happy, but they look not at how they will do such things. They must destroy all that makes people free, all that allows people to choose, and all that makes people happy in order for everyone to finally be brought down to the same level. Their goal is not the happiness of others, in truth. It is the destruction of happiness. It is the destruction of love, of logic, of life and liberty. They do not want to bring everyone up to the same level. They want to drag everyone down to the same level. And after that has been done, they will destroy the ladder, and cover the sky. The free man will be shackled to whomever stands next to him, and they will not even be granted the comfort of contempt, for even the tyrants will stand with everyone else, staring, wondering what they have wrought. There will be no key to unlock the chains; there will not even be a leader to unite against. It will be a slavery to existence itself, as nothing more than living every day for nothing but survival in this nightmare. Death and life will become blurred, for there will be no difference between the two. There will be no preference, no choice, no thought. All live together, so the dead do not matter. All die together, so the living do not matter. The world will not end in fire, nor will it end in ice. Not the machinations of man nor the will of some divine God will destroy us. It will instead be a doomed existence in that dark hell, day after day, until we are no longer human, and the mind no longer exists. This is the way the world ends. On our current path, that sinister plane of existence is exactly where our species is headed. I will not claim an obligation to stop it for anyone. I instead present a choice: freedom, or lack thereof. There exists no middle ground. Decide yourself, of your own volition and rational thought, which existence you would prefer.