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What David said. And we have American at-home terrorists, such as the guy who decided to attack what he regarded as an evil US federal government by blowing up the Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City (the city where I was born and raised). The culprit was duly apprehended, tried, and executed. But, as David said, the cure at the root is instillation of individual rationality, the far reach of rationality, and love of it in one's thinking and actions. On this day 23 years ago, I lived in Chicago, and I was studying my Kant for the morning, when my younger sister in Oklahoma called me and said "Turn on your television. There is suicide attack using airliners in New York and DC." As I put down the phone, I thought to myself: "This is international. Bin Laden." We had known he was out to attack us, but we had not been successful in our attempts to kill him first. That evening I raised the American flag I had inherited from my brother from the balcony of our second-floor apartment in a 19th century grey-stone in the old German district in Chicago. I knew that our forces would be going to the other side of the world to get him and his gang. On the day we killed Bin Laden, I again raised that flag, this time from our native trees near the road on the acreage to which we had retired near the Blue Ridge mountains. Do not tread on the United States of America.* Bottom line: What David said.

To the contrary, I say it is not ambiguities, but contingency in intersecting causal streams that is the space for creative force. (pp. 159–62) That contingency in nature, both in our animal organism and outside us in surrounding nature, is a standing condition of nature necessary for our conscious engineering and condition necessary for the entry and continuance of life in the world. The most important error in Leonard Peikoff's essay "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy", an error also in his early 1970's lectures on the history of philosophy (much of which is in the transcription Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume, is his treatment of the idea of contingency as only in the philosophic historical thread of contingency as in occasions of mind in the world, especially the mind of God. Because he omitted all discussion of the historical thread of contingency in nature absent any minds (he was tuning with Rand's idea that there is no such thing?), such as contingency as in Aristotle's or C.S Pierce's conceptions of it or in the conception I (and later, Gotthelf) formulated of contingency in nature, he avoids treatment of the type of necessity that is the contrast-class of that genre of contingency. That necessity is the necessity in natural laws with their mathematical expression. Thereby, Peikoff does not tackle head-on what is the distinction of logical necessity from necessity in mathematical laws of empirical nature. That is all right, in one way, in that it leaves good work for me these days.

Tad, I'd avoid thinking of new and adaptive behaviors from organismic structures as "creative" rather than as simply emergent life forms and behaviors from biological structures (old or new). A lot of biological behavior suited to survival in an environment may look as if it is action incorporating a recognition or awareness of the situation of the organism, but we have explanations from micro to macro of various behaviors of various kinds of, say, frogs. And as far as I have seen, the structure of causality is that which is structure for all vegetative ends-fulfilling behaviors, which is indeed by (modern) mechanical means. There are indeed physical teleological causes at work in the vegetative behaviors of animal life (and in the tropisms of the roots and in above-ground sun-"seeking" of plants). I have concluded* it goes this way: The teleological process that brings me to the ability to walk and take up the gaits of trotting or running has it teleological end (human types of locomotion) as a constraint (formed by natural selection) in ontogeny, a constraint on efficient causes which, under those physical constraints, undergird and make possible the very teleological constraint under which they operate, themselves containing no teleology, no final causation. The teleological causes are real causes in these vegetative behaviors, such as the continued beating of my heart, and those causes are made possible by undergirding-causes, mechanical and themselves devoid of ends-directive causes. This is a mechanical way in which the engineered-looking structures and their accomplished functions can come about and continue for the years of the animal's life. Aristotle proved correct to see natural final causation at work in such behaviors as real causes there, but he went wrong in taking such causation to be a fundamental type of cause in overarching supervision of efficient and material causes at work in all of nature. Like Descartes and Spinoza, Rand rejected the picture having final causality, natural or mind-of-God, operating in all of nature. She thought that only human intelligently directed behavior (and some related behaviors in higher animals) amounts to teleological causation. Other Objectivist scholars (Binswanger, Gotthelf, Lennox) insist that there is also real teleological causation at work at the level of non-conscious vegetative activities of animals (and this strengthens Rand's theory of value with its values for plants). I think the latter are correct, and that kind of causation is possible only with the "mechanical" undergirding of micro mechanical efficient causation (micro activities unknown until modern science of the last couple of centuries).

For example, certain politicians (elected and self-appointed) have manufactured an "immigration crisis", we also have or have had a manufactured "gas crisis", "housing crisis", "healthcare crisis", "employment crisis" and "weather crisis". The promise of crisis management is what sustains politicians.

That’s an old political science meme, I have no idea what the real boundaries of it are. But as I understand it, the federal government doesn’t “use” it, the government is the target of the strategy, the ones who use it are the protesters. However, politicians certainly play a role in manufacturing these crises. There is no evidence of a conspiracy by lawmakers to write contradictory laws in order to bring about social change – that’s sci-fi thinking along the lines of the Foundation trilogy. Still, irrational law creation and the urge to have your cake, eat it, and acquire universal cake for free, by its nature is a contradiction so of course following entitlement-driven law-making, Atlas Shrugged style chaos is inevitable.

Thanks @DavidOdden. Any Thoughts on the topic @Boydstun? What are some practical strategies, methods, resources, and alliances for dealing with terrorism?

So substantial evidence of the federal government using the Cloward-Piven strategy.

Springfield may be technically “civilized”, living according to the law of the land, but the law itself is contradictory. The contradiction arises from a change in the concept of “rights”, from the original “right to act”, to a “right to have”, according to which various benefits have become “rights” on a par with the right to own property. In aid of clarity, I will distinguish between mandated public entitlements (benefits) versus proper rights. A simple economic equation is that entitlements come at a substantial cost, payable only by violation of rights. Citizens seem to be willing to silently shoulder this burden, as long as it is not noticeable, where the government manages the contradiction so that people do not notice the degradation of the proper function of government or increases in taxes. The local government cannot increase property taxes ad libitum which is why people tend to have some awareness of tax increases. Springfield is not some upper-class woke suburb, it’s headed the direction of Cairo IL. The federal Family Reunification Parole program partially recognizes a right (one denied by some Objectivists) to pursue one’s self-interest free from force, a right that is arbitrarily denied under federal law in the case of people who are not US citizens. When I say “partially”, I mean that a select set of people have been allowed to exercise the right to enter the US, but otherwise they are denied fundamental rights. Most notable is the right to trade ones labor for things of value – to hold a job. Those admitted under humanitarian parole do not have the right to hold a job though they can conditionally request permission to work, which leads to substantial bureaucratic delays (for example, asylum-seekers cannot even apply until they have been waiting for 150 days). The universal social safety net has created a new means of survival, one not proper to man’s existence: “Ask and you shall receive – we will sacrifice others for your sake”. Three factors result in the sudden increase in Haitian immigrants in that part of Ohio. First, there is the perennial “stay with uncle Bob” factor, that immigrants prefer to move to a place where they have some social connection which is why Starbuck MN has so many people of Norwegian ancestry, and why Minnesota and Ohio have the nation’s highest Somali populations. “Stay with uncle Bob” contemporarily becomes a near legal requirement, because the sponsoring relative must guarantee the financial support of the beneficiary, and housing is the biggest expense for immigrants. You can rest assured that the implications of that guarantee are systematically ignored. Second, Haiti has been in a perpetual state of dictatorship and collapse for all of modern history, to the point that there is literally no government in Haiti for a year (or more). This is what explains the immediate substantial influx. It is trivial to generate social media sensations, the number of false / wildly-exaggerated wing-nut claims about horrifying behavior on Nextdoor is legendary. Most people do not understand the concept of rights, so they will explode emotionally over something unfamiliar, like “people not speaking English” as though that is equivalent to trespass which is an actual violation of rights. Whether or not local governments are “inundanted” with improper police calls is a question of fact, so far there is no evidence of actual overwhelming. There is, on the other hand, substantial evidence that this situation is being used by governments to justify expansion of government power, where the state pumps relief (money and police) into Springfield, but that then becomes a platform for demands for more federal “assistance”.

How can the residents be "overwhelmed", aren't the game wardens and police the ones overwhelmed? I assume the town is civilized and lives according to the laws of the land, enforcing, and handing out fines as required.

So no cats maybe, but who owns the geese the foreign foragers are gathering and how is it 20k Haitians end up in one town at the same time? Anti-immigration trope ,lol. You'd think an O'ist reply would be along the lines of "What?! the feds can alleviate 50K in taxes to new small businesses? We need a definition of new ! and Small!! and why are they paying 50k in the first place, if 'it can be done', why wait?! Why start the collections in the first place!?"

Correction: apparently it was dated Tuesday, so it was a few hours before the debate. Still, this is the sort of thing the Democrats will censor off of Facebook and YouTube, and then they will claim on NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN that it never happened, and that anyone who believes it is crazy.

This article was published a few days before the debate: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/cant-take-it-anymore-residents-springfield-ohio-beg-help-after-20000-haitians-overwhelm

Editor's Note: Posting may be irregular due to impacts from Hurricane Francine, which will affect our area after making landfall this afternoon or evening. Thank you for your patience. *** "Harris 'won' the debate, and is clearly lesser evil than Trump. But still sad these are options before us. Out of 330 million people, we should be able to do better. The thought of it almost makes want to eat a cat..." -- Ilya Somin *** The Washington Examiner laid out what each candidate would need to do yesterday evening to win the presidential "debate:"If Harris is going to turn the momentum of this race in her favor, she will need to do more than dole out pablum about a "new way forward." She must explain what her positions are, how they are different from Biden's, and why they are different from those of the far more left-wing Harris who ran against Biden in 2020. ... For Trump, the plan should be simple, but that does not mean it will be easy for him to execute. All he has to do is remind voters that Harris is part of the Biden administration, which has been in government since 2021, that the Biden administration is unpopular for a reason, and that, if anything, Harris is further to the left of Biden on every issue. These are all easily established facts, but Trump will be sorely tempted to denigrate Harris personally... [bold added]This is not bad, but the bar was actually even lower for Trump. To paraphrase Yaron Brook, All Trump had to do was convince voters he's sane. Close, Examiner, but no cigar. The Examiner did nail another important bit of context: ... Tuesday's clash will be more significant than other presidential debates because Harris is intentionally unknown to most of the country. Whether they love or hate him, people know who Trump is and how he will govern. The same cannot be said of Harris. In the most recent New York Times poll showing Trump beating Harris 48% to 47%, 90% of voters said they "pretty much already know" what they need to know about Trump, but almost 30% of voters said they felt the need to "learn more" about Harris.This is as close as a paper is going to get to a joke I recently saw on X/Twitter: I can't vote for Trump because I know what I'd get, and I can't vote for Harris because I don't know what I'd get. I didn't watch the debate and probably wouldn't have, even if we didn't have a hurricane bearing down on our area, but if the video embedded below is any indication, Trump failed to pass the sanity/isn't a nut test. Allegations of cat-eating may be red meat to the Trump base, but they will put off anyone with any sense. Setting aside his unfitness for office, Trump's biggest problem is that, by choosing to pitch himself seemingly exclusively to kooks, he is repelling the sane undecideds he needs to win, and who will not necessarily know or care how far to the left Harris is. Her laughing when Trump babbles about pets being eaten is a direct parallel to his standing off to the side while a senile Biden blathered during that "debate." No. I'm not going to waste my time on that silly new anti-immigrant trope. You can go here for that. (There is no time stamp or transcript as of this writing, but if I recall correctly, that discussion is early.) -- CAVLink to Original

I understood the analogy, I was just pointing to what seems like some non mechanical means that drives novel physical change. Almost like a creative force, which by some perspectives looks like would have to incorporate a recognition or awareness of situation in an ad hoc way. Like I said weird. which is ironic by etymology in that 'weird' can mean fate which is deterministic, lol.

I was making an analogy; I was not suggesting that consciousness has anything to do with DNA.

Did you ever see Michael Levin’s ( of Tufts) xenobots? They created new organisms out of embryonic frog skin cells , weird amazing stuff. They exhibit novel behaviors without any genetic modifications. Obviously that is no proof of consciousness creating reality , but it does seem to suggest those organisms are somehow aware of their situation and adjust their game plan so to speak and seemingly without what is generally understood as the control mechanisms of genetic coding.

There is already no room for a "creative force" because there is no actual example of a consciousness that creates or controls existence. We can observe what consciousness does, and "creation" is not what consciousness does. Bringing science into it too early ends up begging the question, because science is only possible if existence is independent of consciousness, which is to say, if consciousness is concerned with understanding existence (which is what science does) instead of creating it or ordering it around (which would make science unnecessary). Objectivists reject God on the basis of metaphysics, which is sufficient. Then science later confirms that rejection. This is much the same as evolution being discovered before DNA (which then confirmed it).

Those contractions are the tighter wringing removing the ambiguities , a universe without ambiguity leaves no motive power or room for a creative force.

He said "The strategy Caplan outlines is brilliant" – I just do not see that. There is no brilliance to the strategy of only supporting a popular (or at least majority) position, though it is better than "support nothing". A brilliant strategy would be one that successfully turns the tide in the inexorable downward slide to oppression, instead he advocates not opposing the majority view, whatever it may be.

I am in agreement with Rand on this point. One can be aware that ideas and emotions exist, and that they have specific natures, without being aware that they have an ultimate physical basis. If that were not so, it would not be possible for people to make the religious error that you are complaining about, because the contradiction would be too obvious and too immediate. I think this is incorrect. There are many primitive tribes that have made up their own religions without having been taught those religions. Part of Rand's genius was that she was able to establish the primacy of existence without having to go so far as to require that consciousness have a physical basis. All that is necessary to rule out religion is for consciousness to have an identity, and for us to make a few basic observations about that identity. Consciousness having a physical basis can be part of that identity, but that can come later.

Which isn't an issue if one's statements are fully consistent across all mediums and always fully consistent with one's principles even when one is limited to short statements in terms of essentials in most cases because they don't want to spend time writing full essays nonstop without pay.

But he was quoting someone that he specifically said he doesn't agree with and that contextual reasoning must be properly applied in every individual circumstance before quoting Miss Rand's own evaluation of how to properly do so with her own links to the full contextual discussion at the end.

For the most part this is straightforward salesmanship, good advice. It carries a risk, though, that the salesman had better be ready for. Once you get past the one-on-one conversational stage (and sometimes if you haven't) your audience is going to find out what you're saying elsewhere. If you didn't put your principles and their consequences out there explicitly and the audience finds out, you are going to look duplicitous. If you're pushing private school tax credits in Alabama you needn't play up open borders at the expense of your actual cause, but you had better get ahead of the inevitable.

Not quite. One can know one and others are alive without any knowledge of school biology. One can know one is living by breathing, looking, sucking, mimicking, and discomforts. Later with language one can express that one and others are living and a stone is not living. Later one can learn that life is mortal, learn of the various systems in one's body, and learn that humans must produce in order to live. But it is the same referent ALIVE and sense of being alive all along the way. (And when one comes to articulate distinctions such as thinking and running, in either case, in engaging in them, one will know directly they are living actions. Plato: "Are we going to say that it has understanding but doesn't have life? Of course not." Aristotle: "The activity of understanding is life.") Rand spelled out a similar story concerning the referent MAN, and that is what she should have done concerning cognizance of the referent EXISTENCE as well. One never meant anything but physical existence when stacking stones or planting corn or watering corn or shucking corn or wrestling with another child. One had the ideas of not finding one's toy and forgetting to take off clothes before taking a bath, but nothing non-physical was implicated. Until one went to Sunday School or was otherwise instructed by religious adults, there was no non-physical existence in one's world; there was only one existence—physical. (pertinent also) Rand thought that one's concept of the physical world is more advanced than one's concept of existence in general. A parallel error occurs in Aquinas in his view that the first object of the intellect, the proper object of the intellect, is being in general and not primarily physical being, even though knowing physical being is chronologically first. (I say "parallel" because Rand (good for her!) contracts the fundamental of ontology from BEING to EXISTENCE (actual or potential). That contraction is in the direction of the physical, matter of fact.) To the contrary, I maintain that notion or concept of physical existence does not wait on either genetic or logical development out of a generalized existence that subsumes physical existence and existence possibly not physical. We begin with physical existence. World, self, and other are the one and only sort of existence then grasped: physical existence. Contra William James or Martin Heidegger, notion of physical existence is not genetically or logically preceded by anything "pre-ontological." Physical existence is our fundamental ontology, beginning to end. I am not suggesting one set as fundamental axiom "Physical existence exists." I'm only saying that but for influence of religion, one would mean physical existence in the right axiom "Existence exists," and that physical existence is what one should mean.

This is a peculiar recommendation. In essence it says “support the majority opinion, if the majority hold a pro-freedom view”, and “do not support pro-freedom policies, if they are not held by the majority”. This is distinct from “follow the crowd” only in not advocating support of anti-freedom policies under any condition. I suppose this is a recognition of the new reality, that reason is ineffective in achieving a political end. Resources must be not just finite, under this view they must be nearly non-existent. I also noticed that you failed to distinguish between “joining with” your ideological enemies, and “talking with” them.