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"One must never fail to pronounce moral judgment. Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man’s character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism, the idea that one must never pass moral judgment on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good consists of never distinguishing good from evil". AR -- Good men and women - or the youthful - staying silent when they witness a moral injustice (say, racialist and collectivist), a false accusation and any unfair slander on a kid and anyone else, perpetuates such attacks and lends it their tacit consent. Since "the authorities" might not be present - or unable, incompetent or unwilling (often) to take action - you, as the bystander, should take matters in your own hand to articulate a moral judgment. "This is wrong" - could be all that's needed. Broadly, if only a tiny minority speaks up they are not forgotten and cause far-reaching and beneficial ripple effects on the moral health of the school, tennis club, forum or whatever - and the society. Rising to his-her just defense is not only for the benefit of the verbally (or physically) tormented person, it is selfish - in favor of the institution which one is also a part of - - and of one's own moral character.

Slight aside, I note Rand was quite good at wide integrations, and her seeing through false dichotomies, more than one of them in fact, was always breathtaking. Many criticized Marxist Utopias by assuming their failure and evil outcomes was rooted in human failings to implement the system faithfully, Rand rightly noted their fundamental ideas were themselves evil. A modern Objectivist cannot but help to notice that our mixed economy, bloated paternalistic government, increasingly socialist and authoritarian, wasteful, and corrupt institutions are a failure to meet the founding fathers explicit vision of the republic, which no matter how far short of an Objectivist utopia, is revelatory, true and Good. Rand noted America had not ever met her full potential, never ripened to what she could and should be, but nonetheless she paid homage and great respect for her founders vision, adjudging that Republic as the greatest system ever conceived and executed heretofore. She did bemoan her fall and criticized both parties contemporary to her time, the so-called left and right parties which she rightly saw as being little different and in fact is the main reason she lambasted the right, for all its posturing towards individual freedom revealed all the more, its hypocrisy and dishonesty. So she blasted one false dichotomy, of theory versus practicality in the context of utopian politics, out of the water, as well as another false dichotomy (of policy) between the so called left and right. What is more impressive for her revelations is that she did this in spite of common and widely held beliefs in the culture, in academia, portrayed and disseminated by the “authorities” and the media. In her time she was what modern spin doctors would call a conspiracy theorist, and to give them their due, those doctors have identified that indeed sometimes reality and human nature, incentive structures, imbalance and control of information can “conspire” to present a picture which is misleading. They err in prescribing blind obedience and acceptance rather than further close inspection of reality. She was truly a rebel and yes a radical like no other. I wonder why so many modern Objectivists, seem not to have taken on her approach of seeing through the false dichotomies, of making wider integrations than what the predominant culture is feeding us, of seeing beyond the narratives of theory versus practicality, left versus right, of seeing where real and complex forces of human nature and power lead institutions and nations, of being brave in the face of those who attack bold unpopular ideas. I think it has to do with the statistically predominant life experience the type of person who becomes a philosopher comes from. Not all but most are sheltered, insular, academic and the same kind of errors (albeit of different content) which afflicted the Marxist Utopians, afflicts the Objectivist philosophers, it is as if “all we need is a globe of perfect rational humans then our institutions, laws, and systems, nations, trade, agreements, industries, local and global infrastructure, shipping, energy and food will all work…” and perhaps it would, but it wont. It cannot succeed, the systems that will succeed must take into account the global and human realities as well as the current state of things… it must be formed to take us from here, not to assume we are somewhere we are not or never will be… and it must be focused on the Republic itself not a universal utopia which lies centuries if not millennia forward. I wonder what Rand would say if she had lived through all the years since her death, observing, thinking, integrating, in her non naive rebellious way, what she would have to say about the best way forward given all the threats, in all their forms, throughout the world and from within. She certainly would find any fault, any little error, with the remedial cures being put in place but for sure she would be fully cognizant of the complex situation of the present moment and have a good view of the path forward.

Congratulations to backers of having a Trump II, such as prominent Objectivist philosophers Leonard Peikoff and Andrew Bernstien. They, and we square Trump opponents too, are getting what was promised from Trump for II. (Where is any criticism of Trump acts these last several weeks from those two philosophers? Those Presidential acts are just fine by them? Did Objectivist leaders stay silent during Nixon's Wage and Price Controls? During J.F. Kennedy's threats to US industries, such as TV and steel companies?) 3/19/25 – BBC

Apparently, Donald Trump has ordered the release of 80,000 pages of unredacted documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy, a subject that has busied conspiracy nuts for decades. Spoiler Alert: No matter what those papers say, it won't make a damned bit of difference for a certain type of person, whose archetype is Trump's head of health and human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I have no patience with the many predicatable excuses conspiracy nuts spew for ignoring and evading documentary evidence, so we won't wallow in them here, but there is still a fair question for me: How do you know these documents won't make a difference? Image by the HHS, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.Kennedy's nephew, Bobby, has graciously provided the answer already, in the form of the recent announcement that his CDC is going to waste our money studying the long-discredited "link" between vaccinations and autism:The possibility of a link between vaccines and autism has been repeatedly debunked by hundreds of scientific studies. But Kennedy made a profile for himself as an anti-vaccine crusader, criticizing the Covid-19 vaccine and claiming childhood immunizations are linked to autism. He also founded Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group. [links omitted]Interestingly, the scientific literature already consists of a number of pages comparable to the Kennedy papers about this very subject:When crossing the terms "vaccination" and "autism" on Google Scholar, there are 38,200 results with the leading topic being MMR (measles, mumps, & rubella) and the repeated evidence in many thousands of articles against its association with autism.That was four years ago: I got 77,000 just now for "vaccine AND autism". Even if only a third of the cited number are papers are primarily about this subject, if each is only four pages long, that's still over 50,000 pages! Does Bobby Kennedy not know about this literature? Does he not care about it? Is he unable to process it rationally? Is he deliberately ignoring it? He happily imputes bad motives to vaccine makers: Is this a case of the pot calling a spotless chalice a black kettle? I don't know and I don't care why this unqualified non-scientist won't see or admit the truth, but I'd say he proves my point. -- CAVLink to Original

Brook has recommended this, and I pass it along with a second: https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-thinks-ayn-rand-071948623.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall

First of all, let me hand it to David Strom of the conservative Hot Air blog. I have lately found conservative media -- once a refreshing place for intelligent takes absent from conventional media -- to now be largely a stinky, festering swamp inhabited almost entirely by brain-dead conspiracy nuts, Trump fanbois, and other cranks. You can only read so much from people who generally seemed to know better five seconds ago, but are now racing to be the first to defend Trump's latest dumb move. But not this time. Strom takes the current administration to task for its Bernie Sanders-worthy witch hunt of "big egg" over the latest predictable increase in egg prices following a wave of bird flu:In just the past two months, over 40 million chickens were euthanized to prevent the spread of this nasty disease. The Trump administration, though, is following the Biden playbook and pointing fingers at egg producers and darkly suggesting that evil egg producers might be price gouging and driving up the price of eggs out of malign intent. That is just dumb, both as a theory for why egg prices are going up, and as a way to treat the intelligence of the American people. This is AOC-level economics, and I have to say it ticks me off more than a little bit. [bold added]Strom ends as follows:Yes, I know I am supposed to be a cheerleader for my team, and I do quite a bit of that when warranted, but I don't want my team to become the same as what I despise.Good on Mr. Strom for raising an issue I have long wished somebody MAGA-adjacent would raise: What's the point of 'winning' if all you do is turn around and implement the worst kinds of policies of the politicians you defeated at the polls? On that, see also Trump's anti-trade/high tax tariff foolishness (which the House GOP just doubled down on), the nutty left's anti-vaccine hysteria (now mainstreamed by RFK, Jr.), and our new, one-sided "alliance" with Russia, which is still an enemy to the West, including us. It is interesting to note that, just as Trump could quickly help our economy by dropping all his new tariffs, he could nuke the equally avoidable, government-induced egg price problems now and forever -- by getting the government out of the way of the poultry industry adopting the bird flu vaccinations other nations have used successfully. I won't be holding my breath: Between Trump's brain-dead "America first" jingoism and his enlistment of a crank as the head of HHS, I have a hard time seeing common sense prevail here. How many more own-goals will it take for sensible Republicans to see that they need to form a new team? -- CAVLink to Original

The author of the article in the OP could additionally think the earth is flat (he does not), but it has no bearing on the merits or demerits of this particular composition. As for your two views and derogations of people who don't buy the salvation you put forth, I'd say you are in the position with respect to me and probably most other audience of someone telling me of new arguments or evidence of the existence of God or of eternal life through letting Jesus into my heart. The challenge for such an apologist is in getting me to give any of my precious time to their renditions or reports in those two matters. The same goes for anyone telling me they have figured out that the frequency-energy relation is false, when I have more solid, established physics to spend my time on learning. Goes also for anyone proposing that the Asian Flu was a scam, and my folks should not have had me take the vaccine. Or that Covid and the vaccines are a scam (I take the vaccines; I've never gotten Covid, which is no evidence it does not exist; a lot of people died of it here in our hospital, and I'll rely on the regular medical professionals for getting to right diagnoses for patients, myself included). Well, I've spent too much time on this already. Must get to wrapping up important studies, philosophical (not skepticism sensible and not, at this time) and mathematical. The circumstance that some Marxists were on board with raising consciousness on US history of White-Black race relations is not relevant to the truth of historical facts and some White resistance to hearing of them. About 110 years ago, headlines of the statewide newspaper of the new State Oklahoma were "Something Must Be Done about the Negro Problem," while a big newspaper in Kentucky told of a race war simmering in OK. These and the details they report are accessible for research today, and for people with some interest in history, they are eye-opening and certainly should not be suppressed by politicians getting elected for anti-woke rhetoric. Fortunately, we now have ways more effective than ever for waking people up on this history (which the White America mythologists [and mainly low church Christians] want suppressed in public education) outside of formal education. Gotta get back to work.

The New York Post reports that Wall Street types are circulating a video (embedded below) of Ronald Reagan standing up for international free trade, including correctly calling punitive tariffs stupid. Reagan builds more broad-based political momentum in one six minute address than Trump has built (or can build) in weeks of name-calling and chain-yanking. Although, like Reagan himself, this video is far from perfect, it deserves wide circulation for several reasons beyond its clear explanation of why trade is good, which any intelligent adult can understand. First, here are a couple of brief excerpts, lightly edited from an automatically-generated transcript:Both developed and developing countries alike have been in the grip of the longest worldwide recession in postwar history. That's bad news for all of us. When other countries don't grow they buy less from us and we see fewer jobs created at home. When we don't grow we buy less from them which weakens their economies and of course their ability to buy from us. It's a vicious cycle. You can understand the danger of worldwide recession when you realize how much is at stake. Exports account for over 5 million jobs in the United States. Two out of every five acres planted by American farmers produce crops for exports, but because of their recessions other countries are buying fewer American farm products than last year. Our farmers are hurting and they're just one group. So we're trying to turn this situation around. We're reminding the world that, yes, we all have serious problems, but our economic system based on individual freedom private, initiative, and free trade has produced more human progress than any other in history. It's in all our interest to preserve it, protect it, and strengthen it.Much later:I'm old enough and hopefully wise enough not to forget the lessons of those unhappy years [the 1930s]. The world must never live through such a nightmare again. We're in the same boat with our trading partners. If one partner shoots a hole in the boat, does it make sense for the other one to shoot another hole in the boat? Some say yes and call that getting tough. Well, I call it stupid. We shouldn't be shooting holes. We should be working together to plug them up. We must strengthen the boat of free markets ...While I am glad that some are circulating this video, I think it is a mistake not to share it much more widely. For one thing, this is a badly-needed remedial lesson in basic economics, and if the current President can't wrap his head around it, we need everyone else to, so that there is some hope of a united opposition to his policies now, or at least a broad understanding of how to correct for them later. For another, this is also a much-needed glimpse of what leadership in a free society looks like. The people of a free society neither want nor need to be told what to do. A politician wishing to change course will speak to them like the adults that they are and earn their considered support by appealing to their intelligence and to their self-interest. This works, because Trump to the contrary, trade (within or across borders) is win-win, as apparently anyone but he can understand. -- CAVLink to Original

You don't know your own economy. US wages are not keeping up with economic growth, even after they're adjusted for inflation ("real" here means after adjusting for inflation): Some of it is due to demographic changes and rise in medical cost (which is also partly a political problem), but the biggest mathematical reason is that: The situation becomes clearer if you compare hourly wages (plus all indirect benefits) to hourly worker productivity: And the reason this is happening is political: It is due to the political influence of corporations. US institutions today are much more extractive than several decades ago.

An accurate statement would be: "if it's impractical, it cannot be moral" (and vice versa, the moral cannot be impractical). But just because something is more difficult doesn't mean it's immoral and just because something is easier doesn't mean it's more moral. Morality isn't about the path of least resistance. Whether or not some thing is easier or very difficult to accomplish tells you nothing about ethics. Also, the idea that your every action is morally correct just because you have the power to accomplish them is the ideology of a dictatorship. The idea that "might is right" is fascist. The idea that your enemy is always weak (and if they aren't weak, they aren't your enemy) is fascist.

At least she was right about the wreckage of the consensus that had produced the Johnson "landslide" (22.6% popular margin). Here's hoping for the wreckage of the showy current President policies of personal vainglory (1.5% popular margin). Rand would have opposed candidate Trump 2024 for the same reasons she gave for opposing George Wallace in the 1968 Presidential election (anti-intellectuality, shallow nationalism, and resistance to civil rights of Black Americans).

People on the Left keep repeating "Russia was the aggressor," as some kind of mantra, which makes me suspicious. It seems like the idea that "sending an army across a border is always morally wrong" is being held as some kind of Platonic absolute, independent of any context. The reasoning seems to be that if nobody ever sent an army across a border, there would never be any wars. It suggests that a country can do anything it wants as long as it stays within its own borders. I think this idea is a product of UN-based "internationalism" and is not correct. It does not represent a protection of individual rights. For one thing it gives a blank check to dictatorships, who according to this can abuse their own people in any manner they wish, without fear of being held to account by any foreign government. This is contrary to Ayn Rand's principle that a dictatorship has no right to exist, a principle that would also apply even if the government decided to be dictatorial in only part of its territory, or toward only certain ethnic groups. For another, it gives a blank check for indirect force, such as threats or fraud. (The same thing comes from the Left with regard to other issues, where they can attack you in almost any way they wish, and then say it's "force, but not violence," but then if you defend yourself, that's "violence." Ayn Rand wrote about that one, too.) The people who cling to this idea seem to want to suppress any facts that might explain why Russia invaded Ukraine. "Oh, that's irrelevant," they say, "because sending an army across a border is always morally wrong, so it doesn't matter what any other facts are." So they feel justified in evading and censoring those facts. This seems to be indicative of an intrinsicist approach to ethics and politics as opposed to an objective one.

I read that some of those prisoners (in the recent "hostage exchange") said they didn't want to return to Gaza, ha. I'm happy in prison, I don't want to go back to that hell hole! The Qutari- Al Jazeera propagandists managed brilliantly, I have to admit, to turn the violent brutes into innocent victims and vice-versa, for public consumption. That psy-ops war they've handily won, aided by sycophantic media (BBC) and social media filtering down to mobs, the western "man in the street" (interesting that the large majority of "river to sea" nasty idiots you see pictured in the marches and campuses are women). How to achieve moral equivalency and later moral ascendancy to gain world support: first stage, we heard commonly: deny, deny. No "they" weren't raped, beheaded - etc., - until the weight of evidence Hamas itself provided on media quietly shut down that angle. Next, we see (like in this forum) what-about-isms abound: "the Zionists also do and did such and such - what about them?" A cunning maneuver by propagandists is what I'll call "the bug and the feature". The "feature" (characteristic) of the one people is the visible success, scientific advances, high standards, general life-and-peace values and freedoms for all Israel's inhabitants - remembering the Jews arrived there not long ago as penniless refugees from Europe and Arab countries, immediately defended themselves from outside aggression and yet against the odds made a vibrant country. The "bug" - for Israel - are the few individual citizens and soldiers who commit violent acts. Even the free-est nations will have those especially in tense periods. Promptly those culprits get arrested, charged and sent to prison, also widely condemned in the society. The trick, to transpose the bug into the feature, publicly amplifying the Israeli "exceptions to the rule" to be the major feature. By such means the Palestinian moral equation has been inverted, black turned into white, evil to innocence. Over there, the "feature" is ~anything~ but the Israeli success story. All Gazans have shown repeatedly by Intifadas and assaults, even when left alone to make a proper state, they are dedicated to death and destruction, their own included. Violence is their singular feature bolstered by hatred of other faiths, Judaism first. Atrocities are celebrated there as heroic acts, not punished. Somehow--quite incredibly, the shrewd moral manipulation has taken in many westerners, helped by weak minds and underlying Judeophobia. Excuse the long lecture on my favorite topic, mind control, Harrison.

I quoted this from a huge article. I wasn't able to determine where it fits into the whole. Let me just say that Rand was wrong, according to current research into cognitive development psychology. An infant learning to focus its eyes begins innately. Biologically built-in structures begin the process, after which, the baby then learns to focus on its own. Per Banks & Salapatek (1978), Howland, Dobson, and Sayles (1987), Braddick & Atkinson (1983), and Miranda & Banks (1999). Perceiving via integration of sensations into percepts – "not innate, but an acquired skill." As above, this begins innately but then proceeds volitionally from there, and improves with practice. Coordinating muscles (crawling, standing, walking) – "not innate, but acquired." Research shows that the infant brain is hard-wired to learn them. Concept-formation and learning to speak – "not innate, but acquired." Jean Piaget, and more recently Elizabeth Spelke and Susan Carey, show that core knowledge systems for concepts like number, object, and agent exist innately. Piaget is most in agreement with Rand, but later studies disagree with her completely. See, Carey & Spelke (1994) – Domain-specific knowledge in infants, as well as Carey's book entitled The Origin of Concepts (2009).

As if the President's hiring of an anti-vaxxer to head the HHS, a buddy of Bashar al Assad to head intelligence, and a media figure to head defense weren't enough of an indication, his handling of the fallout of SignalGate should show that Trump values personal loyalty to the point that he scorns merit. Consider the following from the Times-Union:A responsible administration would want to immediately get to the bottom of this. Instead, from President Trump on down, the response has been, at various turns:to deny the seriousness of the matter; to falsely state that no war plans were discussed; to parse the meaning of the word "classified"; to deflect responsibility; to refuse to answer questions from Congress; and -- of course -- to attack the journalist who reported the story. We would normally urge the inspector general for the Department of Defense to review this failure. But Mr. Trump fired the person in that post in January, part of a purge of 17 inspectors general in various agencies and one of many actions the president has taken to reduce accountability in government.Like a bad punchline, the next sentence is, "That leaves any hope for accountability, once again, to Congress." Congress? You mean the guys who went along with these horrendous choices in the first place? This is alarming and I am largely in agreement with the editorial, although I would also like to add a point I gleaned from Yaron Brook's commentary on the matter. I unfortunately do not remember which episode of his podcast this came from, so cannot point you to it or verify my recollection. The gist was that the main government actors in SignalGate failed to respond even like adults to their exposure by the Atlantic: An adult would admit the mistake and pledge not to let anything like it happen again from the outset. (And I think Brook may have a point that the original breach alone might not have been worthy of a firing had they chosen this course.) Instead, we have gotten the childish pattern displayed above, which the President himself adopted over the weekend when he said:"I don't fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts," Trump said, calling the story "fake news" throughout the interview. "I do," the president said when asked whether he still has confidence in Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was also in the Signal chat and sent a detailed timeline of the planned strikes before they happened. "I think it's just a witch hunt and the fake news, like you, talk about it all the time, but it's just a witch hunt, and it shouldn't be talked [about]," Trump added. "We had a tremendously successful strike. We struck very hard and very lethal. And nobody wants to talk about that. All they want to talk about is nonsense. It's fake news."We got away (this time) with planning a strike over a channel known to be of interest to (and possibly already compromised by) hostile regimes. Faced with proof of a security lapse that could have cost the lives of servicemen, all Trump does that we can tell is pretend nothing went wrong. This isn't the same thing at all as, say, We are conducting our own investigation of this breach and putting a plan in place so that nothing like it happens again. It's just more "owning" the "leftist" establishment, rather than defeating the left, much less doing his job or, heaven forbid, using his bully pulpit to promote a positive agenda of returning our nation to the founding ideals that make it great. -- CAVLink to Original

"Certainty" isn't part of that paragraph, at least not in my view of this page.

Miss Manners takes a question from someone who recently suffered the double misfortune of being hospitalized and having to share a room with a proselytizer:A few months ago, I was hospitalized for a couple of weeks. For most of that time, I shared the room with a very friendly, talkative woman who had been in the hospital for a long time. While still needing medical care, she was clearly on the mend; she was bored, a little lonely from her long stay, and pleased to have a new roommate to talk to. It immediately became obvious she was a committed evangelical Christian and all she wanted to talk about was religion. I started by making short, noncommittal responses and trying to change the subject, but my lack of enthusiastic response made her decide I needed to be "saved." For the remainder of our time sharing the room, I was bombarded by "give your heart to Jesus" appeals...The confrontation-averse patient ended up pretending to be asleep on the order of 23 hours a day to avoid the incessant evangelizing. Miss Manners gives good advice, as usual, but the most important lesson I took from her reply was not to forget that even hospital patients have agency. I wouldn't have trouble telling someone like this to can it, if my answers at the start didn't succeed in putting her off, but the solution of asking for a room(mate) change is gold, and one I will not forget. About a decade ago, a medical condition I did not know I had (and which I can easily control, now that I do know) landed me in the hospital for a couple of days. Believe me: There is no rest night or day, and the last thing on earth I'd want to deal with in such circumstances is being the captive audience of a magpie. Thanks again, Miss Manners, and may I never actually need this advice! -- CAVLink to Original

As far as I know she never uttered (or wrote) a word on the topic. Somewhere I saw a report (from Peikoff, I think) that Rand was uncomfortable with the whole notion of IQ (i.e. of innate intellectual capacity). She was more at home with the belief that it was all a matter of developing the right cognitive habits. She never went public with her belief (if indeed it was her belief), so this line of inquiry is not likely to lead anywhere interesting. If IQ is not innate like eye color, eugenics is not going to do any good. Not sure what you mean by "Spencerian". The Objectivist literature has very little to say about him, and that unfavorable. I don't know much about him myself, but people I respect (the late George Smith in particular) say that the popular understanding of Spencer is a gross misrepresentation. His "survival of the fittest" applies to practices and business ventures, not to people, and is in any case a tautology: fitness is the ability to survive; what survives is thereby fit. The Objectivists seem to have believed the popular and putatively inaccurate account.

Over at RealClear Markets this morning, I encountered a link to a blog post titled "Tariff Men." This was quite an interesting read, but not for any sound argument in favor of tariffs. Rather, its interest lies in its being an excellent précis of the case Trump's acolytes and cheerleaders are making on behalf of the President -- who seems allergic to addressing the electorate as if we were adults but in fact just doesn't know what the hell he is talking about. Perhaps the most striking things about the piece are (1) the complete absence of argument or explanation as to what tariffs are or why they are supposed to be good for the economy; and (2) a highly ... selective ... consideration of the history of tariffs in America that reminds me somewhat of a contemporary school of "analysis" of the historical record of the Lincoln Presidency. The Founders used tariffs to avoid outrage over a (more obvious) tax? Whether or not they truly believed tariffs weren't taxes, that doesn't mean tariffs aren't taxes or that the Founders were right to do this. Britain become great through protectionism? Really? Call me crazy, but that greatest of British exports, rule of law, applied to an entire empire that presumably didn't levy tariffs against itself, probably had a lot to do with its rise to prosperity. (See "dropping domestic barriers" below, but on a glocal scale.) Dropping tariffs against the rest of the world would be an extension of the same policy, and not some kind of bolt from the blue. Say's Law? Never heard of it. Trade as mutually beneficial? Isn't it obvious that people become wealthy by stealing crumbs from the destitute and building mansion, yachts, and private jets from them? The piece dismisses the entire discipline of economics -- Today it is widely claimed that Trump's tariffs will lead to trade war and commercial ruin: the policy is decried as archaic mercantilism... -- but reveres the shallow arguments of a single school of that discipline:McKinley's understanding of economics grew out of the American School of Political Economy: a school of thought which argued that measuring wages, prices, and production against each other was the best way to understand the health of an economy. With this in mind, the American School argues for intense protection around the walls of America's economy: tariffs prevent products made by low-wage workers from undercutting American products and workers. But the American School also counters left-wing hostility to capital by minimizing domestic barriers to commerce, allowing productivity and wages to rise faster than prices.What's so magical about an international border that the same benefits that come from "minimizing domestic barriers to commerce" don't also accrue from minimizing international barriers to commerce with friendly nations? I don't know, either, but I somehow doubt that Donald Trump -- who seems ready to exterminate Canadians, but also wants Canada as a state -- does, either. Henry Hazlitt, whose Economics in One Lesson, deserves wide circulation, gives a tantalizing lead at the start of his chapter against tariffs:From another point of view, free trade was considered as one aspect of the specialization of labor... But whatever led people to suppose that what was prudence in the conduct of every private family could be folly in that of a great kingdom? It was a whole network of fallacies, out of which mankind has still been unable to cut its way. And the chief of them was the central fallacy with which this book is concerned. It was that of considering merely the immediate effects of a tariff on special groups, and neglecting to consider its long-run effects on the whole community. [bold added]See also the previous quote. -- CAVLink to Original

Donald Boudreaux adroitly punctures a popular misconception -- unfortunately shared by Donald Trump -- about tariffs in his piece, "Protectionism and the Fallacy of Composition." The brilliance lies in how he introduces the logical fallacy to his readers, who may be even less familiar with it than they are with economics:This fallacy is committed whenever someone concludes that that which is true for a part of the group is necessarily true for all of the group. The classic example is standing up in a stadium to get a better view of the game. If one or a small number of people stand up, these folks do indeed enjoy a better view. But obviously it's mistaken to conclude that "therefore, if everyone stands up, everyone will get a better view."This analogy instantly illuminates the logical fallacy, as well preemptively conceding the fact that tariffs do, in fact, comparatively benefit some participants in an economy. In the rest of his piece, Boudreaux uses the fallacy to show that tariffs are harmful -- twice:A second way in which the standing-up-in-the-stadium analogy illuminates some problems with protectionism is this: Just as it's foolish to conclude that, because a few people in the stadium are made better off by standing up, everyone in the stadium would be made better off if everyone stands up, it's foolish to conclude that, because one or a handful of producers are made better off by being awarded protection from imports, everyone in the country would be made better off if everyone received such protection.Boudreaux admits his analogy isn't perfect, but also shows that the imperfection does not harm his case. Whether you're unsure about the merit of tariffs yourself, or you're having trouble making headway in discussions about this once-dead topic, you could do worse than this 1000-word essay as a primer. -- CAVLink to Original

Welcome to the forum, Cave_Dweller A change to my toenail also applies to myself, the owner of the toenail. So I don't see how something can apply to a thing, but not thereby to the Universe it belongs to. And yet, that's what's being suggested here by Rand: a sum of existents that is not "born", despite being composed of existents that do undergo birth. This oddity, I think, is resolved by the idea of a "base ingredient". Think of something like snow; from snow, various existents can be born: snowmen, snowballs etc. whereas snow existed prior to them. This idea, of a base ingredient, has existed since time immemorial and continues today in incarnations such as "mass-energy", which can only be indirectly observed through the forms it manifests in, be it wood or water or electromagnetic radiation. Why indirectly? Because this X is not a "thing" by itself, but rather what makes things exist and behave the way they do. This kind of X seems to be what Rand had in mind when she wrote: "Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist." implying a separation between "things" as such (which are created, destroyed, created anew, so on and so forth) and the indestructible underlying X. In short, Rand is not exactly reinventing the wheel here. Unfortunately, Objectivists tend to have wildly different ideas about what the Universe even is (see this thread for example), so don't get your hopes up for a "universal" answer.

“A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” - Benjamin Franklin

Jeff Jacoby takes a look at the economics of Trump's recent attempt to kill the penny:On the surface, the observation seems logical and germane: Why keep minting pennies that cost more than a penny to mint? What good is a 1-cent coin that takes (according to the US Mint's most recent annual report) 3.69 cents to produce?Jacoby discusses the low value of the penny relative to its metal content as being a result of the dollar being a fiat currency, and he is correct as far as that goes. While Jacoby unfortunately does not call for getting the government out of money, or even a return to a gold standard, he still shows that the move is likely more trouble than it's worth: I can certainly see a strong argument for doing so: The purchasing power of the penny has dwindled to almost nothing. Most people won't bend over to pick up a stray penny in the street. A coin that the public routinely treats as litter is, pretty much by definition, a useless coin. So why should the government keep spending $85 million a year minting coins that are effectively worthless? Other countries, including Canada, Australia, Sweden, and New Zealand have all pulled the plug on their one-cent coins. Presumably the sky wouldn't fall if America followed suit. Then again, I can see a decent argument for continuing the status quo. Eliminating the penny will necessitate minting more nickels, which, as noted, cost even more to make. Moreover, notes The New York Times, "many states have a sales tax that specifies taxes collected must be rounded to the nearest cent, so they would probably have to modify their laws to accommodate cash purchases." That would mean rounding all prices up to the next-highest nickel. Over time that would cost consumers many millions of additional dollars -- even those who never pay for anything with cash. [bold added]Do note the above savings for no longer minting pennies: It's less than a third of a cent for each American! And even that princely sum will be at least partly offset or more by some of the other costs Jacoby outlines that will result from this knee-jerk, un-thought-out move. Trump isn't wrong that minting pennies is wasteful, but his solution may waste even more money, and it will do absolutely nothing to address the cause of the problem, which is that we are using fiat currency. -- CAVLink to Original

Titles and blurbs of two articles of possible interest in the February Scientific American: "How to Recycle Space Junk" "Orbital debris will become a crisis if we don't act soon." "Rocks, Crops, and Climate" "Spreading crushed stone across farm fields could inexpensively pull CO2 from the air while also increasing yields. But it would require a mountain of mining."

Brad Polumbo critiques Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the heels of his recent remark that tariffs and trade wars would be "worth it," even if they cause a recession. The column does a fine job of succinctly explaining just how bad Lutnick is in terms any intelligent, thoughtful adult can understand. He does this by staying high-level and skipping the math, which is fine here since he has so much territory to cover. Lutnick: "Let the dealmaker make his deals. Let the best negotiator and the best person who cares about America, let him make the deals." Me: How on earth did anything get done at all in America before the coming of Donald Trump? Here, for example is his demolition of the ridiculous claim that the United States can replace its income tax revenue with payments to an "External Revenue Service:"The idea here is simple. Americans can stop paying taxes, and we can instead fund our entire federal government by forcing other countries to pay us through tariffs. It also happens to be utterly absurd and numerically illiterate. First and foremost, the math here simply doesn't add up. Even astoundingly high tariff rates could not raise half as much revenue as the income tax currently does, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, meaning that even if Trump significantly slashed government spending, which is difficult to do without touching entitlement programs that he insists he won't cut, you still couldn't fund the government with tariffs. And even if you could, that still wouldn't make Lutnick's fantasies possible! Because, as economists across the spectrum acknowledge, a huge portion of the economic cost of tariffs is borne not by foreign businesses but by American consumers. So even if you called your new department the "External Revenue Service," it would still essentially be taxing Americans -- with regressive taxes that disproportionately harm poor and working-class people. All of this is stuff you would expect any 200-level economics student to understand. But the Commerce secretary either doesn't get it or is simply saying things to the public he knows to be untrue. [bold added]Many regulars here will already know most of what Polumbo explains, but there are some unpleasant surprises, such as Lutnick's dismissal of a volunteer committee of businessmen who had been advising the government on policy over the past quarter century. Even without the additional information, the column is worth reading as a review, and as good material to pass along to any persuadable adult. -- CAVLink to Original

Caplan, briefly https://youtu.be/l5OSWEF29VY?si=TbPM-rKW2VVOrPBU

What makes me hesitant is that you could justify any mixed-economy move as the decision of an innocent victim forced to go along. Does it exclude anything? Can you give me an example (it needn't, at this point, be a principle) of any decision that can't be excused this way? Tesla's need for subsidies and bailouts says to me that the market didn't want it. Musk had the option of admitting this and moving on to some other venture; his company wouldn't even be there without government help. You say that Musk isn't Taggart. This presumably means that Taggart crossed some line that Musk did not, thus making Taggart guilty but leaving Musk the innocent victim. What exactly were Taggart's decisions that led you to this conclusion?

This question was asked in another thread ("About the Russian aggression of Ukraine"), but that thread's too big and I want to answer this question about what's going on in India (or at least prompt a discussion). As an introduction: India is governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu-nationalist party under the leadership of Narendra Modi. Before BJP, Indian electoral politics was dominated by pressure groups involving thousands of castes and ethno-linguistic groups who wanted their share of political influence and tax collections. BJP recently came to power in 2014 and got re-elected in 2019 (the next national election is in 2024 and they’ll probably win again). The principal opposition is the Indian National Congress (simply, Congress), considered to be puppets of Western leftists/elites by the BJP, under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi (the heir of the Gandhi dynasty), commonly referred to as Pappu (name associated with a child or a stupid person). Modi simplified the electoral politics of India into “Hindus vs. Muslims” and sprinkled it with some utopian notion of a cultural revival of Hindu civilization after centuries of Muslim, European and leftist rule. BJP sees East Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, China, etc as the ideal, especially in terms of their homogeneity (or domination by one group, in the case of Singapore). They think the lack of homogeneity in India is the reason for identity politics in India and the reason India is so poor compared to North-East Asia (they make exceptions for Hindu vs. Muslim politics). BJP claims to dislike electoral battles between upper castes and lower castes and claims to want to end affirmative action quotas for lower caste Indians and minorities. In most states, around 50% of seats are reserved for various communities in most government institutions (educational or otherwise). Some states (like Arunachal Pradesh) has 80% reservation for some communities, with the rest of the population competing for the other 20%. BJP wants to make Hindi the national language of India (India currently doesn’t have any national language). They sort of want to create a pan Indian ethnic group. They claim that Indo-European migrations into India (esp. North India) did not happen and have their own Out of India conspiracy theory. Using this, they claim that there are no differences between North Indians and South Indians and that Aryans and Dravidians don’t exist/never existed (and any difference, if it exists, are gradual and doesn't suggest anything about history). They want to construct a narrative that Hindus (unlike Muslims and Europeans) did not invade any part of India and are indigenous to India and always has been. India has Sharia for Muslims which were implemented by previous leftist governments. BJP wants to introduce a Uniform Civil Code, a common personal law for Muslims, Hindus and everybody else. BJP wants to make Hindus the dominant group in India. In 2019, they passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, which gave citizenship status to non-Muslim undocumented migrants (this was partially inspired by Israel). This sparked protests all over India, resulting in 27 deaths. There are allegedly around 30million undocumented Bengladeshi migrants in India. BJP is in the process of creating a National Register of Citizens, which can be used to deport everyone not on the list, particularly Muslims. They have created detention centres to round up Bengali migrants. Another BJP policy inspired by Israel is the bulldozing of homes/shops primarily belonging to Muslims. Muslims suspected of being “anti-national” are accused of having no documents to prove ownership of their land/house and have their homes bulldozed by the government. In 2022, BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma called Prophet Mohammed a pedophile. This resulted in protests, some killings and a beheading (of Kanhaiya Lal). Modi presided over the 2002 Gujarat Riots as Chief Minister (of the Indian state of Gujarat). Rana Ayyub, who is a Muslim journalist from Mumbai claims that the 2002 Gujarat riots was a genocide and thinks more is to come. Propaganda songs and movies are also on the rise. Songs asking Hindus to harm or kill Muslims have become more common. In 2022, a movie called ‘The Kashmir Files’ was released accusing Kashmiri Muslims of genociding Hindus in 1990. The movie was made tax exempt by the BJP in many states and became the third highest grossing Bollywood movie of 2022. In May 2023, a movie called ‘The Kerala Story’ was released, accusing Muslims in Kerala of converting Christian and Hindu women in the Indian state of Kerala to Islam and turning them into ISIS brides. It’s the third highest grossing Bollywood movie of 2023 so far. Another movie, ‘72 Hoorain’ just got released two days ago. Regarding free speech, BJP has recently passed laws to give themselves power over what can be written online. In 2023, BJP banned the BBC documentary ‘India: The Modi Question’ which was about the 2002 Gujarat riots and later raided BBC offices in India, accusing them of tax avoidance. Economically, BJP follows Dirigisme. In 2014, BJP promised to bring ‘Minimum Government and Maximum Governance’. BJP is planning to invest over 1 Trillion USD on transport and other infrastructure in the near term. They want to replicate the successes of North East Asian economies. In 2020, BJP tried to deregulate the agricultural markets in India with the Farm Bills, but millions of people protested and it was repealed. Air India was privatized in 2022. They have a general policy of privatizing public companies which were nationalized decades ago. In 2016, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) was launched by the government for easy digital payments (making up over 50% of digital transactions in India now and is starting to be accepted internationally, along with ‘India Stack’, a system for authentication and online identity). BJP has significant collusion with the Adani Group (a significant number of airports and sea ports in India were sold to Adani by BJP). When Adani shares crashed after the Hindenburg report, BJP made the public LIC Corporation buy Adani shares to prop up their market value. India plans to start manufacturing chips in the near future with US collaboration. India is projected to be the third largest economy by 2030. Goldman Sachs projects India to be the second largest economy (nominal GDP) by 2075, but such long term projections don’t have much meaning. Now coming back to question of electoral autocracy and dictatorship in India: India has considerably centralized its powers since 2014. Some criticism of V-Dem’s characterization of India as an “electoral autocracy” has been provided by Salvatore Babones from the University of Sydney. Many leftists consider him to be on the BJP payroll. According to him, the reason India scores low on V-Dem’s democracy index is because its results are derived from opinion surveys of experts and he claims that the expert intellectuals in India are anti-India. He claims that the low score for Freedom of the Press in India is because they don’t normalize the deaths of journalists in India by the country’s population. If we did that, he claims that India is between Western Europe and USA in terms of journalist safety (and one of the safest countries in the world for journalists). Alternatively, according to the Economist’s democracy index, India gets a score of 7.04, the 46th most democratic country in the world and the 7th most democratic in Asia (including the Middle East). USA is #30. I’m not sure how India is among the freest quarter of the world in one index and a “dictatorship” in another index (I guess those are the perks of being one of the poorest countries in the world and where nothing really makes sense). My personal opinion is that the BJP is definitely becoming more autocratic but they’re liberalizing India’s economy to some extent. They’re called “neoliberal fascists” for a reason.

Altruism, as Ayn Rand has demonstrated, does not mean kindness or benevolence; it means that man is a sacrificial animal; it means that some men are to be sacrificed to others. -- Leonard Peikoff *** Years ago, I was in the car line at a Starbucks and was puzzled to learn at the payment window that "the gentleman ahead of you has paid for your order." Then ignorant of the self-congratulatory, performative ritual variously known as pay it forward or pass it on, I accidentally gave one of the only two acceptable answers. "What a pleasant surprise!" I said, as I accepted my free order at the pick-up window and left, performative chain of unchosen obligations broken. The other correct reply, I think you'll agree after seeing this Reddit thread on the subject, would be No thanks! As I elaborated at some length in an earlier post about performative driving "etiquette," practitioners of such rituals suffer a form of altruism-induced myopia, as if they see only the presumed needs of those immediately next to them -- at the expense of the larger picture of how rude (or even dangerous) they are being to others around them, sometimes even including the alleged benefactor of their largess. The driver who slams his brakes "generously" to allow for someone to proceed out of turn upsets the expectations of anyone else in the vicinity, increasing the likelihood of an accident. The pay it forward guy is cut from the same cloth. The obligation he is trying to foist on you, for example, can blow your budget, should you choose to accept it:I came for the cheapest thing on the menu - popcorn is like two dollars. And there was a large family behind me. And most people were coming in big groups for alcohol. So I might have gotten free popcorn, and I appreciate the gesture, but I might then have had to shell out fifty bucks for beer for a bunch of randos.And as for the workers in a line, there can be inordinate degree of inconvenience:Former barista here and yes, pass it on sucks. In a drive thru, every order automatically pops up on the register. Now imagine having to manually override that every single time to account for people paying for the car after them, while you're also on a clock that automatically reports the time from order to delivery to your district manager, and everyone is technically waiting longer for their order to be delivered because they have to pull forward for the next person to take the order that's already been cashed out for minutes. Mind you, being in the red for too long on the timer can get your whole team into trouble. Those who start these chains are being thoughtless and putting others on the spot, which is rude to begin with. On top of that, there may be consequences many of them would rather not saddle others with if they took a moment to consider them. And, while the temptation to pass along a pleasant surprise out of good will is understandable, it is on the (would-be) recipient to decide against it if there is a sacrifice -- however small -- of self or others involved in doing so. -- CAVLink to Original

I am honored that one of my poems has been selected for inclusion in Invisible Poets – Anthology 3, strong wave after wave of human skill, genius, delight, and altogether hope. Amazing

The lethal ideology is divisive. Hands up, anyone, who lost friendships in this way. It divides because it is intended to divide, and - in the main - its adherents are intellectually unaware it is an ideology. Saad relates a recent experience. https://youtu.be/XHHLY5wgas4?si=B823BHo5k2rGlSNR

It's funny you bring up Trump tariffs. Trump tariffs are a result of capitalist interests acting against free trade. Corporations are pushing protectionist trade barriers to insulate themselves from global competition while consumers are paying the price. Consumers pay the price while established corporations profit. Trump tariffs are because of capitalism, but cappie brains cannot comprehend this.

An O’ist perspective recognizes that force is only morally used when it is directed by non-initiators and used only against initiators of force. Government’s proper role is as the sole legitimate organ of force aimed at the retaliation of initiation of force. Objective law should be the standard that constrains the actions of government , democracy or majority rule writ large can not be a reliable objective hedge against immoral (violations of individual rights) actions of the monopoly of ‘legal’ force. Political power and government force are inversely proportional a government that uses force of arms to ‘keep order’ operates from a position devoid of political power with which to maintain and carry out ‘their’ dictates. Not having the political power may be from dictates incongruent with citizens’ wellbeing or from a plurality of citizens trying to ‘undone’ a previously established ‘order’. Rand gives a moral foundation to capitalism by virtue of establishing and conducting a government based on the principle of protection of individual rights. Abstract moral conceptions are ‘easier’ to identify than to practice, lol.

Depends on the HOA,lol. And maybe the kinds of guns and how you know he has recently acquired them. Context is important , if he casually mentions a new interest in game hunting and they are firearms suitable for hunting , that would be different then if he ‘quietly’ purchases an A1 tank , demonstrates it is not decommissioned and parks it with the torrent aimed at your front door.

Where did Ukraine's nuclear arsenal go? Whoever convinced them to give it up is almost as responsible for this war as Putin. He's still the primary criminal, here; most of the guilt is his [...] 1. @whYNOT was not blaming the US/NATO and Ukraine for the failures you attribute to them - essentially, a lack of foresight. Instead, he was (and is - see his today's post) blaming them for alleged actions for which he refused to provide evidence. 2. Regarding Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal: Although the nuclear weapons were located on Ukrainian territory and technically belonged to Ukraine, the country did not have operational control over them. The launch codes remained in Moscow, under Russia's authority. Therefore, Ukraine did not relinquish a usable nuclear arsenal. As an aside: Experts suggest that Ukraine, with its thousands of engineers and scientists skilled in nuclear, aerospace, and military technologies, could likely have tampered with the launch codes. However, in the euphoric early post-Soviet years, the need for a robust defense was not strongly felt, and such efforts were not pursued. Additionally, maintaining the nuclear arsenal, including its delivery systems, would have been extremely costly - too costly for a struggling economy. Therefore, "whoever convinced them to give it up" had probably a relatively easy task... PS: However, I strongly disagree with the statement, "Whoever convinced them to give it up is almost as responsible for this war as Putin." Although you later amended it to some extent, my point remains: the responsibility lies with the aggressor—whose actions were unexpected and unprovoked—not with the victim’s unpreparedness..

Better yet, save your time. George Will -- having had trouble finding a column topic -- must have experienced greatly circumscribed and temporary relief upon recalling the meanness and busy-ness of the new Administration: He quickly filled his column with vignettes like the following:Elon Musk, who, like Trump, confuses hyperactivity with achievement, is, like Trump, incapable of imagining how his incessant spouting off is making him smaller. When, last week, an X lunatic ("I know Barack Obama is a Kenyan") said, "It's time to leave NATO," Musk had time and inclination to respond: "I agree." Even while busily trying to erase mistakes made by the Constitution's framers (e.g., creating Congress and the separation of powers), Musk has time and inclination to notice and opine about everything, including the need to end history's most successful collective security organization. Protectionism is another manifestation of Trump's courage. He has plucked from the air a number -- 25 percent seems to entrance him -- as a properly muscular way to (in Rubioese) "stand up for" America with tariffs against two of its economic tormentors. MAGA means protecting America (2024 GDP: $29.16 trillion) from Canada ($2.21 trillion) and Mexico ($1.84 trillion).You get the same from any member of Trump's personality cult you encounter, in the form of being alerted (often obnoxiously) to his pronouncements -- or at unpredictable moments finding on your person a regurgitated mixture of those pronouncements and whatever after-the-fact "rationale" some obsequious conservative has fashioned as an "argument" in its favor. But at the end of the day, it all boils down to Uhhh. Whatever Trump says. It's brain-dead, and I wonder why these people even try to communicate at all, since they obviously aren't able to (sometimes even to imagine) offering reasons based on the facts of reality as a means of helping anyone else get on board. The piece starts with "Little" Marco Rubio and returns to him a few times. I once, ages ago, respected Rubio and wished he'd run for President. He was (or seemed to be) generally free-market and generally had a pro-American foreign policy. On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump destroyed him with the nickname above, and he has more than earned it since. I have never been so shocked at how small a person has become (or turned out to be) since first encountering that person, and he frankly seems more and more by the day to be representative of the conservative movement overall. Rubio's complete capitulation to Trump's anti-American foreign policy has still been shocking. Someone said, after an image of Rubio that seemed like it was of a man disgusted with himself captioned the image, "This is what a man who has sold his soul looks like." Robert Zubrin (if I recall correctly) improved upon this: "No, he gave it away for free." The new Administration's blitzkrieg of horrible policies, petty behavior, and uncertainty have been somewhat disorienting, but the effect pales in comparison to the similar nonstop parade of disappointing sub-humanity that has come with it. From the yes-men and hucksters Trump has surrounded himself with to the cowards -- Senator Cassidy, "M.D.", I always think of you, first -- who now form almost the entirety of the rest of the Republican Party, it has been a rude shock, but it is one those of us who value liberty must absorb as we adjust our aims and strategies. (There are a few rare exceptions, but I am increasingly dubious of their prospects of doing much good.) If the GOP ever was a friend to liberty, that friend is lingering at death's door. -- CAVLink to Original

America, NYC, Grand Central, Carly . CArly

I've been rehashing this very thing (considering the USA and Israel): who are "the strong"? How and why did they become so? What actually is strength? And why is strength, in the spiritual sense (rationality, self-respect, independence, integrity -confidence), a vice today? From the altruist-collectivists, to whom "the victim" is of major importance, the "strong" man and woman - had to - have gained their (materialist) "strength" by sucking some victim dry, "racism", "exploitation" and suchlike. Therefore the victim possesses self-evident virtue. Those who uphold him/her/the tribe are necessarily virtuous themselves (by association) and find their one source of ('narcissistic') self-worth and purpose in that . Another approach, these folk can also assume that some humans are "gifted" at birth with mystical "strength", which gives them an automatic duty to provide ... etc., etc. - for everyone else. Where determinism has made inroads recently, it has communicated to the masses that "they can't help it". Strength is self-made. That idea of volition poses an existential threat to the very fabric of many-most people. Those: altruism-collectivism-mysticism-determinism, are all on graphic display and in glaring contrast between the Palestinians and Israelis. True also, that Israelis are not altogether immune to these vices/beliefs too and are often collectively confused by owning such "strength" and will repudiate it. The absolute worst of those: the "jewish self-hater". Outside in the West, the hordes "supporting Palestine" (and promoting Jewish genocide) - all cater to that identical "laundry list" (with old-fashioned Jew hatred thrown in). The Israeli wars consume every man and his dog who are strongly opinionated yet mostly ignorant of the history and facts behind the conflict, because somehow all can sense its *moral* significance sub-consciously.

Not being "pro" that entire cohort of the powerful responsible for this war - or, as bad, creating/allowing the conditions for one - signifies support for a single culprit? You were unwilling to name ONE cohort member, Putin, as at least co-culprit. You cited the US and NATO as culprits, but systematically refused to provide evidence for the "facts" you have invoked to support your claims about the US and NATO being the culprits.

The whining persists. Not being "pro" that entire cohort of the powerful responsible for this war - or, nearly as bad, creating/allowing the conditions for one - signifies support for a single culprit? I criticize such illogic and simplistic value judgment (on an Oist forum). *Everyone* knew what they were doing, everyone evaded the realities and ended up sacrificing Ukraine to their despicable agendas. Are you an "influencer" for the Atlantic Council, or the like? One has to notice your sole activity on this board for 3 years has been only to try to nullify the few dissenting voices to the pro-Ukraine propaganda machine.

They're strong, therefore they must be evil. There's an implicit appeal to altruism baked into the entire conversation about Israel and Palestine, in the form of juxtaposing the strength and prosperity of Israel against the poverty and weakness of Hamas as if this automatically demonstrates the virtue of the latter and the vice of the former. Far from it; the moral is the practical, and genuine evil does tend to weaken itself by default. It can exist only at the sufferance of the good. It makes sense for such a foolish notion to hold sway over most people, in a way, but to see it on OO is just weird. At least, that's what I hear that Objectivism holds. As a Nazi who's been personally exposed by @SpookyKitty as advocating for the genocide of all Jews, I'm really not sure why I support Israel.

We do need a policy based on long-range principles, i.e., an ideology. But a revision of our foreign policy, from its basic premises on up, is what today’s anti-ideologists dare not contemplate. The worse its results, the louder our public leaders proclaim that our foreign policy is bipartisan. A proper solution would be to elect statesmen—if such appeared—with a radically different foreign policy, a policy explicitly and proudly dedicated to the defense of America’s rights and national self-interests, repudiating foreign aid and all forms of international self-immolation. “The Wreckage of the Consensus,”

In the context of military capability, one lacking the cognizance to recognize relative strength would be ignorant , those who do understand the relative strengths and advocate for 'unwinnable' actions are evading the discussion of the relative strengths. My claims are rather 'neutral', I've stated my prevailing view as a quasi-civil war and Khrushchev's fault anyway.

Or: Down, But Not Out The first part of this week was already going to be hectic for me, but I fell ill Friday on top of everything. I'm better, but have a weekend's worth of chores and errands to catch up on, and, if my improved health holds up, a Mardi Gras parade ride to do Tuesday. That opportunity comes courtesy of a relative who is a member of one of the krewes that put on the parades. That will have me busy from the wee hours until the end of that parade Tuesday. And then there's a ball, which my wife is looking forward to. While I am happy to learn even more about this new-to-me local holiday, and am grateful for the chance to participate in this way, I can't help but remember a parting comment I wrote comparing Christmas to Mardi Gras:I forgot to mention in my analogy to Christmas, the lack of social pressure to stress out with gift-purchasing (along with outdoing the neighbors on decor). That's a great feature, so far, although I am not so sure the members of the Krewes -- the folks who plan all the parades, balls, and social gatherings -- share that luxury.It is astounding how much time and effort go into these festivities -- as one can say about almost any field of endeavor one hasn't given much thought about in the past. I'll enjoy tomorrow, but would I want to do something like that every year? I have no idea, but lean to no as I am pretty introverted. But the beauty is that there is no pressure to do anything, as far as I can tell. It's up to everyone to take it as far as they want or to leave it altogether, aside from the matter of joining a krewe, which I understand, can be an inscrutable process. As I also said then:I'm more than happy to have a new reminder to celebrate being alive, and I hope this holiday long outlives the unhappy circumstances of its birth.Happy Mardi Gras, and I'll be back here Wednesday. -- CAVLink to Original

@tadmjones – The declaration of a national emergency was under the conditions that obtained on January 22, when the order was issued. A state of declared national emergency* allows direction of the US military to assistance of other enforcement agents in enforcing law, if I understand correctly. There was in fact no vast and dangerous invasion of people into the US, and the campaign talk of 20 million such invaders already here was a lie (and we'll not see 20 million people deported, just a lot of secrecy and smoke and mirrors). The invasion in my neighborhood this past year was from Pennsylvania, and it is the Japanese Lantern Bug. We civilians are dealing with it. Under a national emergency, I happen to know and this President would happen to know by personal experience, a draftee given a 4F exemption from military service can be called into service. I hope that were Trump or I called up, it would be for a real emergency, not fake ones such as his for show and power and lowering what counts as an emergency. In the US, Tad, can declaration of an emergency give the Pres. power to delay an election?

Russia Nuclear Strategy Ukraine Nuclear Warheads after USSR It looks now like the Ukrainians who wanted to keep the warheads for deterrence of attack by Russia were correct. However, I'm unsure if there existed Ukrainian personnel suitably trained to maintain and operate those warheads and their delivery systems. I vaguely recall that during the era of the nuclear Soviet Union, it was only Russians who were in charge of the nuclear weapons wherever they were were located in the Soviet Union. For the obvious reasons of minimizing an accidental start an all out exchange with the US and of not letting the Russian slave states get control of the weapons and tell Russia to bug off. I expect the tactical nukes Russia moved into Belarus last year also remain under strictly Russian control. I understand why Trump is such a coward in sticking to his wrongheaded economic policy of tariffs when the stock market reacts adversely. He and his social set care about their stocks. I do not understand why Trump has always been so cowardly towards Putin and lets Putin dominate him publicly. Some have said it is due to Putin having some embarrassing personal secret about Trump and that a narcissist like Trump is terrified of having such a thing made public. I'm not convinced, given that in recent years elected Republicans (and earlier Bill Clinton!) have not been damaged enough by sordid personal revelations to resign, which had earlier been the norm in puritanical America.

Russia invaded Ukraine under Obama and Biden, they must be lapdogs too. In a realpolitiks sense how does that work ? The number three(arguably) power installs lapdogs as leaders of the number one power? How or why would the leader of the number one power remain beholden to number three? Basically we would have to assume that the US isn't the real number one power in the world, so I guess 'we were always at war with Eastasia' and America is a subservient nation. Or more objectively, that the identity of power means that the Number One guy is number one and could never be beholden to a lesser power. Even if Putin manipulated US presidential elections to 'install' his lapdog and the US really is the world's most powerful nation, how would he be confident he could run his dog? Literally how would such a ridiculous situation manifest? The only conceivable way would be that the US isn't the number one power....or that the President doesn't have power over the country the way 'we' all believe. "Hey toadie, I'm going to make you the most powerful person in the world, but you will do as I say"

A load of bile from the local terrorist-apologist. The realization that the terror outfit, aka, Hamas 'government', fully intended to bring about its own people's demise - and so - get "more liked world-wide", in sympathy/solidarity is an elementary causal identification that I notice few can, or want to, follow. Their children killed was ~the purpose~ of the atrocities of Oct 7, and taking of hostages, etc.etc., - get it? What better proclaims one's "innocence" to western sentiments than having one's innocent children killed? Moreso, when loathed Jews commit the deeds. Is all this too complex? Israel would respond to Oct 7. Hamas' planners knew that. If all is not clear now by how events transpired, it never will be. As indeed Israel, being the single participant which values lives, was reluctantly blackmailed by Hamas into a ceasefire in order to recover any hostages left alive. No. Over 20,000 killed have been Hamas militants in plain clothes. Other civilians killed of the so-called 40 plus thousand, were "the martyrs" too many westerners admire: the world is indeed sick. Sorry, Hamas-lovers, but Hamas will be finished off. I have been placed under "warnings" (unexplained) on this Objectivist forum. How does this poster continue fomenting moral sickness here, Eiuol?

Has anyone compared the BJP to Pinochet in Chile?