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Civilians face the same exact (apparent) dilemma cops do, just on a different (less direct/personal) level. Whenever you leave your house, you're walking on a pavement built by money that was taken by force. Whenever you call a cop, you are using a service paid for by money taken by force. Whenever you go to an emergency room, you are relying on a government mandate that the hospital should treat you. Etc., etc. This is the world we live in. It's the only world available to us. And, like it or not, living in the world involves interacting with the world, as per rules we didn't make. Objectivism is a philosophy for living in reality, not for escaping it. It CANNOT be immoral to live in the only world there is. I know that, as per the laws of my country, I can use various facilities paid for by force. And I do so, to the full extent of my ability, both to live my personal life, and for work. When I was a kid, I used public education, then I used minimum wage laws to get better pay than I deserved while I was in college, I use the roads to get to work every day today, and I use a million other immoral rules. So did Ayn Rand. And so do cops. My role is to build software in this world. Ayn Rand's was to create literature and philosophy. A cop's role is to maintain the rule of law. All important roles, all rewarding, life affirming career choices. There is no qualitative difference. We all live by immoral rules, to achieve a morally legitimate purpose. I offer no apology for my choice to live in this world, and neither should honest police officers, or anyone else who does that. This isn't some kind of "the ends justify the means" argument, btw. This is a "I'm not responsible for the rules, just because I have no other choice but to live in the world" argument. The people who created those rules are the ones responsible. No. Illegitimate laws are evil, and the people who choose to create them are evil. However, last I checked, laws are created by politicians chosen by the electorate, not by cops. So long as you are careful to identify evil and assign blame for it rationally, you don't have to live with contradictions like "law trumps morality". So let's identify and assign: 1. WHAT is evil about modern societies are the illegitimate laws. NOT the rule of law. The rule of law is the best thing that happened to mankind. 2. The people responsible for that evil are people who vote for, advocate for and believe in it. NOT people who believe in and fight for the rule of law.

The centennial exhibition drawn from the Armory show by the New York Historical Society proved worthwhile. There is a bonus worth on the same floor down the hallway, showing works of contemporary painter Clarice Smith. Smith says her painting is not realist; rather, it is representationalist. The subjects of her exquisite paintings are recognizable objects whose forms and other spatial relations are depicted on the plane of the picture by the means one can learn to discriminate with help from Joan Mitchell Blumenthal’s The Ways and Means of Painting or E. H. Gombrich’s Art and Illusion. Awareness of those perceptual means making possible one’s esthetic experience is fun, but the main thing is one’s experience itself, tuned to the total painting itself.* The Armory show of 1913, whose title was International Exhibition of Modern Art, included paintings representational, less representational, and even less so, that is, paintings fairly abstract. Some paintings and one sculpture I liked in the centennial exhibit are the following: Cézanne – View of Domaine Saint-Joseph* Puvis – The Beheading of John the Baptist* Renoir – Algerian Girl* Robinson – In the Orchard* Hopkinson – Three Girls* Brancusi – Mlle. Pogany 1* Kuhn – Morning* Weir – The Factory Village* Munch – Madonna* Villon – Young Girl* Duchamp – Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) – * Manguin – La Naïade, Cavalière* From the catalogue The Armory Show at 100: Early twentieth-century, modern works—many I found salutary*—are exhibited at Neue Galerie near the Met.

Note: I am not posting this for tips in terms of my writing style. Thank you. The Artist By Summer Hamori His jaw line was sharp and hardened with maturity over the years of his intellectual growth. It was miraculous to witness the visible evolution in aesthetics subsequent to a change in philosophy. His corrected posture, posed and confident, made an infinite difference. His eyes, a blend of hazel that looked green from a distance, were saturated with sentiment. And yet, if she were to say this aloud, it could not be understood. Laughter would ensue – “what’s the punch-line?” because his face knew no sadness. No drama and no depression. The guilt-inducing emotions were non-existent. However, he could be moved by aggression and passion. He could be brought to his knees by his temple of reverence, of awe, of ownership – of the deserved and won. His hair was like fire: thick and violently red. Of all his features, he loved his hands the most. Today, those hands had been put to work – shaping and breaking the clay against his palms. He concentrated on the feel upon creased skin to distract himself from the moments ahead. His angular shoulders shifted with precision and expertise, and the vision was more glorious than any angelic depiction. The woman would never bow her head in church, would never kneel before an altar, but with him, she felt a profound sense of religious adulation – of salvation, almost. He was no angel – darkened by the earth’s sun and strengthened through tribulations; here was a creature who was not reluctant to be, as was his birth, man. At any given instance, something had to rupture, but she enabled the impulse to escalate in confinement. Her expression was a lake with the immobility of glass, an unbroken surface – the deathly hush before some overwhelming storm, prepared to burst into explosion. Her equanimity remained unchallenged. Although the sharp silence screamed of profanity, he operated with cutting composure in utmost silence. She wore his gift upon a slender wrist – a watch of chains, binding time and pushing forth the waiting game. A naked collarbone was exposed beneath the thin, orange sheet, which she excused under the pretenses of a robe. The royal colors were endless, not dissimilar to her legs as they stretched over the bed. The sheet was thin and barely acceptable. It lay against her skin like another man, flowing over and cascading against the covers. Her hard eyes were shut; her lips, partially opened; her face – closed. Concealed by the hair that enveloped her merciless features and swallowed them alive. Bound by the ticking of his clock as he sculpted the clay, apathetic to her genuine skin but feet away.