Sandy

A Secular community; would it be possible? Would it ever be possible to have a community within a County or State that sets the laws without any reference to God/Jesus/Allah/Abraham? Our marriages would be totally secular and handled like a business contract. Our homes and commercial buildings would be purchased under another contract where both men and women were obligated to pay the mortgages. Our schools would have secular classrooms focused on math and science with an emphasis on academics. Since we would have no churches we would not request or accept government faith-based money. We would have our own charities for the homeless and handicapped residents. We can have tutors on the basic rules of right an wrong without any mention of hell and damnation. Our local government would demand that the Federal Government stay out of our social choices and absolutely under the 10th Amendment. Our newspapers would reflect the 1st Amendment for freedom of speech. We would be the perfect example of a Separation of Church and State. Our schools under the guidance of the parents would teach right from wrong from the first day of kindergarten. We would not be required to hand the Federal Government any information on our private or personal lives. The 4th Amendment would be restored inside our secular community. We would be under no obligation to follow any Congressional interference in our lives. No wire-tapping, no eavesdropping and no requests for our medical records or job histories to be put in a National ID registration. All celebrations whether local or religious would be by choice as many Atheists enjoy the time off from work and school to spend with our loved ones. We would pay our taxes to the County, State and Federal Government but our personal lives will not depend on any religious leader found in the White House or the Capitol. This came to me last night when I had had quite enough of the Candidates running who want full control over our individual lives. I want my America back. Comments?

Was the subject humor in Objectivism? Apparently I was wrong in assuming so. I was 9 when I declared by Individualism. I was in my mid thirties when I read Rand and felt I had found a home in her words. I guess no one is allowed to ask questions about the thread? Oh well, easy come, easy go!

I am completely lost in this thread. I read the essays, AS, Fountainhead nearly 45 years ago. I learned so much from Rand on personal ethics and morals. I had given up religion at the age of 9 and wondered how any rational person could follow mysticism. I was fascinated by how people reacted to Rand's writing and how many incorporated her words into a personal philosophy. I come from a very funny family. We learned to laugh at drunks from birth because everyone did. We all learned to locate the funny bone in others to help cover the disust we felt for the drunks at home who seemed to be everywhere. My first years away from the comedy act known as home, came when I was sent to an all girl's boarding school. Out of the hundreds of girls I found only 4 or 5 who could laugh. This was before television and Jack Benny gave us the laughs for the whole week. Individual personalities do not have to have a history of humor but when they blend together, it is a change from our daily lives. It is possible that over the years I have ignored the base of Objectivism but I still remember what I learned from reading and hearing Rand lecture in person. I waste no time thinking about any afterlife and have no desire to communicate with mystics. I am an addicted reader as television plays little in my world of entertainment. To me Objectivism means living off my own accomplishments and have been a Libertarian since the inception of the political movement. I do not understand why an individual's funny bone has to be analyzed by any philosophical analysis. To me the source of insults comes from one God trying to downgrade others. But I have a simple mind.

The only time the existence of God is a problem for me is when our government tries to use him to rewrite the U.S. Constitution. In the case of America, we are talking about Jesus Christ. Are we talkingabout a man, possibly a prophet or a bringer of hell and damnation? I doubt that in the history of earth any man has caused the number of wars or the number of nations who base their laws on this same warrior of hell. At the age of 9, I disregarded this silly concept of being able to sin and then ask for forgiveness. It made people untrustworthy and the older I got, the worse these Christians became. I have a simple mind that wanted only to read more books. We lived 3 blocks from our public library and I dissolved into the entire place. I thought that Christians had to have been the dumbest group ever evolved. They took the words from a single source and massacred millions of other people who had another killer God. I made a point to learn about these sins and came up that they were many that simply desecrated nature and other living things. It was too easy and I set up my own rules of right and wrong. I needed no ghost or books written by other men and gave it no more thought. In the early 1960's I found Rand and felt an immediate kinship. My husband and I heard her speak in person at the Shrine Auditorium. I did not need anyone to confirm my Atheism but it was nice to know that a brilliant woman indeed did.

I am not new but since I was here before, I have added a new email address. I checked out my controls but where do I change the address?

We need to define whether we are discussing city roads or interstate highways. Just as important are those structures like our levees and jetties that crumble during weather disasters. Our Federal government has no quality control when it comes to maintaining their responsibilities. If these structures are built by private enterprise, it is still up to the federal government to protect the safety of the citizens. Private contractors must make a profit to stay in business. Our government should never be profit making.

Everything we buy and rent removes money from our income. One of the first things I did when I became sole supporter of my kids was to work with the Jarvis Proposition to put limits on our property taxes in California. This was the famous Prop. 13 that ended up keeping many people with the ability to keep their homes. In looking over the tax forms that would allow my State, County and City able to keep the roads, schools and other emergency services possible. In many cases we got our money's worth but in the schools within Los Angeles County, I felt our taxes were wasted on Administration costs instead of academics. I felt that t he most important times for a child were those years between 2 and 12. It was important for parents to spend time reading to their 2 year olds to prepare them for wanting to read when they had the ability. I dumped the television and spent our evenings reading to the kids. When they got older I would read and have them illustrate with their crayons what I was reading. It trained their brains to listen to the words. By the time they were ready for school they had a wonderful vocabulary and a well-trained memory. I interviewed many public schools in my area and found little interest in academics and a lot of social training instead. I located a good private school that continued to build interests in reading, writing and self expression. I continued the reading at home just because we all enjoyed it. As the kids got older and our home was filled with their friends, they too wanted a story from one of our books. I had created a monster and figured the kids would out grow this after dinner arrangement. I created kids as addicted to books as I am. By the time my kids were out of school and looking for college, I was running out of money. I could not afford Stanford or USC and looked at the University of California. We're talking real money here and even with the kids working, it was too much. So U of C it was and it was a good move. It was by no means free but it was affordable. For years we tried to get a legal tax deduction for the tuitition paid to private schools but it was always thrown back that every tax payer was responsible for the education of the American kids....even when it was failing.... Until we start electing representatives in our state and federal legislatures we will always be at the mercy of the users of our system instead of the developers of our superior programs. I saw the results of the dumbing down of our American kids in public school and the final insult was how they voted. We found that half the American voters leaned towards socialism where they would always have a safety net no matter where they were or what they did. They did not even have to stay in school as welfare would take care of them. The other 50% simply voted as their Ministers wanted and we got President Bush as our Commander in Chief. The sad part is that both of these voting systems represented only 1/3 of the people. Something has turned off the American public from voting at all. Apathy? Skepticism? Ignorance? Maybe the best system in academics for our kids is public schools enhanced with the parents turning off the television and having either a reading session or taking on the subjects ignored by the public schools. To keep kids in public with nothing else added is a disaster.

I was left with 2 kids to raise when my husband left the state with his secretary. I had been his secretary but we had been married long enough for me not to understand the new office machines so I could head back to work. The house was sold and we were out in the cold. I borrowed money from my grandmother's estate and bought an old cabin in the mountains where I began to sew for people. I learned designing of clothes and soon went to work for a live theater where I designed and made the costumes for the Shakespeare productions. I loved doing it. I had to find work that would furnish insurance so I went to work in a temporary secretarial service and hated it! I combined these two jobs and found a wonderful couple of gay men who were home during the day and they filled in when the kids came home from school. I did this for enough years to get the kids through private schools and into Berkeley. This was a sacrifice for me but the kids were so eager to go along with this plan that I simply went along with joy, watching them work part time and keep their grades up and make it into the best Universities. I have to admit that I was exhausted by working full time as a secretary and evenings and weekends as a costumer. It didn't hurt me at all. The best tool I had during these years was what I learned from Ayn Rand. I saw first hand that anything done for love and pride is never a sacrifice. The Virtue of Selfishness guided me for many years. I was pleased that the kids also read the Rand books and essays and I believe this guided them all these years. Those kids are now 43 and 50 with professions and families of their own. Rand's philosophy is the most valuable gift I ever received.

Atheists! Who Are These People? By Alan Caruba If you are expecting me to launch into a diatribe about people who do not believe in God or religion, forget it. I don’t much care what anyone believes so long as they are not trying to convert me or kill me for what I believe. Unfortunately, history and our present times are a testament (no pun intended!) to the way religion has proven to be the justification for slaughters of every description. “Atheists” is a groundbreaking study conducted by Bruce E. Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer, recently published by Prometheus Books ($20.00) and a slim, paperback volume best read by people such as psychologists, sociologists, and those interested in religious studies. Hunsberger was a professor of psychology until his death in 2003 as is his collaborator, Altemeyer, who teaches at the University of Manitoba. They had previously collaborated on Amazing Conversion: Why Some Turn to Faith and Others Abandon Religion. To my surprise, virtually no studies have been conducted to determine why people become atheists. Most of us are aware of atheists only when one of them institutes a lawsuit involving the separation of church and state. The notion that children cannot pray in school, as do lawsuits to remove “One Nation Under God” from our coinage or to remove a religious symbol from display tends to annoy a lot of people. Religion in American life became a hot political issue when the Supreme Court permitted abortions under the penumbra of “privacy” rights. It flared up again as a right to die issue, but again the courts ruled this was a private matter to be determined by individuals, family and the advice of physicians. Despite the passion of the Religious Right, these issues appear to have been settled in the minds of most people. While America’s Founding Fathers all believed that religion served a useful purpose for the maintenance of a civil, secular society, they all knew well of the evils that ensue from too much church involvement in the affairs of state. They took care to protect freedom of religion, but also to create a form of government in which religious values might inform legislation, but not be “established” as a requirement of citizenship. For the Founding Fathers, you could be a good American even if you did not believe in God. This is a good idea considering that two out of three American adults do not go to church every week. At 32%, those Americans who do attend church outnumber the 20% in Canada and the 14% in England. By most definitions, America remains a nation in which religion plays a role in people’s lives, even if they are not active in either church or synagogue. As the West either loses or ignores religious faith, the Middle East, the cradle of three major religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is a cauldron of religious fervor, pursuing an Islamic Jihad throughout its own region and exporting it in the form of terrorist attacks worldwide. Westerners are baffled and angered by a “religion” for which war and murder is a duty. We have far less to concern ourselves when it comes to atheists. Indeed, one trait they tend to share in common is a saintly tolerance for all lifestyles including homosexuality, though “the rise in apostasy in the United states has occurred primarily among persons with weak ties to organized religion who have been driven from their faith by the behavior of the ‘religious right’” according to the study. Atheists are people for whom the teachings of religion simply do not make any sense. Burning bushes, resurrection, the trinity, life after death, heaven and hell, are illogical by atheist standards. Science, however, is based on the logic of reproducible results and, not surprisingly, atheists have a great fondness for science, noting among other things that there are many more universes than the one in which we inhabit a tiny planet. Almost always arriving at their rejection of religion on their own, atheists tend to keep their views to themselves. The study found that atheists are more self-aware and more resistant to conformity than others. They also tend to excel at critical thinking. “Religion’s big enemy in losing the battle for these minds proved not to be Satan, but its own scriptures, its various teachings, and its history.” As best as can be determined, only 3% of Americans are atheists. What matters most to them is their personal integrity. They are, almost by definition, the least authoritarian of groups you can find and the least likely to attempt to convert someone to their views. The common perception is that Christian “fundamentalists” are growing by leaps and bounds, but those in America who identify themselves in this fashion peaked in 1987 and their numbers has since dropped to 30% of all Christians by 2004. Of any religious group, fundamentalists are those least liked by atheists. Interestingly, American atheists are more likely to object to abuses of power by government than most people. A “Born again” President such as George W. Bush is viewed as a danger to our constitutional system, as are members of Congress for whom religion is a determining factor in law making. Conservative and Libertarian political values, smaller and less intrusive government, fiscal prudence, laissez faire capitalism, and individualism would seem to suit most, but not all, atheists better than some form of socialism or one-world government philosophy. Whether we want to or not, all Americans and other Westerners find themselves locked in a life and death struggle with the newest religion on the world scene, Islam, barely 1,400 years old and a strange conglomeration of things borrowed from both Judaism and Christianity, but mostly reflecting the warring society of Arab tribes. It, too, has devolved into more than twenty sects, all convinced they posses the “true” Islam as cobbled together by the self-proclaimed “last” prophet, Muhammad. One can only imagine what atheists make of this insanity, but whether for God or nation, both or neither, we shall be fighting for our lives for decades to come. Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. His book, “Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy”, has recently been published by Merril Press. [Mod's note: The poster informs me that this was posted with permission. - sN]

Why must we agree on the definition of ethics? Unless we are members of a religious sect/cult why does it matter how we define anything? Ethics and morals should be a personal and private set of actions and agreements with ourselves. I value my word of honor and have never broken it but I see no need to define it to anyone else. I tangled with others on this forum because I still live by the messages I received from Rand when I first read her works in the mid 60s. I read her, wrote to her and heard her lecture in person and feel I need no help from anyone in my objectivism. I truly believe she spoke to individuals not the masses. It seems that every generation has its own definitions of what she wrote. I do know that she changed my life and forced me to think and act as an individual.

Objectivism as expressed by Rand was a viewpoint having to do with my personal acquaintenships and political motivations. Nothing more, nothing less. I had already decided that I was closer to Aristotle than Plato and the best form of government left the people alone to their own devices as long as the government didn't take from the citizens what the government did not need. I read this Objectivism back in the middle 60s and came to the conclusion that I was married to Jim Taggert and began to lose interest in him. My husband was self motivated but not the way I figured was a good motivation. He took from people as much as he could and was found cheating in many ways. I began to look at everyone through the eyes of AR but found that few had read her works and had no idea what was wrong and why I was so critical. I had lost a number of good friends when I realized they looked at the government to furnish all citizens with things they could not get for themselves. I still do this although I have softened up a bit. The American citizens are not educated enough to even consider living without of the handouts of the government. I look at most of them with disgust. But I'm old and out numbered.

I absolutely 100% agree with your statement on Rand and Objectivism. The only group that continues to fight her Individualism come from the churches. Rand stands for everything the religious right has worked so hard to destroy. I began to read Rand in the early 60s and all the clouds suddenly disappeared from my brain and the world became clear to me. It also became plain to me what a mess the collectivists had and were making of a once great nation. America is in deep itshay under this new form of "government by the bible" and I fear we are doomed. I can only hope that every one of us can promote the philosophy through our children and grandchildren to keep it going.

Ayn Rand herself pronounced it as "Ine Rand, and with an R" Piekoff is correct! I met her in the 60s and she pronounced it as Piekoff has indicated. There are many video tapes of her speaking her name.

We have many aliens living in florida who were accepted according to the law as they made it to shore. I feel that Elian could have stayed as "he made it to shore." The way Reno had him "captured" was as awful as what she pulled in Waco Texas. It was an embarrassment to America for sure! I have a great ice breaker that I wear in public everyday. It is a gold dollar sign that was given to me 40 years ago when my husgand and I discovered Ayn Rand's books and essays. We drove to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and became instant followers of this woman's philosophy. Earlier in the year I attended the Arizona State LP conference and this vcery attractive man walked up to me and whispered in my ear "I'm a follower of Rand too," he said and was staring at my gold charm. It was Michael Badnarik and it was not the first time this symbol of Capitalism was picked up by a total stranger. Sadly back in the 60s many of us wore the symbol but today it is rare to see it other than on LP forums or letterheads. I think a lot of the problem is that the Objectivist group has split up into two divisions instead of sticking it out as one group. I transfered my allegiance from Rand to Dr. Leonard Piekoff who seems to have taken the lead in keeping Rand's name out there for new people to learn to appreciate. His program on CSPAN was fabulous and I ordered the video tape to keep in my collection. I remember one very strong statement from Rand when she was still alive and that was to "define one's terms before starting a debate!" Well, it seems that the Objectivists have taken the last 20 years doing just that with little progress being made to expand the movement. I must be simple minded but Rand's message to me was clean and clear and it was called "Objectivism" and I have managed to live within this philosophy for 41 years.