Frobozz

Ayn Rand and every Objectivist is a right-winger. It's the Republicans who disagreed with her, and "the religious right" (an oxymoron) conservatives who have hijacked the Republican party over the decades, who aren't really right-wingers. Or is anyone here going to call the abolitionists, who founded the Republican party, conservatives? "I become a "right-winger" if I debate an idea with a "left-winger", and vise versa." "these days left = liberal and right = conservative" "can you imagine today going up to, say, Rush Limbaugh and telling him he was a leftist?" These misuses do not change the nature of the collectivist <-> individualist continuum. But HOLY FRACKING CHRIST. None of this is even relevant. If you hate the term right-winger so much and refuse to use it to refer to yourself, WHY would you reply to the question "How did you become a right-winger?" If you are ZOMG NOT a right-winger, how could you possibly answer that question? And where do I even say Left Right MEANS Collectivist Individualist in the original post? It's what I believe, but only your nitpicking derailments brought it to that. What an asinine way to respond to the introduction of a newbie trying to share a personal experience.

Derailed on the first reply. Good work.

The presence of RINOs in America does not change the nature of Left vs Right.

As a kid I was a pot-smoking hippie. I raged against The Machine and cursed The Man without really knowing any of the details. I just intuitively knew that secret conspiring warmongering capitalists were the evil that kept good people from getting ahead, even if I didn't know what capitalism meant, and I was clueless of the mysticism that filled my head. One night, a single night amidst a blur of weeks spent following deadheads around the country, we drank beers at the steps of 710 Ashbury in San Francisco. I looked around at our group. One of us was sitting on the ground studying an index card, memorizing the details of a new stolen identity. Another asked tourists for spare change. Two others were busy agreeing about the futility of reason. Another was giggling and jittery while he explained to others how LSD never has any effect on him whatsoever. Our beers were bought with bummed money. We had no property but our clothes. I thought we were truly living a wonderful life of permanent vacation, and how lucky we were for that to be possible. And then I had an epiphany: the only way such a thing was possible was on the backs of hard-working people like the father I had despised. I had hated him for how he always tried to oppress me with his "reality" of lies, the lies of The Man that were finally starting to sink in as truth. They were the makers, and we were the takers. I left the group to walk and think on my own. I had always been right that there was something wrong with society, but I was realizing that maybe I had been wrong about what it was. That night, I didn't yet know the full details and implications of the differences between left and right, collectivist and individualist. But my own personal Second Renaissance had begun.

So he can't stop someone from sharing the information through a non-performance medium, but he should be able to demand sites like youtube remove videos of others performing the trick?

In case you hadn't heard: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2131052/Facing-wrath-Magic-Circle-Penn-amp-Teller-sue-Dutch-entertainer-threatened-sell-secret-signature-trick.html Teller of Penn & Teller is suing another magician who was attempting to sell the secret to Teller's trick in a youtube video. Teller did copyright a drawing of how the trick appears. Is the secret to a magic trick intellectual property? Does the behavior conducted while performing a trick constitute material form and practical application of knowledge? Would it matter if he had never referred to Teller but claimed to have discovered it independently?

This program takes money from people forced into self-sacrifice. On the other hand, some of that money used to be yours. Ragnar took wealth so he could return it to the people from whom it was stolen, but he was careful to calculate exactly how much was truly theirs so he could know exactly how much they deserved to recover. Is it ok for an Objectivist to receive disability payments, but only if he calculates how much money was wrongfully taken from him and stops receiving the payments after that point?

If they don't need the outside world, and the inhabitants of Galt's Gulch are happiest among the other inhabitants of Galt's Gulch, why not simply remain in Galt's Gulch? If all their needs are met in Galt's Gulch, what reason is there to return to the outside world other than to help the outside world?

So the power went out in NYC. The world is still full of the men of mysticism and muscle. I thought they were supposed to die first or else renounce their irrational moral code. It didn't seem like enough time had passed for either to occur. Is the road really clear yet?

...and then simply abolish the directives?

It sounds like what you are saying is what makes cosmetics not evasion is the fact that observers recognize the presence of the cosmetics and are not deceived, because they know that a blue chair has been painted, and that someone wearing eye shadow has applied eye shadow. Does that mean that in cases where the observer is deceived, the wearer of cosmetics has committed evasion? Is hiding a scar not such a case? What about a person with hair dyed a different but naturally-occurring color which observers don't know is artificial?

Is there a singular type of intoxication that does not meet my criteria? Is my understanding of evasion incorrect?

Can it sometimes simply be a matter of inconvenience? Is it hyperbolic to refer to a "Morality of Death"? In a society whose only infringement upon the business or property of a man like Hank Reardon is a yearly tax of one dollar, that man will not die. Is calling it death a metaphor representing the notion that improper life is not truly life?

Are they not both escape from reality? Doesn't intoxication both hinder the ability to think and distort perception? Isn't the application of cosmetics a blank-out of one's true nature? Can an Objectivist ever engage in behavior that involves evasion? Should what is gained through such behavior be called happiness?