Crow

Garbage? What part?

If reality wasn't stable such that a science like Physics could not exist violation wouldn't be very useful.

Not Oist, Objectivist.

I understood this when I turned 11 and told my grandparents who had raised me since I was five I would not be going to church anymore. Pissed them off something awful. For around a year I had to endure shouting protests of concern from them every Sunday. Before this time I had came to understand in a foggy way I did not believe in the existence of a Christian God, I never had, but I thought I had no other alternative. The only principles that had ever been shown to me were mingled with Christian philosophy, this appalled me, I did not know what philosophy was but I was searching for one desperately. At that time I was ready for Objectivism however I did not discover it until eight years later. During those eight years while I was able to work the God character out of my system I had accepted all of the altruistic principles of the Christian morality and it was driving me into the ground, although I couldn't name at the time for the life of me what was doing it. After my discovery of Objectivism, a friend of mine simply mentioned "The Fountainhead" to me, I found the book and thereafter at first reluctantly but after proof of its correctness I accepted its principles by conviction, I searched out every book on Objectivism I could find.

About public education: the state takes children by force from their homes at the point of a gun and glues them into whatever seat they deem fit teaching them whatever is whimsically approved by state legislatures to be worthy of force feeding the young minds without the consent of the parents. I would rather burn my money then mail a copper coin to such institutions.

You are not using logic you are just grabbing fallacies at random and gluing them together. Your little strawman sentence you built is a fallacy that is not derived from the original Ayn Rand quote but is only taken out of context by converteing the abstract into the concrete. Ayn Rand's whole sentence communicates abstract ideas, yours is nothing but a concrete mimic and therefore false. "My brain was swimming happily because I had just completed my masterpiece." The above is an abstract sentence, while it is open to interpretation it does not in a concrete bound way mean that my brain was doing backstrokes in my pool and it would only seriously be interrupted to mean such by someone who has trouble thinking in terms of principles or is trying to prove that logic has it's limits. Apples are apples and oranges are oranges.

I have.

Two years ago a friend who I had been chatting with over the internet for a few years told me she had just read, "The Fountainhead" she said it was one of the best books she had ever read and she thought I would like it. I picked up a copy at a Books-a-million and was hooked on Objectivism for life. I read Atlas Shrugged a few months later, and afterwards I read her nonfiction books. It was what I had been searching for and trying to formulate all my life, although I did not know it, an integrated view of existence without contradiction.

What were the sentiments Pablo valued and carefully chose to express? Suffering, terror, fear, he wished others to contemplate these sentiments and from what I can tell his only reason that he wanted them to do so was he was feelings these sentiments at the time. Would you rather art not be predictable? Shock for the sake of shock, astonishment of the sake of astonishment, both as values? Would you rather Howard Roark live a life of integrity all the way to the end of "The Fountainhead" and then compromise on the last page? I think not. Predictability is consistency being consistent is showing integrity. I would ascribe to both paintings the attribute of predictable but this does not detract from their value as art. If Kinkaide's works are commonplace then Picasso's are non-existents. How often does it snow? How often do neighbors wave to each other? How often is a house light up implying many warm occupants all happily frolicking with each other? I am not saying Kinkaide is a great artist, I am saying his art when judged pound for pound is better then Picassos because Picassos art is at least in this instance meant to bring about the contemplation of suffering as an end in itself and Kinkaide's is meant to make the viewer contemplate joy. The philosophical question raised here is should life be an escape from suffering or a quest for joy, you have your answers in these paintings.

I can understand that Kindaide's painting is metaphorically a gingerbread house but Picasso's painting is metaphorically raw bovine kidney; I like the taste of the gingerbread house.

You didn't explain it well enough for me to understand.

Tom, why?

Why would anyone like that painting? I ask because the only reasons I can think of are malevolent. Picasso's Guernica in it's school of art is a wonderful painting, the work of a master, but it's school is to say the least inferior to Romantic Realism. Why would anyone want to depict suffering for suffering's sake as is depicted in that painting?

Art is the concrete expression of abstract metaphysical and epistemological values. The painting of a bright red delicious looking apple on a shined hickory table is one such expression that subsumes an incalculable number of concrete values. Art is an end in itself. Arts purpose is to be contemplated by man. The issue of which art is superior to another depends on judgments, philosophical value judgments. Epistemologically Objectivists value reason, certainty, pride, ambition, self-esteem, capitalism, strength, and greatness. They metaphysically believe reality is objective, knowable, concrete, and benevolent. To a man who holds reality as knowable; splotches of red, yellow, and brown paint on a canvass is not a depiction of a fall evening, the art flies in the face of his epistemological base. To a man who believes humans are not sacrificial animals a painting of Jesus Christ on a crucifix is grotesque, the art's depiction opposes his formerly said ethical belief. To a man who hates mankind a painting of hell is a moral sanction. In regards to your question, yes we do have broader claims to Romantic Realism's superiority over other schools of art, as we have broad claims to Objectivism's metaphysical and epistemological superiority as opposed to other philosophies.

Then America would be morally in the right if it were to blast France into oblivion?

Does America have the right to declare unto another country "You will not produce nuclear weapons, or else."?

My morality beings with dropping the idea that men are in reason and in nature enemies of eachother. -- Ayn Rand

Why would you want to own land in that kind of a world; where it isn't really yours?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/wallace/wallace27.html I typed Mr. Wallace an email criticizing his article. This is my email to him. "Write about what you know. Ayn Rand did not believe in sacrifice. "Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious. "Sacrifice" does not mean the rejection of the evil for the sake of the good, but of the good for the sake of the evil. "Sacrifice" is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don't." --Ayn Rand "Sacrifice is the surrender of a greater value for the sake of a lesser one or of a nonvalue. Thus, altruism gauges a man's virtue by the degree to which he surrenders, renounces or betrays his values. The rational principle of conduct is the exact opposite: always act in accordance with the hierarchy of your values, and never sacrifice a greater value to a lesser one. This applies to all choices, including one's actions toward other men. It requires that one posses a defined hierarchy of rational values. Without such a hierarchy, neither rational conduct nor considered value judgments nor moral choices are possible." -- Ayn Rand Your article is a lie and to any mind not equipped with the knowledge to shoot down your sneer it is poison. http://www.lewrockwell.com/wallace/wallace27.html" This is his reply. "You're a dumbass, like all Randroids."

Would all roads be owned privately in a purely capticalist system? Would all roads be toll roads?