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moralist

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  1. Like
    moralist reacted to SapereAude in Was the strike, a purge?   
    The problem is that you are pretending that all this happened in a vacuum.
    Several references are made in AS to human history. To the fact that The USA was the first real attempt to have a rational and moral society.
    What he saw was not a people that had no opportunity to know what he knew.
    He was watching them willfully destroy what was good and right. The company he walked out of was not an isolated incident.
    It was made clear in the book that that was the direction the world and now the USA had taken, with the voters' tacit consent.
    They made clear their allegiance to the code of looting and pillaging with their vote that night.

    He did not destroy their world, they did.
    He did not *steal* the other producers from the world of the looters- he gave them refuge.
    He did not "create a gas chamber and lock them in"- he left the gas chamber they created and saved everyone he was sure wouldn't attempt to drag him back. Then he left them to their own creation.

    If you throw yourself off a building I am not murdering you by refusing to use my body to block your fall.
  2. Like
    moralist reacted to tadmjones in the trillion dollar coin...   
    The fact you consider food and energy costs as relavent to a consumer price index shows your covert conspiratoric nature, academic economists have it all figured out, just watch, ttsst .. doubter.( I used to be a denier, but now I'm like yeah it's gettin a little warmer in here)
  3. Like
    moralist reacted to intellectualammo in Was the strike, a purge?   
    He clearly wanted to bring death and destruction to them, not life; as in, Galt could have tried to speak to the world then about his Morality of Life, of his code, his philosophy, but never did then. Not even a single word of it. For he set out to show. I'll show them. "I propose to show the world who depends on whom[…] who makes whose livelihood possible and what happens to whom when who walks out" I'll show them. I'll show them all the proof around them with the death toll, all the dead bodies of men, women, children, in the amount of destruction that results... "O my brothers, am I cruel? But I say: What is falling, we should still push."* Frisco did. He was explicit about it, "I was out to speed up the destruction." "the destruction of d' Anconia Copper, of Taggart Transcontinental, of Wyatt Oil, of Rearden Metal."

    Galt had to have been thinking along this line that night at the meeting, I think: "He whom you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster."* I'll teach them. I'll teach them not with ink on paper, but with blood on ground. And speed up its spilling. And without having to get any of it on my own hands.

    Galt was no fly swatter.** Just go where they cannot fly to. And after they die, return.

    "I am a prelude to better players, o my brothers! A precedent! Follow my precedent!"*


    *quote from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Walter Kaufmann translation.
    ** http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=23468&hl

    (Rand said, "Nietzsche […], as a poet, he projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for man’s greatness, expressed in emotional, not intellectual, terms.")
  4. Like
    moralist reacted to dream_weaver in Rearden's desire to kill teachers   
    The balif cries, "All rise,"

    The Honorable Reader enters.

    The balif announces, "The supreme mental court of this human consciousness is now in session. The Honorable Judge Reader presiding."

    "You may be seated."

    The balif cites, "Docket number 1074, the case of Atlas Shrugged: morality of altruism vs. morality of egoism."

    "Is the prosecution ready?"

    "I am, your Honor", Miss Rand replies.

    "Is the defense ready?"

    "I am, you Honor", Miss Rand replies.

    "You may proceed."

    That could make for a rather novel approach.
  5. Like
    moralist reacted to Boydstun in Objectivist Mechanical Engineers   
    .
    Would Be

    Would be the rise to wonder,
    . . . . this click-shut night.
    To those trains’ risen rumbles,
    . . . . this silk tie tight.

    Would be to traction motor,
    . . . . copper, shellac.
    To axles’ bright ten-thousandths,
    . . . . castings in stack.

    Would be for tons two hundred,
    . . . . high cranes glide free.
    To locomotive thunder,
    . . . . we who would be.


    (Copyright 2013 by Stephen C. Boydstun)
  6. Like
    moralist got a reaction from SapereAude in Tragic and self explanatory (Gun Control)   
    NRA's Wayne LaPierre said it best:

    "Only a good man with a gun can stop a bad man with a gun."

    Notice that the guns are amoral inanimate objects... and only men can be bad or good by their deeds.
  7. Like
    moralist reacted to FeatherFall in Tragic and self explanatory (Gun Control)   
    Thanks for posting that Larry Correia peice. I haven't read it all, but I felt the need to post a quote before I forget. I haven't verified it, but here goes:


  8. Like
    moralist reacted to oso in Tragic and self explanatory (Gun Control)   
    Accusing someone's belief in an ideological issue of being based on culture is a baseless ad hominem. It's especially worthless when attempting to use it against people who already defy ideological norms by rejecting altruism and embracing a philosophy that prevents education through osmosis. Well, you can't even try to use it against me because I'm a Canadian, who wasn't raised around guns nor around a particularly gun friendly culture. My beliefs on gun control are entirely my own.
    As for Ayn Rand's view, it's funny that you start agreeing with her when she expresses uncertainty and basically says "I don't know" and then claim that she is somehow supporting your view. As I’m sure you agree, Ayn Rand can be wrong. The right to self-defence entails a right to do what is necessary to defend yourself and sometimes that will include killing. Also, any right to self-defence implies the right to the means to self defence, just as the right to life implies a right to property. The reason this issue is so cut and dry is that any law that outlaws concealing guns can only possibly affect law abiding citizens because if you plan on concealing a gun in order to rob or murder, then you will never care about the penalty for carrying. As for how to reconcile self-defence with preventing people from killing at whim, first of all, you make killing people at whim illegal. Second, you make carrying in public require a permit, which would only be issued to people without serious criminal records or mental issues and to people who are trained in the use of handguns. It's just the same as how you reconcile productive transportation with preventing people from using cars to kill people at whim. The most important issue here though, is that people are generally good. That's why you don't hear about random hit and run murders. That's the reason why despite the millions of people in America legally carrying handguns, very few commit any crimes let alone senseless murder.
    You’re right that if the United States were turned into a dictatorship, gun crime would likely go down but that alone doesn’t justify any of the measures you suggested. Reducing the amount of murders is not the standard when it comes to the justification of government action. The standard is whether a government action violates or protects individual rights. As explained in the last thread, there is no such thing as your “conflict of rights”. When a government takes an action which violates rights, it is always wrong and robbing good people of the right to self-defence is definitely violating their rights. It’s also not a guarantee that dictatorial gun laws will make significant dents in the amount of guns in the hands of criminals in which case everyone is left a soft target. Even if you do somehow manage to eliminate next to all guns (this is me bending over backwards), the people are still left defenceless against the few criminals with guns left, the government, and all crimes committed with knives or bats or fists.
    As for changing the culture such that anyone who owned a gun would be looked at as a weirdo, how could you possibly justify that? You would have to make the case that it is inherently wrong to own a gun, for any reason, regardless of how safe and responsible you are. You would need to attack, not only the hobbies of hunting and target shooting, but also the virtue of taking responsibility for your own safety. You would need to attack the idea that a populace ought to be prepared for the possibility that their government will degrade into tyranny. The fact is, the only way to attack these things is by focusing on individual misconduct and it’s impossible to justify a stigma against gun ownership in general because it is possible to own guns responsibly and for good reasons. The American gun culture is rational.
    Any middle ground between freedom and banning guns will do nothing at best or quite likely cause more crime. That's because anything short of dictatorial laws, such as the laws you suggested as palatable to Americans, will not do a single thing to prevent criminals from getting guns. Gun control such as automatic weapon bans, the recently expired Assault Weapons Ban, and the recently abolished gun registry in Canada, are examples of gun control that does absolutely nothing but placate liberals and violate rights. Any law that disarms good people can only do harm. The most obvious is creating so called “gun-free zones”, whether they are on the scale of a nation, or a school. All they do is disarm good people, making them soft targets for any predator that doesn’t care about a sign or the law. The massacres you’ve seen in American schools and the rise in crime rates in Australia are the price of being “gun free”. Good people with guns make society safer.
  9. Like
    moralist reacted to Grames in Tragic and self explanatory (Gun Control)   
    I agree. All gun-control laws including those gun-free school zones must be repealed before more children die.
  10. Like
    moralist reacted to Spiral Architect in going Galt...   
    If I read you right, you are looking for how someone might reduce it to essentials as a principle to be applied in life, which is a little problematic since as Nicky said it well defined in the book as a dramatization of the novel’s central conflict. But to distill it down into essentials then integrate it as a principle I would say “Going Galt” would be the negative of the trader principle:
    Refusal to trade your virtues for other’s vices.
  11. Like
    moralist reacted to FeatherFall in Ask for Olympic Symbol Doughnuts. Jackie at Krispy Kreme Delivers!   
    IA, what you have described is just one business model. That model that doesn't work outside of densely populated areas. Even you implicitly acknowledge this when you note the absence of throngs of busy people. Yet you cling to the idea that Jackie should be fired. I think that's funny.

    Some businesses survive on repeat customers with whom a little extra time is taken to establish a relationship.
  12. Like
    moralist reacted to Spiral Architect in The bad guy won. The fight continues.   
    I have actually contacted the local Tea-Party group here in West Michigan. I was happy to see none of the fundamental religion issues that would have been a no sell. There are certainly some religious people but the group is about economic and Constitutional issues, not social. More importantly it got me on some e-mail listing for current events in Michigan and I cannot understate how much additional information has been made available. Listings for State Congressmen, phone numbers, emails, their votes on current subjects, Bill and vote updates, etc. I thought I was informed but this blew me away.

    As an example, last week the House Committee that was supposed to pass the exchange for Obamacare here in Michigan, which would have sent it to the floor then into law sense our Senate already passed it and our Governor has said he would sign it, well that got blocked because enough people turbo called and emailed the offices of key politicians on that committee. Story floating around is that there was a lot of pissed off Lobbyists in Lansing that day. I’m happy to say I was part of that.

    I’ll be honest, I was wary since I had strong suspicions when contacting the group but after the election I decided to try something new. At worst I would lose soem time then move on. I’m glad I did. We’ll see how it goes but for now if I can at least help block some nonsense then it is worth being on a few mailing lists. If it goes well then I'll get more involved.
  13. Like
    moralist got a reaction from dream_weaver in Hi people...   
    Fresh red meat is always irresistable to carnivores...



    Thanks. The atmosphere here is quite pleasant and cordial.
  14. Like
    moralist reacted to dream_weaver in Can there be honor among thieves?   
    The mental disposition toward fighting for the moral high ground is the recognition that morality is the recognition of man's proper relationship to reality. The common misconception is that it can be circumvented without adverse consequences.
  15. Like
    moralist got a reaction from softwareNerd in Life DESPITE politics   
    The wisdom of your positive statement is a striking contrast to the negativity of impotent complaints. My focus of attention has been similar to yours... on the ways which I can render the role of government inconsequential to the quality of my life. Or more broadly... how to live a good life in an evil world.

    Each person's experience of government varies widely and is largely dependent on how they live. This puts the responsibility on us, rather than on the government. Someone I know said that it's more important what you do in your house than what they do in the White House.
  16. Like
    moralist reacted to softwareNerd in Life DESPITE politics   
    Another "any thought"... ...

    It is really important to plan and design your life so that you can achieve your ends and your happiness despite the politicians and despite the ideologies of your fellow voters.
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