Harrison Danneskjold

You can talk about morality for days on end to a relativist, with absolutely no results. In the end what's right and wrong for you is different from their right and wrong and nothing you can say will ever convince them otherwise. To admit that there IS an OBJECTIVE answer out there, which everyone should agree with, is really the first step towards Objectivism.

Well, about Sam Harris, this may well be a turning point in the dominant philosophy. Probably not. But I can hope. Aside from his obvious altruistic bent, he's asking the right questions and he represents a monumental step in the right direction. Burkas are symbolic of philosophical abominations, and putting cholera in the drinking water would be a horrible idea! He has some very, very dangerous ideas, but he's after the truth. Isn't that what Objectivism is about; moral truth? Even if all this amounts to is spreading the idea that ethical issues aren't subjective, once someone realizes that there are solid, logical answers out there, how much better is that for Rand's ideas? It's very invigorating. =D

Nonviolent crime is an entirely different story.

The right to bear arms is an extention of the right to self-defense, which is a necessary consequence of the right to live. The question to ask yourself is: does a criminal have the right to his own life? If so then he has the right to bear arms; if not then he shouldn't be alive anymore. (or, in the very least, not freely roaming the streets) YES, once someone has served their time, they have the right to own a gun again. So if violent offenders are being released from prison, turning around and shooting people again, the problem is that they were released at all. Cold, calculated murder should result in death. If someone goes to jail for nonlethal violent crimes (armed robbery, attempted murder, et cetera) three different times within a single lifetime, I'd give them the death penalty too. But other than that the answer is yes.

Human beings have volitional consciousness. Someone may choose to do any particular thing, or they may not. You can prevent someone from killing you by killing them first, if and when it's necessary. You can prevent a certain action. You can't force someone to perform a certain action. A mind doesn't function at gunpoint; you cannot actually force someone to tell you what they don't want to. The act of torture is an attempt to deal with men the way one deals with nature; it's the icon of coercion and a blatant refusal to accept the facts of reality. You can't negate someone's free will with any amount of force, pain or fear; if someone truly doesn't want to tell you something then you'll be forced by necessity to escalate further and further into the depths of depravity if you attempt to torture it from them. (that's probably why torture is what it is; saying "please" simply won't do it and, the firmer a man's convictions, the more cruelly you'll have to treat him in order to break them) The act of torturing someone is the attempt to turn A into non-A by whatever means necessary. I'm still not sure if that makes it morally evil or not. But I sure as Hell know that no rational person would attempt it, themselves; why are we debating if others should do it on our behalf?

If some maniac came at me with a knife, I would shoot him and I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. In giving me no other option except to die, he would've sealed his own fate. If I was able to restrain him and tie him up for a while, until I could decide what to do next, I wouldn't hesitate to do that either. I could not torture someone, no matter what the circumstances. I have to think it over a bit more, because I really haven't examined this opinion much yet. But if I visualize actual, brutal, gruesome torture, no matter who the victim is, I cannot imagine it as acceptable or the slightest bit necessary. But I'll have to give it more thought; that's my reflex, emotional reaction. I'll elaborate once I figure out what I'm alluding to.

Wow. Just wow.

Intellectual Ammo, you claim that you don't hold a duty-based system of ethics, but that's what you're implicitly advocating. You're upset that Hugh Akston and Ragnar Danneskjold simply "gave up" the debate before they even started, implying that it was wrong (or perhaps distasteful?) of them to do so. The fact is that nobody has the duty to educate the rest of the human race. If they want to try then they can, but if they don't then they can do something else. If you found a technique for creating infinite and free energy, (speaking purely hypothetically) would you be morally bound to tell someone about it and how it works? What about two people? Does it have to be at least a dozen people, the rest of the species, or just one other person? What if they think you're full of it? Are you doomed to dedicate the rest of your existence to helping them discover it, or are they allowed to walk away? I think that if you stop to consider it a bit more, you'll realize the answers to your own questions.

I don't think the majority of her villains were consistent, at all. In Atlas Shrugged the villains were the looters and the parasites, and throughout the course of the book she revealed that they were motivated by hatred and fear; a desire for themselves to die and for the human race to cease to exist. If someone consciously realized that emotion, reaffirmed it and began acting on it consistently, they would be actively trying to kill everyone and themselves. They might blow themselves up in the streets or they might do something else, something less dramatic, but the goal would be the same. Most of her villains seemed to be motivated by some deep, dark urges that they could neither confront nor forget; things that would linger just outside of their conscious minds for years on end. Notice that in the end, when James Taggart finally realizes what he really wants, he essentially has a nervous breakdown. But while I doubt that most of her villains were philosophically consistent, off the top of my head, there is one in AS who was: Fred Kinnan, who knew full well what he was doing and why, knew he was evil and really didn't care.

No, you don't have to read the damn book! It's an absolutely unsurpassed masterpiece and you SHOULD read it for your own enjoyment, but if reading isn't your thing then you don't have to!! Since when did AS become the sole source of arcane wisdom in the world? Read her nonfiction, think about it and try to imagine her principles in action. Better yet. . . I know I'm completely insane. . . Watch the movies? The fact is that if someone's seriously dedicated to the truth and truly honest with themselves, eventually, they can piece together John Galt from the nonfiction. Not the character John Galt; the ideal to achieve. Normal people CAN come to the right answers themselves, if they actually want to, and anyone who says otherwise should reread the book, themselves!! And if he read John Galt's speech then your friend already has all of the necessary pieces. He'll have to assemble them himself, which might take a while and quite a bit of effort (definitely much more than just reading it) but he can figure it out on his own!!! Ayn Rand isn't the only source of objective truth in the world. The potential is in each rational human being. Ayn Rand is the shortcut, without which each rational person would have to spend a lifetime pondering their own philosophy before they could perfect it.

Heinlein will always be my favorite, for nothing other than being the mind that conceived of Friday, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and The Puppetmasters. I've been very disappointed in recent years by some of his other work, such as Farnham's Freehold. But, still. . . He wrote Harsh freaking Mistress. Aasimov is pretty good. So is Frank Herbert, if you enjoy a high word-to-content ratio. Ender's Game almost became one of my all-time favorites, until the ending. I will never forgive Orson Scott Card for that. He may have written less hopelessly bleak things than that; I don't know. I still don't trust him enough to try one. Michael Crichton is a god of science fiction.

Who is John Galt?

I've read a few of your thoughts on art, J, and mine are nearly antithetical. However, I think that's actually extraordinarily apt and true. John Galt alone is worth a mountain of textbooks.

Art is a reflection of the mind that makes it and impacts its viewers' minds similarly. Art you enjoy is art that compliments the way you view reality or what you think reality should be; art you dislike is art that conflicts with what you hold to be true and good. It is a physical extension of the minds who aspire to it. That's something Ayn Rand said, or a close approximation. I don't know whether she would have liked the Penrose Steps or not. I actually do because it's a clever imitation of infinity; a flash of an impossible but rather pleasant dream that it would be nice to experience. But what sort of dreamworld would Picasso inhabit? Picasso's paintings are grotesque, not just because they're impossible (art couldn't function if it could only depict what's really real) but because they depict people as gruesome monstrosities. They're somewhat similar to the drawings of a child, except that what Picasso did as an adult was done intentionally, and also perhaps less skillfully than some children. That's why I don't like his work. It's not just that it's a vision of fantasy; it's that such visions are truly appalling to contemplate. It's like the difference between watching the movie Serenity or the movie Pandorum, even though both are science fiction. It's just which fiction you'd prefer to spend mental time inside of.

There won't be any peace in the Middle East so long as Islam remains the dominant metaphysical framework. I haven't personally read the Koran, but look at all the wars happening there; from the ethnic feuds to the jihads, not to mention the oppression and outright genocide, they all have one common denominator. In each and every case, at least one party (sometimes both) claims the God-given right to annihilate the other. When someone genuinely thinks that murdering you would be a virtuous and glorious act, more desirable than the continuation of their own life, you cannot coexist with them. You can't reason with them. Any compromise you reach will somehow entail your own destruction. And in the Middle East there is a large group of people who want to spread their religion across the world, and kill anyone and everyone who doesn't comply. So logically, there are only two possible ways to resolve that. One involves you and I converting to Islam; the other involves the enlightenment (or, quite possibly the disintegration) of many, many extremist (self-consistent) Muslims. Once Islam is gone there will still be some conflict. Bad people exist all over the place; people will always hurt each other, to some extent. But once Islam is gone at least there won't be any more suicide bombers and children-shields.

I agree with the majority of the earlier responses; it's a very unlikely scenario. Although, on the other hand, it's only slightly more bizarre than having American drones spying on American citizens, selling firearms to Mexican drug cartels and contemplating the possibility of killing our own citizens without trial or due process, all in the name of safety. And yet these have all happened, and Obama's fingerprints are on each of them. I don't think that he'll actually declare himself the lifelong dictator one morning; it's far more likely that he'll step down at the end of his term and simply engineer certain mechanisms to allow him to run the show from behind the scenes. Something shady and secretive like that. But if he were to declare himself the dictator one morning, I have no doubt that he'll do so very "charismatically" and most Americans will simply adore him for it.

Bias? I'd look at the Most Serene Republic of Goggalorostan. It spends almost all of its money on education and virtually nothing on law and order, and so there is no crime. (ergo criminals are caused by undereducation and poverty) It has a tax rate of 73% and is in the top 5% fastest-growing economies in the world. I'm sorry, but at 73% I would be a criminal just to get paid in cash. Still going to give it a try, but I have my doubts. . .

Although this does contribute to the majority of my deaths, since every once in a while I'll find an entire fort full of Thalmor or something like that and I'm bound by my own oath to attack it and meet my gruesome demise. But that's what the 'save' button is for. =]

Well, this is how I see it. The Thalmor are a very good example of the worst possible traits of man(elven)kind. They think that elves are superior to all other races, and High Elves are superior to all other elves, and they want to see everyone else accept that idea. They're basically fireball-chucking Nazis with pointy ears. Regardless of how the Thalmor feel about it, the Nords have a right to worship whatever gods or spirits or whatever the Hell they want to. The Thalmor's outlawing of any belief or idea is an attempt to change people's minds by force instead of reason, which is inherently evil. That said, the Empire exists to protect its citizens from homicidal maniacs (like the Thalmor) and the White-Gold concordat is a total negation of that. The Empire isn't doing it's job, the Nords are subjected to violence (torture and death) for the content of their minds, so they have every right in the world to fight for their beliefs. The legitimacy of those beliefs is irrelevant; they have a right to hold them. Note that the Thalmor are the Nords' actual adversaries and the Empire, intent on being 'practical' is helping the Thalmor achieve their goals. And while Skyrim doesn't set out to expressly show you that any given choice is good or evil (which I appreciate) it's so much more fun if you take it as seriously as possible. Slaughtering millions of generic NPC's can be very fun for a few days but, in my experience, if you actually try to act like you would in reality and treat the characters as if they were real people, well. . . That's when you end up sitting there a month or two later, shouting "You can't kill him!! No! I will make you pay for this if it's the last thing I do!!" XD So yeah. I usually play a High Elf simply because of their talent with magick and spellcasting, but I make it a point of honor to slay any and every Thalmor I see.