Harrison Danneskjold

Whose life is it anyway? Properly, individual rights have to be justified as man's life, the right to. Life, being self-directed/generated action, which we know to be volitional "action" of an individual's mind in accord with his physical acts.
Therefore, the right to freedom of action, and protected individual rights.
Coming at this from the bodily-ownership angle, I didn't mean to by-pass the above. Although the greater society may not be aware of Rand's unique explanation of rights, her "freedom of action" is applicable (I think would be agreeable) to anyone. 
The freedom of action for a whole society of individuals can never be homogeneously "one size fits all". I.e. man's rights are indeed one size for all, but each man's choices of action can't be and shouldn't.
in action, as in thought and values then, what suits one, isn't the universal standard for all, nor vice-versa. That sounds most "categorical imperative". (I'm convinced Kant's CI was the implicit moral base of the mass lockdowns-vaccinations).
For proper life to keep continuity during a pandemic, as always, an individual has to decide on his/her own health and risk/benefit status . The enormous human range of age/etc/etc. requires a personal evaluation that can't possibly be made by others. Particularly, not forced on him by others. There are many thinking and rational people who know they haven't a need for vaccines for reasons well-known. There is also nil certainty of not having side effects and adverse reactions.
There will be some and many whose fear of vaccination is seemingly irrational in avoidance of their own benefit. Again, it is not a choice anyone else can make on their behalf. Morally, one might say, they are wrong: in rights they have that freedom of (in)action. They should be upheld by those who value liberties.
(What doesn't need repeating here is vaccines protect one quite well - BUT - are unable to prevent further infections. You'd think that fact has been understood at large, incredibly it's still denied. Simply: Everyone remains a pathogen 'vector' - vaxed and not. The earlier demand for all to get inoculated selflessly for the sake of all others has provably become superfluous and intrusive. The vaccinated have presumably gained their protection, so they and govts should leave other people, who pose no extra danger to them, alone. Visibly, their moral sanctimony is all that keeps them demanding compliance of others. Control, not health and wellbeing). 
Rights cannot be suspended for an emergency nor equally in normal times. An emergency is exactly when they must be affirmed, more than ever. The effect of this immoral exercise of suspended rights for some - we will see and are seeing how difficult recovering our rights for all will be afterwards.
Whose life - and body - is it, anyway?
 

If Webster's or anyone else did this, they are wrong.  There is a clear difference between being anti-vaccine and being anti-mandate.  Being anti-vaccine means holding that vaccines are bad and people shouldn't use them.  Being anti-mandate, in the context of vaccines, means holding that people shouldn't be forced to vaccinate.  This follows from the meaning of the prefix "anti-".
I am anti-draft, but I am not anti-military.
If you are talking to someone who is confused about this, whether because of Webster's or for any other reason, you may need to explain the difference.  If they are too irrational to listen, you won't be able to communicate with them.
 

The problem here is that failure to get vaccinated is not an initiation of force.
The government exists to protect people from criminals (and invading foreign armies), but not to protect them from natural phenomena such as hurricanes, earthquakes -- or viruses. In a free country, people can organize to protect themselves against such things, and the government is only involved insofar as it prevents crime from occurring.
In some circumstances it might be possible to sue someone for negligence if their failure to do something causes a natural phenomenon to be worse for someone else. Generally, however, I think you have to willingly assume a responsibility before you can be held liable for shirking it.
Interestingly, the government has granted the manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines "immunity" from liability lawsuits.

The purpose of government is (supposed to be) to protect individual rights. The only way to violate individual rights is by initiation or threat of force. Therefore, the government maintains a monopoly on force to ensure that it is only used in retaliation and only against those who initiate or threaten its use.
As such, the only "mandates" from a proper government are negative obligations, e.g., don't murder people, don't defraud people, don't steal from people, don't extort stuff from people, etc.
The government can enforce these without ever initiating force.
Individual rights are not (supposed to be) subject to vote. Unlimited democracies usually end up tyrannical, as mob rule.
As for vaccine mandates, the issue here is whether one has a right to one's own body. I would say so, and therefore I oppose vaccine mandates on the same grounds that I oppose the forced pregnancy and childbirth that result from abortion bans.
A vaccine mandate is not the same thing as a vaccine itself, and it's possible to recommend a vaccine without supporting a mandate. I mean, I think everybody should read Atlas Shrugged to "inoculate" themselves against socialism and communism, but I absolutely don't believe that the reading of Atlas Shrugged should be mandated by law.

I think it's immoral to outlaw meth, heroin, cocaine, ...
But I'm sure as hell not going to use them on principle.
 

I mean, not really. While there is a great deal of exegesis of "the arbitrary as neither true nor false" in ch. 5 of OPAR, but the burden of proof principle is a logical commonplace.
On the second point, I had made the following remark already: "The one way we could know whether we were in error about a given faculty is by discovery of some truth which reveals us our error." This is the way to counter the method of Cartesian doubt with regards to individual faculties, that all of our faculties couldn't be in error all the time.
But the point of the simulation or BIV scenarios is not to deny existence, it's to deny your knowledge of it. Imagine someone saying you are really a brain in a vat, you are hooked up and experiencing a simulation. They're perfectly content to say yes, existence exists, you just don't genuinely experience it beyond what is fed to you. And since we can imagine this being the case, it is therefore possible, unless the realist prove it's not.
The way to counter this is the burden of proof principle, and a denial of the assumption that because something is imaginable it is possible.
 

You equate a philosophic system/worldview (a limited treatement of a set of issues) with the entire field of philosophy.
In other words, you're arguing for the latter, to people who mean the former.
One can only judge by himself, by studying the system and determining which principles add up to the total worldview.
I am copying my own summary. Anybody who is at home with the following, I personally call an objectivist.
 

To the Readers of The Objectivist Forum, The Objectivist Forum, Vol. 1, No. 1
It seems to me that you're too caught up with calling yourself an Objectivist. Even if, in fact, you were not an Objectivist, does that take anything away from the highly virtuous actions you took during that period of time? I think not. Living virtuously in pursuit of your own happiness is the most important thing in the world. If you've rationally (and I cannot emphasize this enough) concluded that a departure from some of Rand's ideas will enhance your happiness, then you are in the right to act on that. 

RationalEgoist,
I don’t think it will do to say that if Rand did not live to say something was part of her philosophy, then it is not. Something can be logically entailed by what definitely was stated by her as part of her philosophy. The entailment will do. (Additionally, as you would know, just me saying that something is part of my philosophy does not really show that my dicta is part of philosophic views at all, and if philosophic, my stating it does not make it necessarily consistent with other parts of my philosophy.)
Here is such an entailment, taken from my fundamental philosophy paper published last summer:
Rand’s informal say-so years later was not required for the thesis being part of her philosophy. Had she died before making that remark, as you see above, we could infer that the thesis was part of the philosophy she invented and stated in Galt’s Speech.
I’m not letting you off the hook, by the way, from being an Objectivist, simply because you disagree with Rand’s esthetics. Her philosophy in that area, like her theory of concepts, was not included in Galt’s Speech, and anything essential (or 'core' or 'fundamental') to her philosophy is in that text. Mere exemplification of her theory of literature in her novels is no setting out of her theory. She wrote above the text of Galt’s Speech in her book For the New Intellectual “This is the Philosophy of Objectivism.” Anything essential to the philosophy is in there or in its logical entailments. Rand’s esthetics and her theory of concepts are, of course, part of her philosophy of Objectivism. But they are not essential to the philosophy, however fine and important they may be in various ways. So. You’re not off the hook.
I’m delighted by your remarks about the rightness of just realizing and stating that one is not an Objectivist if one disagrees with an essential (or ‘core’, or ‘fundamental’) of the philosophy. The practice of enthusiasts of Rand’s fiction and philosophy thinking that when they have come to disagree with something essential in the philosophy, then Rand made a mistake in what was her philosophy and that it needs revision, while keeping the name Objectivism, has always been absurd. Neither Objectivism nor any other philosophy has as its definition “that in philosophy which is true” even if it happens that some philosophy such as Objectivism is entirely true. (Well, OK, I do concede that idiots are allowed that definition.)

The chronological order was:
Peter Schwartz - “On Sanctioning the Sanctioners”
David Kelley - "A Question of Sanction"
Leonard Peikoff - “Fact and Value”
David Kelley - Truth and Toleration in Objectivism 
There is also a related lecture by Kelley in 1991 here. (I haven't seen much of that; I'm more a reader.)
I apparently do not have a copy of the initial article in the public exchanges, which was “On Sanctioning the Sanctioners” by Peter Schwartz.

Harrison,
I hope to watch this video later. Meanwhile I have a couple of related questions.
Would you say that someone is an Objectivist only if they hold to everything that is truly part of the Objectivist philosophy? Or would you say that someone is an Objectivist if they hold to the essentials of the Objectivist philosophy? I'm with the latter.
It’s not that I go around wondering of people I encounter whether they are an Objectivist. But the two questions are sound all the same, and both are important for precision when talking about Objectivist philosophy.
I first met David Kelley around 1990. He had come to Chicago to talk to a circle there about the new organization he was trying to get going, which was called the Institute for Objectivist Studies. He addressed the question of what defines the Objectivist philosophy in terms of what is essential to the philosophy, and he took concurrence with those essentials to mark who is an Objectivist. After his remarks, I said I’d noticed he hadn’t mentioned Rand’s theory of concepts in its measurement-omission element, and I asked whether he considered that essential to the philosophy. He said that on balance he thought not.
Today I think he was correct on that. Rand’s measurement-omission theory of concepts is truly part of her philosophy, but not essential to it. I’ve come around to that verdict because of something Rand had said as a preface to Galt’s Speech in her For the New Intellectual book. She wrote there before the text of the speech: “This is the philosophy of Objectivism.” That has to mean that at least the essentials are contained in that text. (That is not to say that everything in the speech that is philosophy is an essential of the philosophy.)
Straight deductive implications from those essentials would also be essentials. Things merely consistent with the essentials would not be essentials of the philosophy; that would be too weak a constraint to even pronounce such things as markedly part of the philosophy at all in my view. Arguing that mathematics is about the world, for example, is consistent with this philosophy, but also with many others, so not distinctively part of this philosophy. Showing that the way mathematics is about the world requires incorporation of Rand’s measurement-theory of concepts, however, would be a philosophy of mathematics distinctively Objectivist. It would be part of Objectivism, specifically the setting forth of an Objectivist philosophy of mathematics. It would not be an essential of the philosophy.
In some recent year, I think Peikoff also came around to saying that whether someone is an Objectivist hangs only on whether they hold to the essentials of the philosophy. That is not to say that he would agree with my constraint that in order to be an essential of the philosophy a thing has to be contained in Galt’s Speech or be a direct implication from essentials therein.
There are things that contradict those essentials, though one would might need to muster an argument to be persuasive that there is a contradiction at hand. I’d say that supporting mandatory national service of all the youth in the country contradicts essentials of Objectivism, and so one could say that a Representative advocating that is profoundly at odds with Objectivism. Composing an argument for the reality of the contradiction might be useful in some communications.
Another such contradiction, one I’ll argue, would be someone holding to the existence of God (under a traditional conception of that). Rand taking as the most fundamental of truths ‘existence exists’ bars the existence of an intelligent being such as God as more fundamental than existence and anything else as more fundamental than existence. Then too, in Galt’s Speech, Rand argued virtue of reason, the virtue of choosing reason, to the purpose of attaining the true ultimate value in life, which is life itself. Faith in the sense of the suspension of critical reason, she argued, is wrong, morally wrong. Acceptance of the existence of God by the mental operation of faith is wrong, however much true goodness one might repose in one’s notion of God. The true repose of all human value and meaning is in life in the world. The sacred is us alive on earth.

You aren't aware of the Star Trek Q?!?!!
Shame! Dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow; dishonor on your whole family! Go watch some more Star Trek: The Next Generation immediately!

 
Thank you for stating that under absolutely no circumstances are your opinions open to revision; that simplifies things a whole lot. Some stellar Objectivist Epistemology huh?
 
Indeed.
From what I gathered from the linked website (you seem to have read far more of it than I, but still, I did read some) the posts are about as vague as you might expect from your local medium.
The FoxHunt is on! Great; what is that and what precisely do you mean? We Can Not Be Stopped! Cool; who are you and what can you not be stopped from doing? I'm sensing a dead loved one whose name starts with a "G" over here!
They're the sort of claims that can't easily be proven or disproven. Not a great epistemic look.
 
This is gonna be an awkward question...
 
Now that Joe Biden is officially our real president (as awful as he truly is) ... What do you now think of that prediction?

"You can't take the sky from me"
Damn straight. That's one of the things nobody can take from you without your consent.

When discussing such radical and long-range possibilities as this I (like Elon Musk) find it much more useful to reason from known principles than what does or does not sound plausible.
Will we ever have truly faster-than-light travel? No; according to our current understanding of physics that is impossible and not worth mentioning outside of fiction. Will Mars ever have its own proper magnetosphere? If a magnetosphere is caused by the motion of internal molten metals (which Mars appears to lack) then probably not; certainly not in the next thousand years or so. Maybe in a thousand years we will have ways of injecting such moving lava into Mars (PERHAPS) but as for our own moon that is out of the question. Can human beings survive on Mars? Certainly, if we send them with adequate food, water and oxygen (and especially if they have the means to produce these in situ, as we already know how to do) then they can live there.
Granted, whether or not one could ever enjoy an autumn sunset on Mars as we do on Earth is debatable (not on any time frame; whether or not such atmospheric conditions could ever be created is debatable). However, if it isn't then Mars would have its own sort of seasons and its own sort of Autumn, which I would like to experience.
Especially in power technology? The track record of artificial intelligence is much worse. We thought we'd have basically-sentient-machines many decades ago and we're currently still trying to teach them how to drive. However, even in cases where real technology has utterly failed to live up to the dreams of sci-fi authors, this does not equate to the stagnation of such technologies. We may not hit  the targets we've set and yet this doesn't mean we're hitting nothing at all.
I assume you're familiar with AlphaGo; the AI which beat the best human Go player on Earth several years ago? Well since then there's been AlphaStar (a StarCraft-playing-AI) which also went on to beat the best human players on Earth in an incredibly hectic and fast-paced real time strategy game.
Just because our actual progress doesn't live up to our expectations for it (and sometimes embarrassingly so) does not mean that no progress at all is being made.
Oh, yes, there will never be a society without money; not even a communist one. That certainly is true. There will never be any truly faster-than-light travel or travel through black holes, either.
It's interesting you mention Star Trek, though, because there are other aspects of that show (besides the Communist sympathies) which actually do stand up to proper scientific scrutiny.
Have you heard of the Alcubierre Drive?

To my mind, this is the most compelling argument for off Earth colonization.

The realization
that every individual's contextual surroundings, metaphysically is becoming such that freedom to choose to live outside of a wrong society, outside of its grasping, oppressive, insipid, nanny-tyrant grip...into some pristine environment abundant enough to support a human life... not free from hard work but at least a free one ... is fast disappearing... 
is existentially depressing.
 
A few centuries ago a free man could tell his village he wanted no more... and could leave... and if he ranged far enough, and was ingenious and productive enough, and with perhaps others of his ilk, he could make a living in supporting and sustaining himself and his family, and escape, if at least only for a while.  A totalitarian or a socialist might try to go after him, but perhaps they would stop at only chastising him as he left.  "Don't like it here? Good riddance!"
Now, or very soon, there literally is no where to go
Nowhere to escape the many many hands, in our pockets, bedrooms, education, entertainment, speech, economics...everywhere...   "You'll own nothing... you'll all pay minimum wage and minimum tax or earn a minimum "living salary" have a minimum of health care and you'll love it"...  I am disgusted and outraged beyond description at the insanity, which seems to march incessantly onward... the whole world is going from shirts to shirtsleeves.
 
Instead of escaping our enslavers, instead of walking away peacefully from a fight with our petty screaming redfaced despots next door... who know what's best for us (and them), wielding that all mighty ballot box...
must we choose to fight forever or be enslaved forever?  sigh
 
So really true freedom comes again... when... in a few millenia?  Perhaps never...
 
I know will never see the day where I or my son, or my ancestors live in a truly free society... I will be taxed, redistributed, and redtaped into submission every day of my finite life.
 
Perhaps... there is after all an actual morality in escapism... morality in perhaps living in a video game, or with a belief in the afterlife ... 
if death is all that can ever set me free..
perhaps a morality based on life is profoundly misguided.
 

To clarify, I don't mean all of life on Earth would suffer. I mean that to the extent resources from Earth are transferred to the Mars colony, those are resources unavailable for supporting life on Earth. It might not be the most important concern, but some thought should be given to the propriety of sending Earth's valuable materials on a potentially one-way journey to Mars.

It would appear that the next half century will be crucial in determining whether freedom lives anywhere on Earth.
 
It also seems that space technology, and its becoming more ubiquitous and accessible to pioneers, is critical for plan B: any escape from a One World Order to the great free expanse.
 
The next iron curtain that goes up will "surround" Earth itself, and the next space race will be between that curtain and free individual's ability to leave and sustain ourselves elsewhere.
 
So in the sense of mental fuel I get from anticipating the welfare of my children, grandchildren, etc. going to Mars, and all the technology and infrastructure that would entail, for me, is good.  Although I can't vote with my wallet for space tourism (I cannot afford it)... I'd donate a few clicks to and maybe buy some merch from a firm like SpaceX precisely because of this... and maybe Virgin Galactic as well.
 

Only if China could maintain its authoritarian model over such distances. History suggests otherwise.
That's the beauty of any frontier.

What if the chances of your being alive by the time terraforming is complete is exactly 0%. 
When could it be possibly rational for you to contribute your money/wealth to something like that?  Does it matter if you have children?  Could it be rational if thinking about a future after you are gone gives you some kind of mental fuel?
 
 

Once the context were such that there was a market for passage and colony building, and free people chose to pay passage to live there (as settlers who crossed the sea to NA did), then I suppose it would at least seem "good" for those who were taking the risk and making the choice to start a new life on Mars.
Unless and until free peoples do so, any "colonization" would probably be premature, involving coercion and/or taxation.

Is colonizing Mars a good or bad idea? For whom is it good or bad? Why is it good or bad?
Elon Musk thinks it's a good idea for humanity. He says we have a choice: stay on Earth and inevitably perish in a doomsday event or become a spacefaring, multi-planet species. (See about a minute of his speech starting here at 1:44.)
On the other hand, Jeff Bezos seems to think that colonizing Mars is not a good idea. Compared to Mars, he says, living on top of Mt. Everest would be a garden paradise. Perhaps Musk should try living on Everest for a year before trying to start a colony on Mars. Earth, Bezos notes, is by far the best planet for us.
Bezos asks us to consider a different problem. He says that in a couple hundred years humanity's energy needs will become so enormous that we'd have to cover the planet in solar panels. So people in the future will face the choice of stasis on Earth or using the rest of the solar system to produce our energy needs. He suggests that Earth could be zoned for residences and light industry, while the heavy production would be done in space. (See about five minutes of his pitch starting at 1:40 in this video.)
Clearly Musk and Bezos see virtue in making space travel more cost efficient, but they're doing it for different reasons. Musk wants to turn Mars into a second home for humanity, and Bezos wants to turn Earth into a residential utopia.
I disagree with both of them. I shudder to think of the totalitarian government that would ban heavy industry from the planet's surface. And if we haven't perfected and accepted nuclear energy (or something better) within 200 years, we probably deserve stasis. And as for Musk, I believe there is value in colonizing Mars, but for the sake of expanding human knowledge and testing human potential. We shouldn't look upon a Mars colony as a way to save humanity from extinction, but as a way to experiment on ourselves as a species with physical and mental limits. Of what exactly are we capable?

It's all about the headlines that generate the ratings, that create and sustain a following that wins elections.  The Republican Purge is real, and the midterms will determine its success as political strategy in American politics.  An extended family member of mine recently noted, "Impeachment is just street cred for him," and that pretty much sums up my opinion of The Donald and his Dark Wing.
 
The Donald's 1st term election was unimaginable, until it happened. Former republican opposition candidates undermining the election in Congress on his behalf was unimaginable, until it happened. January 6th was unimaginable, until it happened... and the Dumbercrats continue to campaign as though if only everyone understood what a bastard the Former President is, no one would vote for him, while those who vote for him don't care because, "He's our Bastard!"
The Former President will be restored to office as the party default if the current political trend doesn't produce someone who can beat his political base.  Do you see that coming?  Last go round I gave him and his following 50/50 odds, and this time I think if the Republicans make gains over the Democrats in the midterms, it's their presidential election to lose, if narrowly.
Lady Liberty was raped on January 6th. That's what I think.
 

What do I know of "QAnon" and right wing conspiracies? Little, thankfully. Only some words and rhetoric.
What I do know from long familiarity is that that "Fascist right" has been the go-to cause celebre of the MSM and others, in order to by sleight of hand, through misdirection, cover the tracks of the resurgent Socialist Left. 
And so far, thankfully, the right aren't actively responding, to the disappointment of many, I believe. Anyone can predict the, er, "active" response if the political shoe were on the other foot, mind you.

When Trump said very fine people he was referring to the people on both sides of the debate surrounding the public display and or removal of Civil War monuments.
In that same speech he specifically condemned any and all who participated in violence.