softwareNerd

As you can see from the two reactions to your post, this seems out of left field. Do you think that phrasing is accurate, or is there a better way you could conceptualize it ? Are you stressing "formal"? After all, the concept of "rights" is primarily a legal one. In the Objectivist framework, individual rights are the bridging concept between Ethics and Politics. So, at very least rights are about action within a social context, and arise because we want a principle we can use to live among other human beings without ditching self-interest. If you think your phrasing is the right one, my follow-up questions would be: Is "human right" the same as "individual right"? Could you give a couple of examples of a "human right" that is not a "formal legal right", and vice versa? Are you talking about something like "right to a jury"? i.e. are you talking about concrete implementations -- in law -- of individual rights that would be more abstract (and which could have alternative concrete implementations)? If so, there's still a correspondence -- not a one-to-one, but perhaps a many-to-many -- between the two. And, one would hope that a good legal system will have a list of concrete laws that -- as a whole -- cover the gamut of individual rights.

So you're saying Trump is bad, but no worse than Obama?

Trump's ICE agents enter private property without a warrant, and dressed in civilian clothes. An American citizen tries to remind them of the law, and rights, and they back down for a bit, but then decide that such niceties aren't going to stop them. It is White Caucasians who voted Hitler into power and thus gave the Gestapo their power. And regular American voters -- not Mexicans or Asian -- will give up their rights one by one, until they finally find themselves with no recourse.

You continue to make this an issue of money, when you should know that it is not. Money has nothing to do with this case. It is about hardcore Christianity. It's not as if the government is asking her to pay, or asking some other government to pay. They simply aren't allowing a procedure.

Are you seriously claiming that this is an issue of money? Even if it were, she's in custody: her legitimate healthcare is the responsibility of her jailer -- i.e. you. But, you obviously know that money and tax-dollars are not the issue at all. Trump is trying to keep his hardcore-Christian voters happy by appointing some of their team to federal positions. And, being hardcore-Christian they are anti-abortion. So, one of them is trying to impose his hardcore religion by force of law.

Not really. Since it's an immigrant's baby, it's gotta be a socialist Seriously though, too many people refuse to acknowledge that the average American bears all the responsibility for what the country is today. For instance, people will tell us how FDR made the country so much more statist. Firstly, they don't come much more White-and-Waspy than FDR. And, yes, he might have been the worst President in American history. Nevertheless, the underlying feeling in popular American thought pre-dated him: as evidenced by the success of the Progressive party. Think Donald Trump leading average, good, working-class (white) Americans and promising to get them their dues. Americans have always been suspicious of big-business, often for good reason, and the average American has only a vague idea about the role of individual rights. So, when he feels oppressed, he reacts by wanting his own "dear leader" to form a group or union that can then be a player in the politics where each group fights for a slice of the pie.

Now Donald Trump is preventing a 17 year old held in custody (for the crime of being an immigrant) from getting an abortion! Onward Christian soldiers!

Being a rational animal (the rational animal) doesn't preclude man from being a "social animal", or (say) a "worrying animal". Nor does it preclude him from seeing his happiness as a primary end.

Man is clearly a social animal. Why do you use the term "awareness" though?

Meanwhile, in healthcare, Trump basically echoes Bernie Sanders' position by painting insurance companies as the villains of the system.

Fact is the military campaign against Mosul and Raqqa would have proceeded just the same under almost any President. A John McCain type may have stepped up U.S. efforts, but middle-roaders like Trump, Hillary, Bush and Obama would have let it unfold as it has. Also, the Iranians, the Iraqi government and the Kurds all have a role in giving it momentum -- the U.S. is a major player, but does not set the agenda. And, the pragmatist in the White House could not foresee that victory would see two allies -- the Kurds and the Iraqi core -- turn against each other and start a fresh war over who controls territory won from ISIS (and other territory in the north). Trump is such a pragmatist that even after the two sides start to fight, he says he won't take sides!

Wow! Decades ago, one could buy books that contained two or three tests, and you could self-score. Not a full-fledged, controlled test; but, as far as I know, they were not scams either. I see Amazon sells some books like that. I wonder how good they are.

A surprise attack on Mosul is pure spin. Pop lore says that D-day was a surprise attack, but the Germans pretty much knew an attack was coming. The only surprise is the Army-level tactical one. Nobody was telegraphing that about the Mosul attack. Only someone like Trump -- who is ignorant about such things and seems to live in a make-believe world -- would think that a surprise attack on Mosul was possible: i.e. in the sense his followers lapped up his spiel.

His talk about not warning about the time line on attacking a place like Mosul was pure spin.

Sure, I didn't mean to imply he was a "rational" centrist, just a centrist. The picture I drew was illustrate that being centrist can never be rational in the abstract, because when you do it on issue after issue choosing to compromise between some good and some bad can't be better than just choosing all good. So, it can't be rational in the sense of ideal, in the abstract. However, in the sense of actually choosing between choices that are practical when a whole lot of people need to agree, it can often be rational to choose a centrist position.

Well, linking to HandyHandle, who sporadically visits the forum to curse its members, to curse ARI, and to embed a link to his anti-ARi site makes me wonder if you're him. If you are, that would make you a white supremacist.

It's hard to use a visual metaphor (left vs. right) and plug "good political philosophy" into that mix. If you list various key issues, you might be able to say whether the "left" or the "right" is better on that particular issue. (Often they're both wrong in different ways.) If the Green dots are the ideal positions on each issue, then this ideal (on any particular issue) would not lie in the middle of either the red or the blue. However, the term "centrist" would give that false impression. Added: France's new president, Macron, seems like a true centrist: someone who would choose to push policies that lie somewhere in between the red and blue, on a case-by-case basis. This type of centrism might be the best we can hope for in a polarized political environment.

It isn't an ad hominem to call him a pragmatist -- no more than saying he's leftist or rightist. [Unless you were referring to "conceited".] Interesting question: how does one know that someone's policies are pragmatic? One can point to a particular policy -- say keeping Mexicans out of the U.S. , or lowering taxes, or raising spending -- and label them "nationalist", "republican" or "Keynesian". However, pragmatism is different because it does not refer to any specific grouping of policies. Rather, it points to a lack of coherence and a day-by-day picking and choosing from a basket of ideologies, with no coherent pattern.

He's an exemplar of pragmatism.

So, are you saying "stealthing" is rape?

A recent news story suggests that the definition of legal rape may expand beyond consent, to informed consent. The example is a man who secretly removes his condom, but where the woman consented to sex with a condom. One could imagine other scenarios: a man having sex with a girlfriend and it turns out he has a wife, or a second girlfriend and the sex-partner would never have consented if she knew.

A related FYI, in case you were unaware of it, at the height of Harry Potter's popularity, an Objectivist wrote a book titled "Values of Harry Potter: lessons for Muggles". I realize that's very different from what you're considering, but thought I'd mention it anyway.

I think two things get mixed up here: let's presume that Branden is totally right and Rand totally wrong in any place they disagree. Obviously it is sensible to agree with Branden in such case, leave alone discussing it. The whole point is to discover true philosophy. It does seem to be stealing someone's better idea if we then label their ideas "Objectivism" just because they were right and are fixing some error in Rand. Why not, then, call it "Aristoleanism"? I don't see why one has to come up with a concept for "true physics" or call it all "Newtonian Physics" even when it contradicts him. In every field of knowledge, we constantly learn and seek new truths and reject old ones. We use terms like "Newtonian Physics" or "Galilean ideas" as a way to conceptualize a certain set of specific ideas in the history of the science.

I've never felt the need to come up with a word for "true philosophy", and it feels like cheating to say that all true philosophy is Objectivism. Anyhow, this controversy has always eluded me: my curiosity is mostly about why either side in the argument cares about this.

There are three ideas here. First, the "smallest deviation..." of ideas and opinions should not be met with "strong objection" (by which I think you mean things like shunning someone or impugning their character). Dogmatism may be correlated to shunning -- particularly in then eyes of the shunned -- but it is not a necessary precondition. Some people are not being dogmatic, and still think their opposition is "being dishonest" etc. Also, dogmatism is rarely self-recognized. So, it's better to have a rule that says "I won't shun/curse ... this type of opposition" rather than "I won't shun/curse ... this type of opposition when I'm being dogmatic". As for "orthodox opinion", I doubt that's too closely correlated. I've seen "heretics" can cuss people, turn debates into personal attacks, and display a constant premise that their "orthodox" opponent is dishonest or dumb or whatever. These comes from both sides: orthodox and heretic. There are a lot of reasons to stop communicating on a particular subject. In contexts like this forum, I think it should be done earlier rather than later. Often, it is clear that the two sides have stated their respective positions, and disagree after a couple of posts to and fro. After that, the marginal productivity of further immediate discussion drops to zero. At the very least, one should give a few days or weeks for both sides to chew on contra opinions. Sometimes, even returning after a while is of no value because the other person does not the same context/premises: productive discussion would require an exploration of the underlying context/premises.