Doug Morris

In order for it to make sense for two people to date each other, they must have a positive evaluation of each other's actions and statements and must not consider those actions and statements to include anything unacceptable.  This does not require philosophical agreement.
(I am stating a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.)
 

There seem to be some people who just irrationally hate Ayn Rand.  Every now and then one of them will come up with a hit piece like this.  As long as there are a lot of people who don't understand Rand very well, there will be people with questions as a result of such hit pieces.  We just have to keep answering and explaining as we need to.
 

Stephen Boydstun provided the following as an example of the government's attack on the gold standard.
“Genuine free banking, as we have noted, exists where entry into the banking business is totally free, where banks are neither subsidized nor controlled, and where at the first sign of failure to redeem in specie, the bank is forced to declare insolvency and close its doors.”
Doug, it looks like Murray Rothbard's book The Mystery of Banking is a good resource on this controversy, including the historical record. The book is available online. Pages 197-234 of the book (220-257 in the PDF pagination) look to be exactly the pertinent material, though it is challenging and probably requires some portions earlier in the book to understand it well.
(i would suggest starting one page earlier.)
 

In each of the following your friends may have additional questions, so try to be prepared to answer such.
"Ayn Rand’s raped-girl-decides-she-likes-it novel, “The Fountainhead.”"
"Rand’s hero Roark, in fact, “raged” so much in her novel that he blew up a public housing project with dynamite."
It can help in both these cases to provide context from the novel.  Also, make the point that the encounter between Roark and Dominique is an unusual encounter between unusual people, not a guide to ordinary relationships.
"Only billionaires should rule the world, Trump has suggested.
And he tried to put it into place, installing a billionaire advocate of destroying public schools in charge of public schools, a coal lobbyist representing billionaires in charge of the EPA, an billionaire-funded oil lobbyist in charge of our public lands, and a billionaire described by Forbes as a “grifter” in charge of the Commerce Department. Trump’s chief of staff said that putting children in cages and billionaire-owned privatized concentration camps (where seven so far have died) would actually be a public good."
No one should rule the world.  Such positions should be eliminated, not just filled by someone from a different faction.
"Trump’s chief of staff said that putting children in cages and billionaire-owned privatized concentration camps (where seven so far have died) would actually be a public good."
Neither "illegal" immigrants nor anyone else should be put in cages or concentration camps.  Imprisonment should only be for people convicted of serious crimes, which does not include "illegal" immigration, and should be done in a properly thought-out manner, especially if children are involved. 
Rand's personal life is not relevant to evaluating her philosophy.  If anyone insists on digging into her personal life, we need to sort out actual imperfections from smears.
" Rand believed that a government working to help out working-class “looters,” instead of solely looking out for rich capitalist “producers,” "
The working class are producers, not looters.  The looters are politicians who seize people's wealth.  Government should not "help" anyone at anyone else's expense.  Its sole proper function is to keep physical coercion out of it, leaving everyone free to produce and trade and to enjoy the fruits thereof.
 Of course Ayn Rand disagrees with the traditional Judaeo-Christian ethic of self-sacrifice, for reasons which she has explained.  It might be helpful to explain about metaethics here, for those people that are willing to listen.
"Ironically, when she was finally beginning to be taken seriously, Ayn Rand became ill with lung cancer and went on Social Security and Medicare to make it through her last days. She died a “looter” in 1982,"
Government takes a lot more from us in direct and indirect taxes and reduced economic efficiency than it ever gives back.  Anyone who leads a basically productive life and does not vote or advocate for government handouts is entitled to take whatever government is willing to give back to them.  Ayn Rand first explained this in "The Question of Scholarships", written long before she got cancer.
"over a million dead Americans from Covid"
I don't think Ayn Rand would be a vaccine denier or a vaccine skeptic.
Lockdowns kill people too.
"an epidemic of homelessness, and the collapse of this nation’s working class."
This is the result of mixed-economy statism, certainly not of laissez-faire capitalism, which we haven't even approximated for a long time.  (Here you may have to persuade people that this is a well-thought=out position, even if they still don't agree.)
"the Republican Great Depression"
(If people want to argue with the following, you may have to research it.)  The gold standard provided a natural discipline which prevented monetary and financial matters from getting too far out of balance.  The government sabotaged the gold standard and moved further and further away from it, giving more and more control to the Federal Reserve.  In the buildup to the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve loosened money and banking up too much, creating a speculative bubble which had to burst sooner or later, creating a massive dislocation.  The specific trigger that burst it was a combination of crop failure and financial panic.  Then Herbert Hoover intervened in ways that may have been well-intentioned, but made things worse.  He propped up wages and prices, pricing people, goods, and services out of the market.  He signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, which restricted trade when it needed to be opened up, and provoked retaliatory restrictions from other countries.  If Hoover had been a do-nothing President as some people say, the Depression would not have lasted as long or been as bad.
"pitting Americans against each other, and literally killing people every day." 
It is mixed-economy statism that does this, not laissez-faire capitalism.  Mixed-economy statism pits people against each other in pressure-group warfare and impairs the functioning of the economy.
"get billionaires and their money out of politics"
The way to do this is to get away from mixed-economy statism and the resulting pressure-group warfare, and establish laissez-faire capitalism.
(Sorry, I can't get rid of the bolding here.)
 
 

Stephen Boydstun provided the following as an example of the government's attack on the gold standard.
“Genuine free banking, as we have noted, exists where entry into the banking business is totally free, where banks are neither subsidized nor controlled, and where at the first sign of failure to redeem in specie, the bank is forced to declare insolvency and close its doors.”
Doug, it looks like Murray Rothbard's book The Mystery of Banking is a good resource on this controversy, including the historical record. The book is available online. Pages 197-234 of the book (220-257 in the PDF pagination) look to be exactly the pertinent material, though it is challenging and probably requires some portions earlier in the book to understand it well.
(i would suggest starting one page earlier.)
 

In each of the following your friends may have additional questions, so try to be prepared to answer such.
"Ayn Rand’s raped-girl-decides-she-likes-it novel, “The Fountainhead.”"
"Rand’s hero Roark, in fact, “raged” so much in her novel that he blew up a public housing project with dynamite."
It can help in both these cases to provide context from the novel.  Also, make the point that the encounter between Roark and Dominique is an unusual encounter between unusual people, not a guide to ordinary relationships.
"Only billionaires should rule the world, Trump has suggested.
And he tried to put it into place, installing a billionaire advocate of destroying public schools in charge of public schools, a coal lobbyist representing billionaires in charge of the EPA, an billionaire-funded oil lobbyist in charge of our public lands, and a billionaire described by Forbes as a “grifter” in charge of the Commerce Department. Trump’s chief of staff said that putting children in cages and billionaire-owned privatized concentration camps (where seven so far have died) would actually be a public good."
No one should rule the world.  Such positions should be eliminated, not just filled by someone from a different faction.
"Trump’s chief of staff said that putting children in cages and billionaire-owned privatized concentration camps (where seven so far have died) would actually be a public good."
Neither "illegal" immigrants nor anyone else should be put in cages or concentration camps.  Imprisonment should only be for people convicted of serious crimes, which does not include "illegal" immigration, and should be done in a properly thought-out manner, especially if children are involved. 
Rand's personal life is not relevant to evaluating her philosophy.  If anyone insists on digging into her personal life, we need to sort out actual imperfections from smears.
" Rand believed that a government working to help out working-class “looters,” instead of solely looking out for rich capitalist “producers,” "
The working class are producers, not looters.  The looters are politicians who seize people's wealth.  Government should not "help" anyone at anyone else's expense.  Its sole proper function is to keep physical coercion out of it, leaving everyone free to produce and trade and to enjoy the fruits thereof.
 Of course Ayn Rand disagrees with the traditional Judaeo-Christian ethic of self-sacrifice, for reasons which she has explained.  It might be helpful to explain about metaethics here, for those people that are willing to listen.
"Ironically, when she was finally beginning to be taken seriously, Ayn Rand became ill with lung cancer and went on Social Security and Medicare to make it through her last days. She died a “looter” in 1982,"
Government takes a lot more from us in direct and indirect taxes and reduced economic efficiency than it ever gives back.  Anyone who leads a basically productive life and does not vote or advocate for government handouts is entitled to take whatever government is willing to give back to them.  Ayn Rand first explained this in "The Question of Scholarships", written long before she got cancer.
"over a million dead Americans from Covid"
I don't think Ayn Rand would be a vaccine denier or a vaccine skeptic.
Lockdowns kill people too.
"an epidemic of homelessness, and the collapse of this nation’s working class."
This is the result of mixed-economy statism, certainly not of laissez-faire capitalism, which we haven't even approximated for a long time.  (Here you may have to persuade people that this is a well-thought=out position, even if they still don't agree.)
"the Republican Great Depression"
(If people want to argue with the following, you may have to research it.)  The gold standard provided a natural discipline which prevented monetary and financial matters from getting too far out of balance.  The government sabotaged the gold standard and moved further and further away from it, giving more and more control to the Federal Reserve.  In the buildup to the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve loosened money and banking up too much, creating a speculative bubble which had to burst sooner or later, creating a massive dislocation.  The specific trigger that burst it was a combination of crop failure and financial panic.  Then Herbert Hoover intervened in ways that may have been well-intentioned, but made things worse.  He propped up wages and prices, pricing people, goods, and services out of the market.  He signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, which restricted trade when it needed to be opened up, and provoked retaliatory restrictions from other countries.  If Hoover had been a do-nothing President as some people say, the Depression would not have lasted as long or been as bad.
"pitting Americans against each other, and literally killing people every day." 
It is mixed-economy statism that does this, not laissez-faire capitalism.  Mixed-economy statism pits people against each other in pressure-group warfare and impairs the functioning of the economy.
"get billionaires and their money out of politics"
The way to do this is to get away from mixed-economy statism and the resulting pressure-group warfare, and establish laissez-faire capitalism.
(Sorry, I can't get rid of the bolding here.)
 
 

The most important response to something like this is to explain, as fully as necessary, what Ayn Rand's philosophy really is.
It would take a long time to refute every error in this rant, and I'm not sure how worthwhile such an effort would be.
 

How you answer a question probably has to depend to some extent on just what the question is, making it more difficult to give advice.
You may wish to consider focusing less on the FDA's motives and more on the basic principles that say the FDA, and government in general, shouldn't have this kind of power.
I might be tempted to say that with government agencies, resistance is futile, with the last three words delivered in a Borg tone.  (If you don't know what that is, ask a Star Trek fan.)
 
 

Human brain is for improving nature, improving lot of human individual and fellows in nature, because it is possible to us and we choose it. In a hundred years humans are unlikely to leave reproduction to sex. They will put reproduction to production, though the joys of bringing up infants and children will remain. Many functions of human brain areas and functions appearing in ancestral species were repurposed in the evolution of the human brain arrived at by 25,000 years ago. And what the species did by their inventions and cultural developments since then is fantastic, including better health, less hunger, and rising treatment of women as first-rate self-directing human agents, not reproductive chattel for direction by the tribal witch doctors, and including liberation of humankind from the tribe for the enjoyment of individual life and bodily pleasure and choice in bonding and a liberating recognition of the virtue of those. Even by his time, Kant recognized and welcomed that with humans, sex had repurposed primarily to sexual enjoyment (Lectures on Anthropology). Some moral constraints have rational bases, and to find them, we don't need intonations of demands and brute-law left over from the witch doctors (Kant was a step more decent than that, contra Rand's caricature), still sprung from the same primordial suspicion that someone is actually happy in and with life from brain down to the fingertips and the same primordial urge for domination. Nature's evolutionary purposes are something to keep an eye on, including on the urge to domination, and all the while humans have and do and should remake the materials supplied by nature; do our own engineering (the Pill; the IUD; the condom—conspicuously absent from Mr. Grames' list of preventatives) for us. The regressive, subjectivist, fantastical hearing Nature or God disapproving human redirections of natural teleology by human intelligence and choices are delusional and deaf to the glory of human being, however much bolstering they get from Notre Dame or the Supreme Court. There is nothing modest or decent about those drums.

The grounds for the judgments are relevant.  Aren't a lot of anti-abortion people really anti-sex?
 

Another way of describing this is as a violation of rules you have implicitly agreed to by entering a situation.  If you take food from a buffet, you are implicitly agreeing to a rule about sharing the food.  If you drive on a road that is not your private road, you implicitly agree to a number of rules, including not obstructing traffic.
 

Another possible description is "sacrificing others".  This gets at a key confusion in popular concepts of "selfishness".

There may be more than one concept of "emergence" here.  Perhaps we should ask each person who used the concept to define it.
My understanding of emergence is that X is emergent from A if a complete fundamental description of A need not mention X, but A is known to have caused X.  This does not require that anything be uncaused or unexplainable.  Also, there is no requirement as to complexity or as to how much has already been explained. 
One example: life is an emergent feature of the physical universe.  This means that the fundamental laws of physics and chemistry do not mention life, but are known to have caused life.
 

A column in the June 14 email edition of the New York Times reports and criticizes a case of political correctness perpetrated by trans hardliners:
Stop subjecting novels to moral purity tests, Pamela Paul writes.

The idea of Russia joining NATO is either remarkably naïve or a gambit offered with an ulterior motive.  That Putin of all people could be naïve is not plausible.
The larger an alliance is the more unwieldy it becomes.  Too great of a diversity of interests causes the organization to only be able to respond to peripheral issues unimportant to all of them.  Russia in NATO would diplomatically neutralize that alliance in cases where Russia itself were to cause controversy, much as both Turkey and Greece being in NATO removes NATO from Greek-Turkish disputes.
Russia having been admitted to NATO ahead of all those unimportant little countries would mean Russia could veto their admission.  Russia could then act against them at its leisure and diplomatically prevent NATO from doing anything about it.
Russia could never be an equal partner in NATO without America accepting its demotion from de facto leader of the alliance.  America would gain nothing from accepting such a displacement but would risk the loss of the long peace in Europe.
It was alarmingly insightful and bold of Putin to understand all this twenty years ago and attempt to achieve by diplomacy the neutralization of NATO even when Russia was at its weakest economically and militarily.  
The economic integration of Russia with Europe has had some success.  But the Euro community is feeling rather betrayed right now and Russia's gas lines supplying Europe are being used as leverage against sanctions.
Its been a pleasure working through these thoughts even if you remain unconvinced.

"Whenever you committed the evil of refusing to think and to see, of exempting from the absolute of reality some one small wish of yours, whenever you chose to say: Let me withdraw from the judgment of reason the cookies I stole, or the existence of God, let me have my one irrational whim and I will be a man of reason about all else—that was the act of subverting you consciousness, the act of corrupting your mind. Your mind then became a fixed jury who takes orders from a secret underworld, whose verdict distorts the evidence to fit an absolute it dares not touch—and a censored reality where the bits you chose to see are floating among the chasms of those you didn't, held together by that embalming fluid of mind which is an emotion exempted from thought." (Rand 1957, 1037 [1st ed. hb.])
Rand here argues for constant rational moral principles by claims about human psychology, about bad results for the mind that crosses moral principles once in a while. This is opposite the sort of argument she makes for her principles of metaphysics: she does not argue that Existence is identity (if no identity of a thing, then no such thing) by observing that incoherence in the mind will result if that principle is not so. She points to examples of identity-delimitations, examples from various categories of existents, and generalizes to all existence, and then she defends the generality by showing* contradiction in any denial of the generalized principle. I think it is fair for Rand to shift strategy for moral principles as distinct from metaphysical principles. Appealing to effects of decisions on the mind of the agent seems fine in thinking about moral principles. Human beings have a general nature, which is pertinent in every human act. Of course, claims about what that general nature is need to be substantiated to support a thoroughly sound argument for constant rational moral principles.
* Rand did not execute much of this showing, but a few years ago, I did some of it for her. 
Every entity is of some kinds that are exclusive relative to other kinds of entity. Let me argue this thesis for Rand. That is, let me argue the axiomatic standing of “existence is identity,” where the existents are entities and the identity is kind-identity. All entities are of some exclusive kinds—a leaf cannot be a stone at the same time—and this postulate must be accepted on pain of self-contradiction.
Suppose an entity exists and is not of any kind that excludes it being any other kinds. If the supposed entity is nothing but existence itself, then there is no contradiction; one is simply talking about existence as a whole. So suppose an entity exists and is not of any kind that excludes it being other kinds and is not existence as a whole.
Then the supposed entity could be one with any other entities that are of exclusive kinds (just as a leaf that is a drain clogger could be one with a leaf that is dead, maple, and wet). For it is not an entity of any kind excluding it being other kinds. But to say that an entity is not of any exclusive kind and that it is one and the same with another entity that is of some exclusive kind(s) is a contradiction. (Non-A is A.) Indeed, if some entity were not of any exclusive kind, then it could be one with the person who supposes such an entity. Then to suppose an entity that is not of any exclusive kind is to suppose that one’s person could be an entity not of some exclusive kinds. (If A is identically B, then B is identically A.) But that supposition contradicts the presupposition that one is of the exclusive kind person, a person who makes the (errant) supposition. (Cf. Aristotle’s Metaphysics 1007b19–1008a28.)
My argument is supposing that particular, numerical identity is admitted by both disputants, while specific identity is the identity at issue. But that seems a fair supposition.

DEA officer stops at a ranch in Texas and talks with an old rancher.   Ghost Girl, studied Literature, Languages, and Communication at Foreign Langauges (2011) Posted May 10 He tells the rancher, "I need to inspect your ranch for illegally grown dr*gs."
  The rancher says, "Okay, but do not go in that field over there," as he points out the location.
  The DEA officer verbal...
 Read More »      

EF, tell me if I understand your position correctly: 
Apart from immaterial mind(s), there are only particles and maybe space. Some of these particles interact with your sense organs, leading to sensations. The immaterial mind (not made of particles) performs an act of thought through which sensations are integrated into percepts.
Reason, integration, purpose etc. belong exclusively to the immaterial mind, and not to some body part.
There are no rocks, trees, and butterflies, only particles. Rocks, trees and butterflies are mental constructs.
The immaterial mind can directly interact with material particles in such a way that it directs the evolution of lifeforms.
The faculty of reason has always existed. Induction is not a valid method of proof because you're inducing from your own integrations of sensations.
If this is an accurate summary, could you clarify the following?
1. There seem to be two clashing premises: a) the existence of sense organs or lifeforms, and b) the notion that there are only particles out there, not rocks, trees and butterflies. Which one is it? Does the mind merely integrate sensations, or does it integrate actual, material particles into sense organs, trees and butterflies?
2. Does the immaterial mind have a physical origin? i.e. the nervous system leads to the immaterial mind, which has a nature of its own and can influence the material nervous system back.
3. If ideas construct percepts, why do you use scientific experiments to validate your positions? For all you know, the ideas that construct the experiment-percepts could be bogus and not related to reality in any way. Are you counting on a pre-established harmony between what is true and what your innate ideas say?
4. Whose mind directs evolution?
Thanks.

The entropy of the entire system always increases, even when the entropy of parts of it decreases.  This is true whether the decrease of entropy in part of the system is due to purposeful, goal-directed, teleological action or to some other cause.
Natural selection does not operate at random in the long run.  It is capable of producing low-entropy results in parts of a system whose total entropy is always increasing.  It is not purposeful and does not need to be.
We do not yet know exactly how life began.  The appropriate reaction to this situation is to investigate and to find out as much as we can, not to arbitrarily say a purposeful being had to do it.
 
 

No, you never understood or answered my question.
What are your grounds for saying the "Azov Regiment" or "Azov Battalion" runs the government there?
What are your grounds for saying President Zelensky is a puppet?
 

You alleged that the Ukraine government “is run by a neo-Nazi gang”. I’ve asked you to prove it. I even suggested you a specific method: by naming the top government officials who are Nazis. Or you could list the specifically neo-Nazi policies of this government.
You did neither of these. Neither have you done it in any other proper, i.e. rational, way. Evasions, misrepresentations and ad hominems are NOT arguments.
Therefore: do you intend to prove that allegation? And make only claims you can prove?
Otherwise it will mean that you intend to continue to contaminate this forum with putinist propaganda.

No, you never understood or answered my question.
What are your grounds for saying the "Azov Regiment" or "Azov Battalion" runs the government there?
What are your grounds for saying President Zelensky is a puppet?
 

"a Ukraine government run by a neo-Nazi gang (the Azov Battalion) with a puppet president (Zelensky)."
What are your grounds for this accusation?

What are your grounds for this accusation?

What are your grounds for this accusation?