FeatherFall

I happen to agree with you that Romney is a relatively better candidate (by a very small margin, but still). However, he didn't get my vote, because I didn't think that small margin was worth it. I instead just spent my vote on a much better candidate, Gary Johnson.

But, more importantly, my opinion is very much focused on my own situation and interests. I happen to be more interested in the aspects of politics Romney was better on (economic freedom and foreign policy), because they affect me more. But I know other rational Americans (and I'm not referring to some of the Liberals on this board, I'm referring to people who do understand Rand's ideas and the need for freedom on all fronts, including economics), to whom some of the issues Obama is better on (immigration, gay rights and abortion) are more important than to me, and therefor would not consider Romney the better candidate.

Some of those people voted against Romney (so they voted for Obama, the only candidate that could prevent Romney from winning), others voted for Gary like me. I find the notion that they aren't "American" enough to vote the right way absurd. They are much more "American" than most Romney supporters.

Agh. You really didn't understand the question?


How? The Libertarians campaigned consistently against Obama. Even more so than against Romney. And there is evidence that in several key states (like Colorado) they actually took more votes from Obama than Romney.

Sam Harris is also discussed in the thread "The Illusion of Free Will".

Because it is a proper noun, "Objectivism" and "Objectivist" should be capitalized.

You already know about the thread "Weak vs. Strong Emergence"

"Scientific Challenges to Free Will" makes many good points, but one which appears there and which I have used in the past is that these reaction time tests are pointless because we do not need free will to follow an urge on a cue. 'That is not what free will is for', to hijack and paraphrase someone else's phrase. A single instance of an explicit self-consciously carefully reasoned conclusion which one accepts and acts upon although it may be surprising or against one's prior biases or assumptions is sufficient to establish the existence of volition even if much of our other behavior is rote or automatized. Or in other words, 'downward causation' from the conceptual level into physical action is what free will is for.

Two (very obvious, to me at least) points:
1. If 90% of the population was homophobic, he'd be in jail or dead, not jobless. The suggestion that an all-powerful, majority elected government will protect unpopular minorities is just bad math.

2. In the situation you described, his only hope would be to have a government limited to its proper functions. That would still leave him 10% of people to deal with. That's 30 million Americans, which is plenty to get a job. Any government that gets a say in who gets hired and who doesn't would do only one thing: enact the will of the other 90%, and ban the hiring of gay people.

The main problem gays and blacks faced, before the civil rights movement, wasn't discrimination by individuals, it was discrimination by an increasingly powerful, racist and homophobic government. And that government was put in place during the Great Depression, precisely by people who thought like you (and looked at the government as a solution to all their problems).

Would working for a homophobe really be worthwhile? I fail to see the use of anti-discrimination laws except to force nasty people to hire you. By working for a homophobe, you're only giving them a livelihood, which I'd say is absolutely unjust if you know about it. Worse, when it's illegal to say bigoted remarks or act bigoted, it's more difficult to see who is in fact bigoted anyway! If there are threats of violence, that's another story.

It's not like the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol is a binding agreement ratified by 190 countries (pretty much everyone except for the US, and now Canada which withdrew from it).

Agenda 21 is an entirely non-binding plan of action.

Besides, with the massive new discoveries of fossil fuels in North America setting the continent on a long term path of oil and natural gas fueled economic boom, it's doubtful that either country will ever agree to any kind of reduction on emissions any time soon. So the Kyoto protocol is pretty much dead too, on a global scale. The only ones sticking by it are Japan and the EU, both with economies that matter less and less in the grand scheme of things. Hopefully the rest of Asia will force Japan's hand and cause them to abandon it too. I also doubt the UK is going to stick to the plan, and with Germany's recent decision to abandon nuclear power, they won't be able to either.

Neither you, nor any government you might choose to elect have any business forcing people into therapy.

Let's take an example from my own life. I'm gay.
At a position I held about 12 years ago the owner found out I was gay (and by found out I mean that I am not "obvious" nor do I scream it from the mountaintops) and started behaving in a terrible manner towards me.
No need to go into details. It lasted about two weeks and I assume he was trying to get me to quit and evenetually would have fired me had I not walked out in the middle of one of his sessions of bullshit.

I chose not to file suit against him as I could have for harassment and hostile workplace because such should not be the domain of government.
It is irrelevent that not being wealthy I needed to always be employed. It is *my* responsibility to make myself a desirable enough employee that I am always hirable.
Obviously he was a jackass and should be shunned by decent people.

But end of the day, he was the victim, not I.

I was hired to save his failing business, and up until the day I walked out it was working.
He was unable to get anyone else of my skill level willing to work for what he was offering.
He was closed within 6 months, bankrupt and facing several lawsuits and an IRS investigation.

No government interference desired or required.
He was brought down by his own bigotry, whereas the project I began after walking out gained me even more notoriety in my field than I enjoyed before.

So you see, I have been the victim of so called "bigotry" and still I must call bullshit. He had every right as a "Christian" man to not want anything to do with me.
Frankly, it would have been better for all involved if he hadn't been too cowardly to just fire me.

Note to add- I purpose in telling this personal story Kate86 is that you seem to be taking an emotional approach to this issue, not an objective rational one. You are focusing on what you perceive to be the plight of victims. This story is merely to demonstrate in a very concrete way that assumptions of the results of victimhood aren't always accurate. What matters is the rights of individuals to associate voluntarily with whomever they please.

First off, it's not Romneycare and Obamacare. The Mass plan was initially proposed by Romney, under pressure from a broad coalition of legislators, and to prevent a a ballot item that would've forced a more expensive plan to be implemented. Through the legislature, his plan was heavily amended, including with penalties for employers who don't provide "enough" insurance to their workers. Then Romney signed a much different version from his original plan into law. Again, under the threat of a popular ballot measure that would've been more expensive (and also to keep federal subsidies that were reimbursing the treatment of uninsured by hospitals). It was a pragmatic move, not an ideologically motivated one.

The national plan was written by House Democrats in consultation with the White House, as a lesser version of a more damaging initial plan that would've been filibustered by Republicans. This plan would've also been filibustered by Republicans, had they had that power. It was an ideologically motivated law, that would've been even worse if the Democrats were left to their own devices.

The suggestion that similarities in the two legislations prove that the future intentions of Obama and Romney are equally similar is illogical. Your argument is a pretty blatant application of thinking by association rather than logic.

I asked you to explain to me where the racism is. Repeating your assertions with an avalanche of snarkiness doesn't accomplish this. You can take my last post as a rejection of this kind of rudeness and another opportunity for you to man-up and admit your mistake or actually answer the question. If you want to pretend this is a personal attack, fine. Just keep in mind that you're not fooling anyone.

Given than Rand did not vote for Reagan because of his views on abortion, at very least the topic of the thread should be "Why *Objectivists* are..."

Of course, it still would be true of most Objectivists. It is completely true of GOP supporters and who want all abortions banned regardless of term and cause, and who support "personhood laws". By a large majority, Objectivists support the results of Roe v. Wade's and would not like it overturned. I know many Objectivists factor this into their voting decisions.

Witch doctors are actual people who exist and act as healers/shamens in their tribes. The symbolism of Obama as a witch doctor can simply be construed as Obama wanting to play the role of a mystical healer, which is what he's doing in reality, in a sense.

The fact that witch doctors and Obama are both black are unavoidable, because they are both black in reality. One can portray Obama as a witch doctor in order to symbolize his role as a mystical healer without necessarily be alluding to black people as savages.

Then again, there is a very good chance that the person who made that image IS a racist. I'd put my money on it. But you can't determine that from the image alone.

The portmanteau is a bit overused, but I kind of like it.

The McKibben supporter discussion leads with this gem:



This woman and her daughter are outraged because Epstein is thinking about humanity, while their value-systems dictate that we sacrafice humans to Gaia. I wish other environmentalists were as willing as this woman to display their premises. It would make Epstein's job much easier. Notice that Epstein tried to give McKibben an opportunity to reject this position when he asked McKibben to support Nuclear. McKibben dodged by claiming it was more expensive than wind and solar. Epstein was too kind; I think next time he should bait the McKibben types into affirming the position, rather than rejecting it. Once an audience knows your opponent doesn't care about people, the rest is a cake-walk.

Johnson finally hooked me with his "5%" rhetoric. Wisconsin.

True. And yet, I wonder how much most gas-stations would charge, if the law did not stop them. The law is based on a very popular notion of morality and fairness, and gas-stations would probably be hesitant to raise prices for just a few days and have their regulars curse them and swear to use the guy across the street. If gas station owners discussed this and raised prices together, that might give them cover...but they'd probably be breaking a few laws by any such discussion.

So, I suppose -- all said and done -- the voters gets the shortages and long-lines that they deserve.

On the strength of the first few sentences of each of the first two links, I can make a few points, the first of which is that the earlier posters are right: you needn't worry.

Rand was talking about learned, chosen behavior specific to rational beings, not instinctive (to use a dangerous term) behavior of non-rational species. What goes for one does not go for the other. If one of us is talking about chess and the other is talking about banking, and we both use the word "check," you can be confident that we aren't talking about the same object. So with "selfish" or "altruistic" behavior.

The articles conflate altruism with cooperation or good will. Rand dealt with that one long before evolutionary biology became middlebrow trendy.

Rand did not say that human nature is naturally selfish. She said that we have to identify the selfish thing to do and commit to it deliberately, all by a voluntary process. To say that it comes naturally is a deterministic position that would have been odious to her. The standard way of putting across this bit of misinformation used to be to call her a Hobbesian.

Another laughable comment. It is all about Phd's and grad students bitching about each other's writing as it appeared in JARS or books, and then bitching about the bitching, and a person changing affiliation from TOC to ARI being cast as a betrayal of personal loyalties. These aren't butchers, bakers and candlestick makers having a flame war over the internet about Objectivism (not that they would be excused either), but people who publish as part of their professional productivity and should know better. It is petty office politics and professional in-fighting.

And there is the confession.

Look kid, looting can only be done to people, thus fracking is not looting. Fracking is a method of using property to extract one substance from another.

Next, it does not matter, even if you are right, because a person can dispose of their property as they see fit. People can frack, fuck, or frell their property all they want. Your whims are not a substitute for their right to live their life and dispose of their property in the pursuit of living.

What is real is if someone violates my property rights. If you are right and the latest and greatest from the Granola Death Cultists is true, and the process somehow does foul my property as a side effect, then I'm already protected under the law and can sue them to repair my property. Plus I’ll likely get more from the damages and get a nice vacation out of the deal.

In fact, I hope someone does start fracking next door just so I can take Mrs. Spiral on a trip. Maybe Vegas again. Good times.

So I don't need alarmist nonsense. I have common sense which is already in place.

Everything else is just a desire to use government force to make people obey you, since you know better than them - I.E. strip them of their moral right to use their property as they see fit. When you realize who is trying to force others to obey them, you quickly discover that the greedy and evil person is the face in the mirror.

Obviously it's all tongue in cheek. I take from Aglialoro's statement that I was correct here, from earlier on this thread:

Now they ought to take the Schwartz piece down from their website, or, better, put something new up that states their new position.

If you promote Obama as some sort of agent for cultural change toward more rational discourse and fact-based discussion relative to Romney, then you write, "Many people here want to believe that politics will drive culture when it's always been the other way around for all of human history," you engage in hypocrisy. If it is indeed the other way around (which it is), then electing Obama can't have some sort of effect on logical discourse unless Romney plans to initiate a campaign of censorship. But as far as I know, the only campaign dedicated to censorship in any way is Obama's. He would have us amend the 1st amendment so that pesky decisions like Citizen United don't stop the government from telling us who can speak out and to what extent.

Marriages sure are similar to other types of contracts, like wills. The governments role in marriage should be to enforce such contracts and create certainty regarding legal interpretation. So it makes sense that there will be vanilla/common marriage contracts that the state recognizes, which would include standard provisions for dissolving the marriage. I can't speak to any particular provisions, but that's the gist.

I say it depends on where you live. If you're in California or one of the other states that's certain to go to Obama, then by all means vote for Johnson and help get his popular vote figure higher. Also, if you're in a state that's solid for Romney, I say vote Johnson. If you're in a battleground state, as I am, you've got some moral dilemmna to grapple with. I'm hoping the November polls show Romney comfortably taking my state, so I can vote Johnson without conflict.

Someone I know reminded me of a poem that is appropriate. It was written by an Asian-born US citizen who joined the RCAF to defend the free world in WWII. His name was John G. Magee, Jr. He died in an aviation accident when he was 19, so the young hero never got to witness man set foot on the moon. Nevertheless his poem, High Flight, seems even more fitting for the likes of heroes such as Armstrong. You can read about him and the text of his poem at his wiki page.

Public or public-sponsored (i.e. government-sponsored)?

I can't answer for her, Overt, but for me it was because Dagny took so long to stop fighting - she didn't understand "shrugging" because she thought the battle was winnable. I also liked Ragnar for similar reasons; except, choose not to fight on the looter's terms.

By the way, welcome to the forum, Modern Athena.

Rep. Ryan has a 100 percent voting score from the National Right to Life Committee.
I don’t want any more Supreme Court appointments from this quarter.