MisterSwig

MisterSwig posted something on Facebook that is relevant here:
Videos are an inefficient way to get news and commentary but this 20 minute video – skipping commercials – by Rudy Giuliani is worth the extra time.  Biden isn't just evil in the sense of evil politics, he is evil in the sense of corrupt as hell:
How Joe Biden Got Millions in Foreign Bribes
October 23rd 2020
Skimpy prose comment by Paul Craig Roberts:  NPR, CNN, NYT, Wa-Po, MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, Google Presstitutes Covering Up Biden Scandals by Refusing to Report on Them
 

Our new episode covers the controversy over the NY Times' 1619 Project versus Trump's push for patriotic education, when it comes to teaching history. We also get pretty deep into the principles and design of the correct curriculum.
 

At the first presidential debate Joe Biden and Chris Wallace started interrupting President Trump soon after the initial round of two-minute answers. Trump then went into beast mode, like any self-respecting man might do who was being attacked from both directions. He verbally smashed Biden like an action hero smashing henchmen in order to reach the big villain. "Biden as henchman" is an apt analogy, I think, because he is just a little man with little ideas. He's a weak human shield for the pack of thirsty socialists peeking over his shoulder.
Listening to Biden debate was like watching a robot whose battery is running down. As Trump vigorously interrupted him, Biden might have called the president "disrespectful" or even "rude"--and made it stick! Instead he called Trump a "clown" and immediately retreated from his own word, changing the insult to "person." Even Biden's invective arrives dead in the water. He's practically lifeless. If he wins, what vitality will help him fend off the rabid socialists in his own political party?
I smile when Trump treats these people with due disrespect. I nod when he gives them appropriate nicknames like "Sleepy" Joe. (It's hard to distinguish one human shield from another without such colorful monikers.) And I clap when Trump points across the battlefield and calls them all "socialists." It's time to draw a political line in the sand. Trump's line will do for now. It's not the best or clearest line, but it's better than nothing. It helps rally forces against the more devoted socialists in this country--and some of their support networks.
Politically the battle is between various types of socialists and various types of capitalists. Over the years much mixing has taken place, which makes it difficult to sort out the different sides. But the sorting must happen if we are to ever rid ourselves of socialism. Trump is the candidate actively attempting the division.
On a more personal level, I recall that in 2016 Trump told USA Today that he was an "Ayn Rand fan." He even identified with Howard Roark. This makes me happy--that someone running for president would admit to liking Rand, and even connecting with her protagonist in The Fountainhead. Trump doesn't represent the core of Rand's philosophy, but it's a good sign that he shares some of the ideas and the sense of life found in her novel.
Has Biden ever said a kind word about Rand? I challenge you to find one.
Trump believes in "the power of positive thinking," which he picked up from pastor Norman Vincent Peale. Whether this power comes from God or from one's self, it results in a psychological orientation towards "positive thinking." Further, it apparently helps Trump focus on finding solutions to problems. But even if this idea offers little philosophical value, the name still contains the words "positive" and "thinking," which is something to go on. Trump's speeches are often full of off-script remarks, indicating an actively engaged mind. Unlike Biden, Trump holds his own at regular press conferences and interviews. He entertains large audiences at his rallies, usually for an hour or more. He has a bold sense of humor and rarely fails to communicate his freshest thoughts--sometimes to a fault. Given his positivity and mental output, I'm not surprised that our president appreciates Rand's fiction, which celebrates rational thought and achievement.
Primarily for the above political and personal reasons, I'm voting for Trump. In the end, I hope you consider what you want in a president that is of political and personal value to yourself, and vote according to your values.

Our new episode covers the controversy over the NY Times' 1619 Project versus Trump's push for patriotic education, when it comes to teaching history. We also get pretty deep into the principles and design of the correct curriculum.
 

I’m afraid I remember little on the whens of them, MS. None are from reading or listening to criticisms of others, only from my own reflections across the years. (I became familiar with Rand’s literature and philosophy in ’67-’68.)
Some core things here.
Concerning biological function of mind here.
Egoism suffering some pinch here.
To the preceding one, I should add that resort to the subconscious, packing it with purely selfish aim, to egoistically explain what Branden/Rand named the Visibility Principle, is packing the subconscious with an untested, evidence-absent conjecture.
Some divergence here over context of knowledge and meaning of truth.
I’ve written objections to Rand’s definition of logic as “the art of non-contradictory identification”. Those objections concern the incompleteness and secondary standing of non-contradiction in elementary deductive inference, in proof procedures, and in rationale behind the proscription of some informal fallacies. Still, my own supervening definition of logic does not toss hers away, and her grounding of logic and its rudimentary function and normativity remain sound all the same.

This is a curious conclusion to Rand's essay. Her entire argument appears to rest on the final claim that in a free society we don't have to deal with irrational people and in a non-free society it's impossible to pursue our interests. So does her position fall apart if it turns out that in a free society sometimes we do have to deal with irrational people, and in a non-free society it's possible to pursue our interests?
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that our society is a mixture of free and non-free aspects. So in any particular interaction, how do we determine if it's possible or impossible to pursue our interests? And if it's impossible, does that mean we live in a non-free society? If so, shouldn't it be time to pick up arms and revolt?
Another part of the problem is that we don't always know whether a person is rational or irrational. Making this determination sometimes requires much exposure to their thinking process, which they must share with us, since we are not mindreaders. So how do we know if a particular conflict of interests is due to a rational or irrational thought process? Should we simply assume that if there is a conflict, it's due to irrationality? Why? Because "there are no conflicts of interests among rational men"? That principle appears to be based on assuming the thinking processes of others.

It strikes me as a kind of foreshadowing. But the connected events happen in such quick succession that they indicate a plot-theme integration of predetermination. You see that the movie was so well done that the issue of choice versus fate was there in the initial scenes. Also, the "wake up" bit not only foreshadows his immediate waking from sleep, but also his later choice to escape from the matrix. 

What and When is Capitalism?
William Thackary was evidently the first to use the word capitalism in print. That was in his 1854 novel The Newcomes. Its essential mark was ownership of capital. So if one knew what is capital, one should have a definition of capitalism. By that simple definition, I’d say capitalism goes back at least to the periods of the various archaic states, that is, back at least to the social organization coming after hunter-gatherer groups, after tribes and chiefdoms.
Capital
Rand took the essential mark of capitalism to be purely private ownership of property. (note) That would include private ownership of capital goods. Rand called mixed economy one having both private and public ownership of property. Purely private ownership would mean that the entire bundle of specific rights in each property is held by the private owners. I own a couple of acres, but with that does not come the right to make bonfires under all wind conditions (city ordinance). So there is some public ownership of my land property, though the bundle of my rights over the property is preponderate in the total bundle.
Rand and many others have thought of our modern mixed economies as mixtures of capitalism and socialism, and that is right, but I think the more fundamental characterization of the mix is the mixture between private and public ownership.
Ideologues of either pure capitalism or pure socialism tend to see only each other as what is other in the mixed economy. I’ve come to realize this is an enormous error. There is an important third component, and it is a publicly owned thing. It has been present since those archaic states and apparently isn’t going to go away or be made to go away. That factor in nation states is outlay for common defense of the country. And in the contemporary world with its greater wealth and technology, that common defense has expanded beyond defense against aggressions to common defense against natural catastrophes (warnings and evacuations), against contagious diseases, and against all sorts of manmade dangerous things within the country.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Consider also: Capitalism
 
 

Smith was on Timcast IRL and said that she's voting for Trump because "he doesn't speak woke." She sees him as the only anti-SJW candidate. 
 
Yes, it's the nature of Marxism to frame liberalism as an aspect of a certain class, the bourgeoisie. So even today we have the spectacle of rich Democrats downplaying their capitalism and wealth and pandering to the working class and poor socialists who have been taught that "liberty" means freedom from capitalist exploitation and racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia and hate speech and misgendering and racial disparity and police officers and whatever else hurts their fragile feelings or hinders the Marxist revolution.

You guys talked about the philosophical motivations of the protesters. This article is about that. It is written by one of the authors of the soon-to-be-released book Critical Theories.

They used music from Light Rain's 1978 album Dream Dancer.
 

LIGHT RAIN — Pax de Deux (8.5 min.) 
dancers — Lucia Lacarra and Marlon Dino
choreographer — Gerald Arpino
music — Douglas Adams and Russ Gauthier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8wMMMgHcfk 

Definitions exist within a context of knowledge. If you don't know what "talking" means, then you're probably not worth talking to.

If anyone is still interested in the goings on at the Ayn Rand Institute, Yaron Brook has come out strongly in support of Biden for President: 
Yaron Brook Show
The article “Biden is Our Only Hope” comments on this in detail.  You can find it by  searching on
biden yaron "christian right"
using Google (Bing and DuckDuckGo won’t work); “christian right” must be in quotes.
You will learn that after Brook’s comments it became known that Leonard Peikoff had donated $250 to Trump’s campaign.  So far Brook hasn’t commented on having once said that no “Trump apologist” should call himself an Objectivist.
 

Returning to the initial question, I’m going to say “No, it would not be helpful”. It would be helpful to clearly articulate a real problem which in principle could be solved, but that has nothing to do with BLM. The problem is not that Richard Spencer has his ideas, and the propagation of his ideas cause some other problem.  The problem that BLM is addressing is the “rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us by the state” (their words). As they say, “Our intention from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the world who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities”. Given these fundamentals as a raison d’être, there is no reasonable connection between their purpose, and intellectual engagement over wingnut ideas about race. You do not need to inform Blacks that Spencer is intellectually wrong: that is experientially self-evident. BLM is at its core an anti-intellectual “progressive” ideological movement, which has become the quasi-official spokesperson controlling discussion of a broader issue. Their success as a movement is, very simply, that they connected emotional reactions to poorly-understood problems in race relations in the US with an ideology that most people don’t bother to analyze, using a slogan as the glue.

"The famous image of Aunt Jemima was based on the real image of Nancy Green, who was known as a magnificent cook, an attractive woman of outgoing nature and friendly personality, an original painting of which sold for $9,030 at MastroNet. The painting was rendered by A. B. Frost, who is now well known as one of the great illustrators of the Golden Age of American Illustration.[13]"
This quote is from the Wikipedia article covering the life of Nancy Green, the original celebrity personality representing the soon to be discontinued brand, known as, Aunt Jemima. 
I hope there is common ground among the other contributors to this thread regarding the nature of the decision of the Quaker Oats company. Their decision is a meaningless gesture pandering to the Social Justice Warriors, who will, no doubt, glow with pride for their valiant campaign to retire poor Aunt Jemima. Quaker Oats can breathe easier now. But, I can't truly cooperate with any sort of boycott of Quaker Oats products, as I can't remember the last time I've purchased any. Pancakes and syrup are a little too rich for my breakfast diet.
This has all been somewhat educational; I was unfamiliar with the story of Nancy Green, until yesterday. I have been aware of the very controversial "mammy stereotype," or archetype, which every you prefer. According to the available resources, Nancy Green made a success from her personality, as well as her apparent abundance of other virtues. Whether or not one might approve of her persona, it served her well, as it served the needs of industry marketing of a fine product. She was born a slave, but she chose to be the person she became, with the help of free enterprise. She was not forced to cook pancakes; she was a free woman. I don't know how much money she made, but she didn't die in poverty, as far too many other African-Americans of her generation did. I think it would be reasonable to promote awareness of her life story, as well as other early-twentieth century African-American celebrities and entrepreneurs. Regardless of the means of her success, Nancy Green deserves some credit for not only achieving the American dream, but for her efforts in promoting the dream to others.
I stand by my position that it seems pathetic, silly, and wasteful to try to persuade others to believe in the heinous nature of a harmless logo. The heinous nature of racism will never be properly understood, when SJWs waste their 15 minutes of fame trying to harpoon red herrings such, "plausible" racism found in marketing logos. How will the conversation be taken seriously as this goes on? The mammy-image of Aunt Jemima had been revised for years, but some people will take offense at anything. You can remove the image of every human, anthropomorphic animal, vegetable and/or extraterrestrial alien from children's cereal boxes, and it won't make a damn bit of difference in progress toward changing the justice system. If you'll indulge me a slippery-slope argument, we may all be satisfied, if not thrilled, when the food products available arrive in plain beige containers, marked, Brands X, Y, and Z, after all mascots have been deemed unlawful. And the only place you'll find a representational image of slave-holder George Washington will be the statue on display in Trafalgar Square.
And that's about all I have to say about that. Eioul, go ahead and pick all of the nits from my statement you want until your heart's content.

Give a different, less spineless, producer a try. If you trade with cowards you'll get more cowards.

I prefer not to associate with people who don’t agree with me. I am willing to do so when those people have some superior value for me. I prefer to not deal with any form of irrational behavior, but I don’t live by myself in an isolated cabin in the woods. What value system tells you how much time you have for friends (as opposed to anything else), and what specific value do you apply in sorting your acquaintances into a friend / non-friend grouping. E.g. is it “any form of irrationality”, “violent communism”, “communism”, “violent”? And why would it be rational to shun a person who you know has irrational beliefs. Is it something completely different, namely the “in-your-face” nature of SJW’s.

Nevermind, I found them.

Eiuol (Lev) and I (William) have created a new show on Youtube called Welcome To Reality! It is devoted to respectful debate and discussion. We will cover various topics that interest us and try to apply our understanding of Objectivism to moral and political action. The first episode is on the use and morality of recreational drugs, such as alcohol and psychedelics. We hope you'll check out the program and subscribe to our channel. Thanks!
https://youtu.be/aDWd-b2xEB0 

Definitions exist within a context of knowledge. If you don't know what "talking" means, then you're probably not worth talking to.

When you omit the measurements a quantitative measurement becomes qualitative.  That is what a quality is: a certain range of measurements.  The quality of red means (refers to) any of the various shades and intensities of color within the range of red, and it does so open-endedly (all reds near, far, past, future, known, unknown).   Quality is itself a concept, not a concrete.  The philosophical problem is relating concepts to concretes.  Once a method of handling concretes conceptually is found, handling qualitative thinking is just more of the same. 
And I don't understand how any of this other grumbling by others about spatial thinking is at all well founded either.  Space has measurements.  Measurements of distance can be omitted to form concepts of directions, directions can be omitted to form the concepts of near and far, both types of measurements can be omitted to specify relationships such as "on top of" or "to the left of".

So when exactly did God not create the universe? A long time ago when there was no life or consciousness? Or a couple days ago when you were thinking up this topic? Maybe he created everything five seconds ago and our memories of yesterday are artificial implants. How constrained to logic and scientific fact is your concept of god? Because you don't need a dozen sentences to say that you can't create something ex nihilo.
I'm just stressing the fact that the arbitrary is not true or false, so you can't prove it true or false. Some dork can always come along and throw arbitrary objections at you, like the universe could have been created yesterday with people and pets and politicians even.
Also, you begin your formulation like this:
You're dealing with "classifications"? In other words, abstractions. Your premise already assumes the existence of something that can form concepts.
Furthermore, "classifications" don't exist outside the mind, so they have nothing to do with how a material universe was or wasn't created. You aren't starting with anything objective, not the real or alleged referrents of these "classifications," but the "classifications" themselves. Then you do switch to referrents, but treat them as if they were your earlier abstractions.
And finally, if "God" is a "classification," what does it classify? That which did not create the universe? Well, lots of things didn't create the universe.

If evil extorts values from the good, then punishing evil is rewarding the good. It is helping restore what rightfully belongs to the good. It is justice.