MasterScowler

Indeed. We are far too concerned with our public image; we have conducted this war in such a politically correct fashion that it has abdicated our capacity to succeed. Our soldiers are bleeding in the streets of Najriyah and Fallujah to satiate the sensitivities of the bleeding-heart liberals who oppose the war, and to cater to the diminishing approval of the Global Community. I'm tired of seeing the Good Guys die on unagrateful foreign soil. Spain has remarkably illustrated Rand's maxim "In the compromise between Good and Evil, Evil always wins". Spain has conceded, and Thailand has said that they will too; both will be forever at the mercy of terrrorists until they revoke the sanction they've given in doing so. We and our allies, on the other hand, continue to fight the good fight with one hand tied behind our backs, at the cost of our soldiers' lives. I think it's time that the insurgents paid with their lives, until there are none left, or they learn the value of rational self-interest. Whichever comes first is of no moment. First lesson of rational self-interest: if an 800-lb gorilla wielding a battle axe comes to your house and offers to clear it of cockroaches, one should not attack said gorilla with a butter knife.

Sorry if I haven't been clear. I reject that force requires physical contact or threat of violence. The Federal Government may legally sieze the property or freeze the bank accounts of alleged drug dealers. This is the use of force.

No offense, Kitty Hawk, but if that's all you got from it, then you missed the point entirely. The point of that particular aspect of SotF was quite clearly stated in the Wizard's Second Rule: "The greatest harm can come from the best of intentions". This is a paraphrase of "check your premises". Naked Empire was the first of three books on his remaining contract with Tor. I haven't heard that the third will end the series, personally. But I will concur with Kitty Hawk on this one. It's time to move on... When Goodkind first released Wizard's First Rule, he was a different person. He will deny this, but that matters not. WFR irrefutably has a much different flavor than does Naked Empire. If you read his interviews, so does Terry. He was more "moderate" when he first came on the scene. Now he is treading the fine line of pedantic Randroid. Pay very close attention to two things: The Keeper and Creator for one, and Richard's relationship with the D'Harans for another. He learned some very important lessons in D'Hara, not all of which Terry has yet addressed. I think the loyalty of the Mord Sith is still rationally questionable, as is the devotion of the D'Harans to the Lord Rahl (viz the logical errors of those who invested in D'Anconia's copper mines...) I'm waiting for Terry to resolve these topics; and I will be smugly validated if he doesn't...

Fair warning: Pillars of Creation was awful. The plot of Naked Empire was contrived, but the message was outstanding.

Which you did quite nicely, thanks. I'm not too worried about this being accurate, RC. I pride myself in being cognizant of my own paradigms of thought, and in seeking to conquer them. In this case, that the definition which makes the most sense to me also happens to include blackmail, slander, et al, only reaffirms that I was on the right track all along. I am not afraid of being wrong, mind you. As a matter of fact, I endeavor to find my incorrect ideas and ideals and squash them. That's one of the reasons I'm here. But after considering your post, and reconsidering my stance, I do not think this is one such case. Bearster, If "force" were a concrete concept, likely there wouldn't be as much debate about its definition, eh? Perhaps "reducing it to its epistemological core" could have been phrased better; RC seemed to understand what I was getting at though, so I'm not going to bother clarifying, if you don't mind. I'm not interested in semantics. Not always; one could threaten to blackmail a Senate-elect with revealing their rocky childhood, or a President with "proof" that he had smoked pot in college. It is not always a lie that is being revealed, it could be a matter of mere embarrassment for an honest error in one's past. The concept of blackmail does not presume that the "blackmailee" has done anything immoral. I knew a Feldblum went to Yale who was a fan of Rand. He was convicted of drug trafficking in his sophomore year and booted. A friend of mine tells me that he returned home, where he opened up a dry-clean business as a front store for harboring a fencing ring. i.e. Slander need not be true (nor even provable!) to be effective. *** Force is compelling a response from an individual by any means which they do not condone; be it legislation, internment, false implication, or hammering shoots of bleach-soaked bamboo under one's fingernails until they admit to a crime they did not commit. Force need not even be direct upon the individual; the Italian mafia in its heyday was notorious for implying that one's family could bear the response of one's non-compliance, and this is also a very effective tactic; today we call it terrorism. So I stand by my previous statements: force need not be a gun, nor even violent. It need only be a threat, real or implied, stipulatory or inevitable, of a specific response or situation.

It's the stigma of the underdog, Joerj11. People love to hate anybody who has more than them, so a movie depicting a member of the 2% as the bad guy will appeal to 98% of the populous. Well, maybe not 98%. Not everybody who reads Rand is a millionaire... This, BTW, is the same fallible thought process that made Christianity so popular; it appeals to the underdog -the poor, the sick, the suffering- tells them that they will be rewarded for these things; glorifies their toleration of it! "Do not be sad if you are hungry, if you are poor; you are chaste for it, and will be rewarded in the End!" Of course so many hate the wealthy; because they feel inferior! And besides, what if they're wrong, what if they will not be rewarded in the End? That means they suffered all of their lives for nothing, while the wealthy got to have all the fun! O cruel irony! ZiggyKD has a good point. Here's another: Robin Hood. If art is a value-judgment of man's metaphysics, then in deciding whether or not a particular movie has any value, one need only consider its value-judgments. For example: The Unforgiven American Beauty Boogie Nights Saving Private Ryan Boyz n the Hood All of these stories have elements that might be classified as stark anathemas of Rand's philosophy, but I think every one of them is an outstanding movie. After all, sometimes a negative illustration of a concept is even more powerful than a supportive one...

I knew it! After the American Domain Name Reservation Society was disbanded, Harold C. Heralder, III (Esq.) veritably disappeared from reality. Some said he was holed up in the basement of a RT 66 Web Cafe somewhere in Utah, others said he returned to his native Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, to become a marine biologist focusing on the pseudo-sociological stigma of iconoclastic tuna, but I was not so easily fooled, no sir! Think about it: who, of any significance whatsoever, has heralded from Greenland since Leif Freekin' Erikson? So I just checked, and lo! www.americanbooktitlesilluminatisuqattersconspiracy.com is alive and kicking... (so they are obviously a legitimate group) and is a vile threat to free speech/thought everywhere! BTW, my own novel is called "Tramp". Is that too simplistic, d'ya think?

I was introduced to Rand via Terry's books, Skywalker. I am also part of a community of his fans, and an admin on his web site. Terry's own favorite novel is The Romantic Manifesto. He has been a fan of Rand for 30 years. The Wizard's Rules are meant to be paraphrasal of her core values("The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason") as well as some of his personal philosophical views. I don't think he refers to himself as an Objectivist, however. Much like myself, there are certain topics where he would not seem to be in complete concordance. For example, consider how many times Richard sacrifices himself for the sake of others... Faith of the Fallen is probably his best book, and certainly reminiscent of Rand's writing. By Naked Empire, he has almost completely stepped outside of mere fantasy writing in favor of being philosophically didactic (to no small outcry from the Sword-and-Sorcery sycophants, who feel he is being more pedantic). But he is still one of my favorite authors. I find reading philosophal treatises tedious; books like Atlas and the Sword of Truth series add a little sugar to help the medicine go down...

In the Public Interest Monopolies thread, RadCap correctly asserted that the legislation of fair trade is synonymous with such thuggish tactics as drawing a gun. Wouldn't irrationally-founded laws designed to cut the legs out from under an objective entrepeneur be considered force? If you haven't already, check out Peikoff's article on Fact and Value. Rand considers Kant one of the most evil men in history; but, interestingly, he would not have broken any of the definitions of force presented here... I prefer to reduce esoteric concepts to their epistemological cores when I consider them. From the Princeton WordNet lexicon, then, force is (amongst other definitions) "to cause to do through pressure or necessity, by physical, moral or intellectual means". Blackmail and character assassination, thus, are both means of force; no punch need ever be thrown, no gun need ever be drawn. As for America's involvement in Iraq, I consider it self-defense, despite being a preemptive military action. The force was initiated by Saddam. While shouting "I'm going to kill you" may not be the same as pointing a gun, saying it 19 times changes the scenario, too, esp when all the while being secretive about whether or not you are actually carrying a gun. Furthermore, he initiated force the day he decided that he could kidnap, torture, and kill at his whim. Some might consider this altruistic, it seems rather obvious to me that this action was in the United States' own rational self-interest. Deposing a piece of sh* criminal in the process is but icing on the cake (and a means of gaining support from the Rational Public Sector -those who understand the need to destroy evil when it appears). I reassert that, sadly, some people need a bullet in the head. (The Irrational Public Sector can euphemize this as Involuntary Enlightenment via Trepanation, if it helps them cope with reality...) Trepanning -uh, I mean... accomodating such persons is not initiating force; more likely it is a) answering force or 2) preventing it.

The reviews on TRQWBoEE(aEsTtDNFC) should be outstanding, although I think there was some confusion amongst his readers about whether or not it was the prequel or sequel to An Examination of Painfully Obvious Tautological Fallacies Regarding Life Qua Life in a Sarcastic Society, which I didn't care for as much as I will TRQWBoEE(aEsTtDNFC). (Sheesh, whatever happened to simple book titles, like The Republic? As if a superfluously redundant verbose book title were directly proportional to the value of its content...) I believe Sean Hannity uses similar writing methods; e.g. alternate reality...

RC: Here is The List as it Stands: *Encyclopedia of the World's Religions -R.C. Zaehner *Romantic Manifesto -Rand *Under the Banner of Heaven -Jon Krakauer The Iliad -Homer Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection Anatomy of Thought - Ian Glynn Ender's Game -Orson Scott Card The Complete CS Lewis (compilation) Let Freedom Ring -Sean Hannity Anthem - Rand The Virtue of Selfishness -Rand XML Benjamin Franklin: An American Life -Walter Isaacson Beyond Good and Evil -Nietzsche Antichrist -Nietzsche The Conquest of the Incas -John Hemming Darwin's Dangerous Idea -Dennett The Koran The Elric Saga -Michael Moorcock The Republic - Plato Nicomachean Ethics -Aristotle Sir Apropos of Nothing -Peter David OPAR -Peikoff *The last three I've read. I keep them in order as I gain interest in them, but the actual reading order is somewhat arbitrary... I like to break up the tedium of verbose, and painfully thought-provoking stuff with something light, silly and fun. Under the Banner of Heaven actually made me cry; the next night I read Paul Reiner's "Couplehood", and I switched to The Iliad instead of Sagan, thinking mythology would be a little easier on the brain... Even the Master Scowler needs an occasional break from the sturm and drang... And this doesn't include "The Reserves", about a dozen paperbacks and such that I keep around the house for when I need to fill a short gap of time between List selections. And "The Faves", e.g. if Terry Goodkind or John Grisham release anything at any point, they automatically move to the top of the list. Guilty pleasures, yaknow...

Damn. RH, you answered I question I never quite nailed down. Out-freaking-standing! I'll second AshRyan on that.

Exactly! Emotions ARE actions, because they are a form of thought, and thinking is an action. Emotions are a value judgment, and the emotion ascribed to that jugment will tell you its value. So the question is: Do you value hatred? Why? (I need to read Fountainhead again, because now I'm thinking it was Roark who said that the opposite of love is indifference.)

I do not like to worry; it produces nothing, and so is a waste of time. It has no value. I will ponder a trouble, but if I cannot resolve it, I put it away until a later date, when a resolution might be possible. Likewise, hatred produces nothing, at least nothing worth producing. I do not consider hatred a virtue, it is not one of my values, and I will not sacrifice my values to anybody for any reason. (BTW, feldblum, pardon that I can't recall the source, but I believe the opposite of love is indifference, not hatred. Maybe it was Rand... Anyway.) Looking at hatred at its most irreducible level, I think Nietszche summarized the inherent danger (and contradiction!) of such a thing quite well (viz fighting dragons). To wit: What can be said of she that steals only from thieves, but that she is a thief? What can be said of he that kills only killers, but that he is a killer? What can be said, thus, of he that hates only the hateful...

No smears, just being sarcastically playful. Kinda like the "twisted" (correct) logic comment, sarcasm. Sorry, forgot the <sarcasm> tags. My bad, I should know by now that sarcasm sometimes doesn't flow well via text. BTW, the last two sentences were also sarcastic. (Must be some Epimenidean blood in my lineage somewhere...) RadCap, OPAR is on "The List". Couple others precede it though. In the meantime, I hope I'm not imposing by posting. I sincerely do appreciate the insights. Apparently, you have the endurance of an elephant; your significant other must be greatly pleased. (Hey, only two paragraphs this post.)