Betsy

In other words, there is no such thing as evil? People are either good or mistaken? Ayn Rand was wrong when she said that we should distinguish between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality because every bad thing some person does is always an error of knowledge and never a breach of morality? Is that your point?

That's only half right. A fetus is definitely human, but it is not yet a being. It cannot exist -- i.e., it cannot be -- apart from the mother. It is as biologically dependent on her as is her elbow is. Until it is born, a fetus is only part of the mother. It can likewise be destroyed by the human it is part of. Once the baby is born, however, it is not dependent on the mother and other people can care for it. So why don't elbows have rights? So you have asserted, but not yet proved.

"I am wondering how something first becomes owned (not becoming owned by being purchased from a previous owner)" In general, it becomes owned by the first person who uses it. Using a resource like land productively, makes it property. This was the principle behind the Homestead Act which granted unowned land to someone who would farm it for a certain period of years. It was also the principle behind granting mining rights to someone who could "prove" -- i.e., productively develop -- a mining claim. "and how you apply ownership to things that move over or through many properties (such as air, rivers, and aquifers). Also, does an individual own the airspace above his land to an infinite height?" There is a well-developed area of the law which deals with these issues, but it gets down to who first uses the resource and how. If someone first uses a river to travel from place to place, his use for transportation cannot be restricted without his consent. A person who builds a house on some land has whatever air rights he needs for the peaceful enjoyment of his house. He may have a right to keep airplanes from flying over at a height of twenty feet because the noise and danger interfere with his use of his house, but he can't keep a passenger jet 30,000 feet up from flying over. "who own's the moon (or how could one come to own it)" By using it and making it useful for human purposes -- just like any other piece of real estate.

No! Sometimes it is rational to understand, accept, and continue to hate something. BTW, I notice you sometimes use capital letters, so your shift key isn't broken. How come you type the personal pronoun "I" in lower case?

If a person's actions actually do pose a threat of a terrorist attack, then restricting that person's ability to do so is within the proper sphere of government action. Actually, that's backwards. Our ethical system must guide the use of force. As to the way to compensate for improper uses of government force, that is a technical issue of legal philosophy and not a strictly philosophical matter.

What others? The fetus? A fetus doesn't have rights for the same reason an elbow doesn't have rights. Until it is born, it is a part of the mother's body and not a separate organism.

"dondigitalia" may find it valuable to check out Ed Locke's lecture on animal cognition which is available from AynRandBookstore.com.

God "exists" the same way Santa Claus or Bugs Bunny exists -- as a fictional character. That's true. So what?

That's properly a question for legal philosophy rather than philosophy itself. It is a specialized application of philosophical principles. Correctly answering that question requires knowledge of the law, legal history, psychiatry, and other areas of specialized study that an average person just doesn't have.

Not so. Although I am a positive value-seeker almost exclusively concerned with gaining and keeping the things I love, there are a few things, here and there, which have been able to hurt me (an IRS audit that dragged on for three years comes to mind) and I know exactly what I am hating. Setting aside the fact that some things (like IRS persecution of innocent people) are evil, that is not what the emotion of hate is all about. Hate is the normal, automatic, response to those things which destroy your values. You can hate more than people. You can hate the flood that destroys your house, the disease that shortens your life, etc. In fact, although I always label evil people as evil, I usually don't hate them. That's because good people like me are strong, and evil people are weak, pathetic, and unable to do much of anything -- including hurt me.

Since pregnancy can be the result of rape and birth control can fail, this is not always the case. The fact is, a woman also has the choice to maintain the pregnancy or not and, since she has the right to control her body, she can also choose to become unpregnant. On what grounds can someone claim that a woman has the right to control her body in order to become pregnant but not to become unpregnant?

It must be an independent entity. The set of conjoined twins or the organism with two heads, because the set or the organism is a human entity, would have rights which other human beings should not violate. As to what happens when the twins or the two heads disagree with each other, I don't see this as being any different from what happens when you or I have ambivalent feelings or conflicting goals or motives. They would have to "put their heads together" and work it out.

Yes it is. Having this ability (whether he chooses to use it or is able to use it at any given time) is one of the facts of reality which gives rise to the need for rights in the first place. Having a conceptual faculty while necessary for the existence of rights, is not sufficient. In addition to having the faculty, one must be alive, a separate biological entity, in a social context, etc.

I disagree. Marriage is a contract involving complex property relationships, promises exchanged for actions to be performed in the future, and other matters properly involving government acknowledgement and enforcement, if necessary. It also has a rational moral meaning: the public declaration of one's highest romantic value. That's why most Objectivists either are married or want to be. (I don't see why either the legal or the moral significance of marriage is inapplicable to gays, although there may be grounds for arguing that a new term, such as "domestic parnership" rather than "marriage," should be used to denote such a union.)

As an extra added bonus, that issue also has an article I wrote: a review of the book Marva Collins Way.

Thomas Malthus said the same thing when world population was under a billion and the average life span was under 30 years of age. Malthus was wrong. If you don't see why, read The Ultimate Resource by Julian Simon.

I don't. All I want from Fundamentalist Islamic nations is for them to leave us alone. If they want to live like animals and kill each other, there is no reason for us to get involved. If they want to kill us, I want them to know that we will wipe them out.

You weigh them on different scales using a standard appropriate to the different aspects you are measuring and relating them to what is actually in the work of art. For example: Personal reactions: What do I feel about this film? What is it in the film that makes me feel this way? Why? Philosophical evaluation: What are the explicit and implicit philosophical premises of the film? (Sometimes the implicit and explicit premises conflict with each other.) Are the premises true or false? Esthetic appraisal: How well does the filmmaker use the means available to him? Do his choices serve his purpose well? ==== If you do this, you should come up with three separate evaluations. It is perfectly fine, and often quite accurate, to say: It's a great (esthetically) film, espressing loathesome values, and I hated it!

Guess what film Spielberg himself admires? From Betsy Speicher's CyberNet

Then talk your local community or school library into getting them -- or any other Objectivist book or tape you would like to listen to or read. Your tax (or tuition) dollars at work!

ARI had another record year -- as did the sales of Ayn Rand's books which they promote. ARI is doing many things see this and this. Actually Yaron Brook is at the helm and is responsible for ARI's operations. Policy is set by the ARI Board headed by Peter Schwartz. You'll find a list of the others on the board and all the people who work for ARI, and their projects, here.

This is EXACTLY what Ayn Rand said about Fritz Lang's "Sigfried" in a short talk she gave about it before a screening of the film in the 1960's. Also, in appraising Dostoyevsky, she distinguished between her own sense of life reaction (the opposite of his), and her esthetic appraisal of Dostoyevsky as a master of integration of theme and plot structure. See The Romantic Manifesto. Personal reactions, philosophical evaluation, and esthetic appraisals of a work of art are often very separate issues.

"Subjective," in Objectivist usage, means the view that consciousness creates reality rather than the "objective" view that existence exists and is the object consciousness seeks to be aware of. Objectivists use the term "personal" to denote that which pertains to only one individual. Thus, the thoughts in my mind right now are "personal" -- not "subjective." My love for my husband (the incredible Stephen Speicher) is personal and very, very objective.

I read it. His main point is citing someone who totally misses Ayn Rand's argument for her central moral premise: "It is only the concept of "life" which makes the concept of "value" possible."

You won't find any real-world examples of this kind of monopolizing because the only way a bad monopoly can exist is because of improper government intervention into the economy. I dare any advocate of antitrust laws to show me one real example to the contrary.