khaight

My point was simply that on the basis of Schiff's position as stated, we can't tell whether he would be a supporter of military action against nations that do pose a threat to us -- like Iran -- or not. The threat posed by a nuclear Iran isn't going to be any less dangerous because our economy is in a shambles. What would a dirty bomb going off in New York do to the economy? From what I've heard of Schiff's economic views, they sound good. His lack of religion and pro-choice views are good. But libertarians are often notoriously bad on foreign policy, and so far I can't tell whether Schiff is in that boat or not. Whether it makes sense to support Schiff depends on his views. That's why I'm trying to clarify what they are in cases where I don't know.

No lie. They're excellent lectures, but damn do they cost a lot. I scored audiotape copies during ARB's cassette tape sale, so I got them at 75% off. I don't think they have any more, though -- I think I got literally the last tape copy of the modern era lectures.

That's a mixed bag at best. While the current war in Afghanistan isn't serving our national interests, calling our current foreign policy a "luxury" and advocating bringing the troops home sounds more like Ron Paul-style isolationism than a proper policy of self-defense. Here's a better keystone: what does Schiff think our policy should be towards Iran?

I'd take a different perspective. If and when there are Objectivists with the knowledge and ability required to produce machinma, why should they restrict themselves to remaking versions of Ayn Rand's novels? Much better to produce new, original material that reflects their values. I'd kind of like to see an Objectivist playthrough of Bioshock, done along the lines of the "Freeman's Mind" Half-Life series on YouTube, with the protagonist commenting on the various ways in which the setting diverges from Rand's actual vision.

I'd envision such a book as having a brief introduction to some of the key principles of Objectivist social ethics, particularly the trader principle and the harmony of interests principle. Then you address various concrete questions, as applications of the principles. This demonstrates two things. First, that Objectivism provides real, useful answers to how to solve problems in everyday life. Second, it models how to move between concretes and abstractions, thus providing examples of proper thinking methods. Because of our horrible educational system, many decent people today simply don't know how to take an abstract idea and apply it to concrete circumstances -- it's a skill they were never taught, and never learned.

There are actually a number of 'introductory' level books of various kinds. Off the top of my head I can think of Objectivism in One Lesson and Ayn Rand for Beginners, both by Andrew Bernstein; Loving Life, by Craig Biddle; On Ayn Rand by Allan Gotthelf; and The Ayn Rand Reader, edited by Gary Hull. These books have different emphases, but all are reasonable introductions to significant and unique elements of Ayn Rand's thought aimed at a beginner level. The Bernstein books both provide overviews, as does the Gotthelf. Biddle's book focuses specifically on the ethics. The Reader is a collection of excerpts from Rand's own writings, intended to cover a representative sample of her views in a somewhat orderly way. So it isn't like there's only one introductory book -- there are several already. What I'd like to see are some more works on applying the Objectivist ethics in everyday life -- concrete primers on how one lives a happy life as a rational egoist. In effect, we need a Miss Manners and/or a Dr. Laura.

You will note that I explicitly said "well-written". Your hypothetical counter-example clearly was not and is thus not on-point. OPAR is not suitable as an introduction to Rand's ideas. Peikoff himself has said so explicitly. So if you're looking for a book to introduce Rand's ideas to a curious but otherwise unphilosophical person OPAR is not in the running. The main problem with Atlas Shrugged as an introduction is that it is extremely long. People can be curious, but not curious enough to commit to reading something that lengthy. Let me ask you a counter-question: Do you find something wrong with Andrew Bernstein's Objectivism in One Lesson? More generally, do you have a problem with the idea of an introductory-level explication of a topic when there is already a longer, more comprehensive version available?

Although if he's running for Senate, as the thread title states, the relevant demographics are those of CT as a whole and not just Fairfield County.

When I was looking to buy a house, I picked up "Home Buying for Dummies" and "Mortgages for Dummies". Both were very helpful. They provided clear, structured explanations of a rather complex process. Could I have found equivalent information in other books? Of course. But the point isn't that the "For Dummies" books are the best-in-class of their particular topics; rather, they just need to be consistently 'good enough'. And in my experience they are. People have been making the "Yes, X is for dummies" joke ever since the first book in the series came out. I haven't noticed it harming any of the targets. A well-written layperson's introduction to Objectivism published under the "Dummies" banner would be a good thing, IMHO; it would probably lead to a lot of curious but otherwise unphilosophical people being exposed to Rand's actual ideas.

Oy. It's like cargo-cult planning. Galveston has a cruise ship port, and cruise ships stop there. All we have to do is build our own cruise ship port and the ships will stop here too! We're probably lucky they didn't go whole hog and build the thing out of balsa wood to save money.

My guess would be 'yes' to the first question, 'no' to the second.

I think this is the wrong way to approach the question. The issue isn't whether you and I perceive reality the same way, it's whether you and I perceive reality *period*. And the answer to that question is unequivocally yes. To take an extreme example, I perceive reality very differently from a bat. I use visual receptors that respond to light waves; the bat uses echolocation. But both of us perceive reality. Both ways of perceiving are valid. Is that subjective? Of course not -- both of us are perceiving reality, which is what it is independent of us. Don't fall into the trap of assuming that merely because a phenomenon depends in some way on consciousness it is subjective. Perception is a blending of existence and consciousness -- an awareness of existence, in a form determined by the nature of the perceiving consciousness.

Not necessarily. An organization has to compensate its employees enough to keep them from seeking other jobs. A non-profit in a field that also features for-profit entities has to compete with the compensation plans of those for-profit organizations if it is to retain its best employees; this could easily lead to the use of bonus plans even by non-profits. I could even see legitimate cases in which a business that is losing money overall might pay out bonuses to some of its employees, e.g. if the bulk of the losses came from one part of the business, while another part was profitable. In a case like that one might cut back or shut down the unprofitable division while rewarding employees in the profitable one. Taken to a sufficiently fine level of granularity this could even result in the high-performing individual employees in a company receiving bonuses while the group in which they work is not profitable. Our culture is steeped in egalitarian assumptions; in business, this sometimes leads to the view that all the employees of a company are 'in it together' and if the business overall is not profitable then none of the employees could possibly deserve to be rewarded for their performance. This doesn't follow. Stellar performance is stellar performance and deserves its reward even if incompetent performance by others in the company caused even greater losses.

I'd say no. Objectivism is a philosophy; economics is a special science. A given school of economic thought may well have methodological presuppositions which are compatible (or incompatible) with Objectivist philosophy, but that doesn't mean that Objectivism *is* a school of economic thought. It's entirely possible to have multiple schools of economic thought that would be compatible with Objectivism -- methodological presuppositions do not entirely determine content.

There was a thread discussing this literally a day or two ago, in this very sub-forum. I suggest reading it. I believe the topic title was "Question about an Ayn Rand quote" or something along those lines. The ancient philosopher whose view Rand was referring to was Epicurus, BTW.

The question isn't so much why one joined the Libertarians as why (or whether) one left them again.

No. Rand's point is that the self, the 'I', stops existing at death. We never actually experience death, because death is the end of all experience. And because of that, one can equally validly look at death as the end of the world -- the end as far as the self is concerned. Rand's view here is essentially the same as the ancient philosopher Epicurus, who famously stated his view as "Where death is not, I am; where death is, I am not." In 1974, interviewer James Day asked Rand "How do you, as an Objectivist, feel about death?" Rand's reply was "It doesn't concern me in the least, because I won't be here to know it. The worst thing about death, and what I regard as the most horrible human tragedy, is to lose someone you love. That is terribly hard. But your own death? If you're finished, you're finished. My purpose is not to worry about death but to live life now, here on earth."

You might get in touch with Andrew Medworth. He blogs at www.medworth.org.uk. Another related possibility is the Ayn Rand Forum, whose website is at www.aynrandforum.org.uk.

I voted, just not for President -- I left that slot blank, because no candidate on the ballot met even minimal standards of acceptability. From a purely practical standpoint my vote would not have made a difference anyhow: I live in California, and Obama would have received my state's electoral college votes even if I and everybody I have ever met had turned out and voted for McCain. With regard to Quo Vadis' question, my position is a bit different. While I do think that McCain's concrete policies and intentions might have been less bad, his basic ideas were just as bad as Obama's -- with the additional drawback that McCain presented himself as a defender of America. Under a McCain administration we might have seen slightly less massive attacks on our freedom, but the deeper ideas driving us towards fascism -- particularly the rejection of individual rights in favor of altruistic service -- would have become even more cemented into place on both sides of the political spectrum. The result would have been twofold: the disasters caused by the government's actions would have been much easier to blame on freedom, and our choice of candidates in future elections would have been even worse. While I respect McCain's personal character more than Obama's, in the end character is not the driver of history. Ideas are. If we are to regain our freedoms, the most likely way will be for the Republican party to turn to a better set of ideas than those which currently animate it. What motivation would they have to change course if their current hash of religion, altruism, statism and tradition had rewarded them with the White House? None whatsoever. I regard Erik Christensen's charge of sanction as almost too ludicrous to deserve response, so I'll just make one point. I'm not saying that I approve of Obama, or that I think his policies are good. They aren't -- they're evil. I said so before the election and I've said so many times since then. But Obama's existence and success is not a causal primary. It's the product of ideas widespread in the culture, and those ideas result in increasingly bad candidate choices across the board. What really needs to be attacked and changed are those ideas, and having Obama in office makes that job significantly easier.

The fact that very young children do not have the capacity to use their reason to guide their lives is obvious. As they mature, that capacity develops. This is the foundation for concept of age limitations. Most people don't object to the idea that a 30 year old can legally do things that a 2 year old cannot. (Those that do typically have some really repugnant sexual desires.) What usually bothers people is not the division per se, but the arbitrariness of the dividing line. Maturation is a gradual process, which occurs at different rates in different people, but the age of maturity is a legal bright line that is the same for everybody. The basic reason for this, I think, is simply that the law needs an objective standard to let people know when they're dealing with a minor and when they're dealing with an adult, and age is a simple way to achieve this. The existence of the division is not arbitrary, but the precise location of the dividing point inside a certain range *is*. One could certainly imagine a culture in which psychological knowledge was more developed, where some kind of psychological test could replace the arbitrary age line as the legal certification of adulthood. I don't think our culture is really at that point yet. Even so there are some legal mechanisms to enable unusually mature children to obtain many of the perks of adulthood prior to turning 18, by becoming a so-called emancipated minor.

Not necessarily. It is of crucial importance that the government perform its proper function, viz. protecting the individual rights of the citizens. When, as now, the government is not doing so, it is of crucial importance that the government be moved back towards performing that function. That does not mean, however, than in each individual election we want the better man to win. Out of context, I think John McCain is probably a better man than Obama, both in his personal characteristics and in some of his likely policies. (I doubt, for example, that a McCain administration would have been as appeasing to North Korea as the Obama administration has been, or that it would have backed Zelaya in the Honduran crisis.) But I am quite glad that McCain did not win the election because of the longer-term effects such an administration would have had on the culture and the battle of ideas. Sometimes you need to take a short-term hit to build the foundation for long-term success. From that 'all things considered' viewpoint Obama is IMHO (and paradoxically) the 'better' man.

The first thing that comes to mind is that it's non-intellectual. This is more a sense-of-life reaction to the Obama administration. That said, I find it interesting as an example of the right engaging in a kind of cultural activism that has historically been the province of the left. (Organizations like Bureaucrash are similar; left-wing style tactics deployed in service of right-wing goals.) It's also entertaining watching the left whine when it's subjected to the kind of tactics that it has been deploying against others for years. They've got a bit of a glass jaw -- they can dish it out, but they can't take it. Ultimately, the course of history is determined by ideas. This sort of perceptual-level response may be an interesting symptom of how people are feeling, but I'm doubtful it has any significant effect on the longer-run course of events.

Do you think there's something missing from the answer I originally gave to that question earlier in the thread? For ease of access, I'll repost it below.

More and more Americans *are* seeing what's happening, and they don't like it. Unfortunately many of them lack the words and ideas to identify exactly what it is that they don't like. That's an opportunity for those of us who do have the words and ideas to help them by calling this what it is: the rise of fascism in America, with the SEIU playing the role of the brownshirts.

Roark explained that explicitly and succinctly in the novel, when Toohey asked what Roark thought of him. Roark's reply: "But I don't think of you." For that matter, Galt didn't bother debating Mr. Thompson either -- he just took over his time and laid out his own ideas. Whether those literary events are proper models for intellectual activism in our present context I leave as an exercise for the reader.