Space Patroller

It's called the Toto Principle and it states: You can never go wrong by looking behind the curtain, but you have to look down and pay attention.

What a horrible dream I just had: I dreamed I was a leftist in the Revolt of 2064 and had fallen into the hands of some Objectivists and they wanted some information out of me but I had been impossible to break so the leader of the groups said. "We have ways to make you talk" "Hah! I sneered. "We live in the Love of the Lord and the Left. Our heart is ice and Our soul is steel: Russian steel, if you take Our meaning. Just a week ago We were waterboarded by the Conservative Insurgency of America and were able to keep them occupied for 48 hours until a party of Comrades arrived. Then it was our turn... We have had Our groin kicked around by some of the NFL's best! What can a pathetic individual hope to do to break us?" "We'll see" he said. Turning to his aide he ordered "Prepare Room 101..." then to me "...I'm sure you know of 1984". I sneered (I seemed to do a lot of that) "So what's Room 101 that We can't handle?" His response was "We put you in a room with a smoker, an AIG executive and a gun". "Bring it on! " I said elated and almost begging. "What's so horrible about that? We personally get to kill two of the most evil creatures since Rand" "The gun has only one bullet. Ain't life a bitch?"

As health care eats up more of our money, freedom and time, it would be good to ask just what we're getting for all of this as it becomes more expensive, oppressive and onerous. http://cockpit.spacepatrol.us/08aug.html I report, you decide.

There is a pneonomenon parallel to this discussion and it is covered in "What To Do With the Idiots Who Agree With US" and the "going Galt" threads. That is reading ATLAS SHRUGGED without understadning Objectivism. If you have seen some of the things that I have since the middle '70's then you'd know why I used "Objectivism" in a very circuscribed manner. In that era the "going Galt" pheomenon was the 'Bits and Pieced of Ayn Rand" phenomenon to which she said "If they need Ayn Rand to tell them this then things are worse than I thought" or something like that. How about the claim that the Talmud is a "proto-Objectivist" document? or that cetain kinds of socialism are "....compatible with Ayn Rand", or that Objectivism is a kind of "social Darwinism" or compatible with Utilitarianism's "greatest good for the greatest number"? This is what you get when you have ATLAS SHRUGGED without more a deeper and precise knowledge of Objectivism. Soon, "Objectivism" came to mean so many, often incoherent and conflictiong, things that the term is now almost meaningless except around here. and the antics of some of the so-called Objectivists have been, in the last 35 years, on the order of "Get a load of that". My ex-best friend was one such. Also conditions have changed. The Pro-Choice movement that has co-opted abortion rights is so anti-philosophical that a rational person would almost be required to support the "Pro-Life" side under the aegis of Rand's "a person with principles, even the wrong ones, is better than a person with none" and many persons here would not like Rand's attitude on homosexuality expressed in a comment about Womens' Lib and about which she was vehement enough to imply that it was antithetical to Objectivism (unfortunately, she did not state her reasons at the time but I suspect I could figure out what they were, she treated it as a given, the comment being in the late 1960's/very early '70's). Hence...

And here's the dirty little secret, or dirty big secret: When you look at the input of the ObamaNostra crowd The "mob" doesn't give a Rigellian rat's rear. Obama had a $MUS400+ (I think it was $M600) war chest that he used against the pathetic McCain and only wone by 5 or 6 points. depending on who you listen to Last week, according to Rush Limbaugh, Zogby had Obama at "50/50" approval rating down from 75+% just two months prior. This looks like a case of Obama fatigue and his telprompter doesn't get it. When the bad guys organized a trip to CT and the homes of the AIG execs. according to WCBS on that Saturday. they got a whopping 35-40 warm bodies to show up. Now that's a real seething mob for you. This is what you call laboring mightily and bringing forth a paramecium; and a dwarf paramecium at that. The university-media-totalitarian complex has to keep the drumbeat up to save face. Even if I were sympathetic to them, I wouldn't touch this bunch with a 10-foot Cylon for fear of being (correctly) lumped in with not-ready-for-prime-time interstellar-class losers. It's not that this isn't very impressive, it's that it is very impressive. Someone better teach these clowns the heimlich maneuver and it's uses to prevent mondo-sized chokes.

Actually, the fire was started by the media, fed by CONgress and recycled by the media. Obama was nowhere near the scene This is how a complex works, in this case the university-media-totalitarian complex. each part knows it's part so that no real co-ordination is necessary, they just respond in their habitual ways to what they see and the gears mesh If x happens, you and I are Objectivists in different fields. The identities of X, you and I will cause a reaction where our two actions will mesh although we had never even talked about the matter of x or may not even know each other

Mostly because this was aloowed to fester instead of the proper measures being taken against the bratty individuals. For instance, when they were children, being corrected verbally, then, if this continued, physically. The only way to deal with a criminal is to crack his skull before he cracks yours. The only way to deal with a brat is a good crack across the face since reason will not suffice, then you up the ante. This evil also tries to cash in on the attraction to "far away places with strange sounding names" that is at the heart of the explorer in all of us. and perverts it to its own ends.

I think we should wait and let him "make it perfectly clear"

Sure with his little red book; THE HAUGHTY ASS CITY OF DOPE

Ain't that kind of redundant?

Or ATLAS SHRUGGED

I think what we're having a problem with is understanding versus appreciation. Now, once I accepted Objectivism, reading ATLAS SHRUGGED was just a matter of time. So that can be argued. ATLAS gives a fuller appreciation that mey be essential. However that may not be testible since, if you accept Objectivism prior to reading AS, reading AS may be just a matter of time. Since I presume that we'va all read it then there are no cases of someone being an Objectivist for more than a year and a half and not having read it so there's no control group here. However, to my way of thinking, the only reason to read anything is for its own sake.

I think what we're having a problem with is understanding versus appreciation. Now, once I accepted Objectivism, reading ATLAS SHRUGGED was just a matter of time. So that can be argued. ATLAS gives a fuller appreciation that mey be essential. However that may not be testible since, if you accept Objectivism prior to reading AS, reading AS may be just a matter of time. Since I prwume that we'va all read it then there are no cases of someone being an Objectivist for more than a year and a half and not having read it so there's no control group here. However, to my way of thinking, the only reason to read anything is for its own sake.

Are you saing that, to make my mind up on the direct contents of Objectivism, processed via Reason was "mistaken"? Because that is what I did. I came to the same conclusions as I would have from reading ATLAS SHRUGGED. But then I was part there anyway. If you'd have presented me with the Primacy of Existence, being a person of sicience, I'd have said "of course". If you had presented me with the proprietary role of reason in knowldge: "Of course". However, I did not thinkof them as philosophy; I though of philosphy as a bit airy-fairy but expressing some truths, just a matter of scientific fact. I was far from a Rationaiist (too airy-fairy), If you had asked my to adopt a label, it would have been Empiricist (rooted in reality and staying there). It was THE FOUNTAINHEAD that jelled them to philosphical ideas with me (I was 22). Where the rub would come in is ethics; I was more psychologically oriented than philosphically so and had come to the conclsuion that man was by nataure, made to act in his interest since that was necssary to survive. THE FOUNTAINHEAD brought that to a philosphical matter. Also Individual Rights was to me a means to the end of productivity in a Skinnerian sense as with self-interext My economic approach was about that of Scientific Socialism, in which intellegent manipulation of the economy was seen as a benefit to all and in everyone's self interest. the most salient thing that I had in common with Rand was that were were both atheistic. At first encounter, I regarded capitalism as backward and conservative. Rand won her case on the logic of it pure and simple. The cure for that was Buckley's UP FROM LIBERALSM which showed that those charged with guiding the economy were much less than honest. Prior to Rand, my model for things was the Foundation trilogy. it was true that in the early part of '68, just before and during the time I was reading THE FOUNTAINHEAD, I was studying Math Logic and generic philosphy on my own and had had a taste of it at a Catholic High school (De La Salle Academy, Nweport RI), which is how I came to think of myself as an Empiricist and two years earlier had used philosophy as what would turn out to be a tool of prediction. So I was beginning to understand its role before I focused on Objectivism. Therefore by the end of May of '68, I was ready. Also, this was the Psychedelic era which saw a blossoming of interest in larger matters before it was co-opted by the hippies. As for the metaphysical aspects of this in particular. I mentioned my association with Science Fiction and the space shows and what they presented. Well what would be the metaphysics of such if not almost identical to those of ATLAS SHRUGGED? Certainly close enogh at the sense of life level to come up "Match". In fact, you could call them proto-Objectivist and certainly objectivist (Primacy of Existence and the Propriety of Reason as the Tool of Knowledge). Granted they were unstated. It goes like this: The various "cadet" organizations were a police and quasi-military force defending a specific type of society. The "starting position" was that this society was the good guys. This society was (implicity), ultimately, a reason-based (epistemolgically) utopia. Ergo, reason and rationality were proper. Now, at age 6 to 9, even had the been explicit, I would not have gotten them except at a superficial level, but it gets into you and is what I mean when I said "You never retire from the Space Patrol. the principles and values stay with you for a lifetime" and elsewhere "When I understood Objectivism enough to pass judgement on it, I said "Wow: Space Patrol come to life!". Don't forget, also, less than 10 years earlier, we had won a war via technology and productivity and that was in our culture for the post-war decade. What would be the cultural leitmotif of that? Later brought home by the surprise of Sputnik. the net result would be a fertile ground for Objectif=vism to grow like a weed. That's why I say I kind of cheated. There is another issue here. How can I be mistaken about my own consciousness and its operation unless I am not "a creature of self-made soul"? So why go there? There is a saying: "it is better to let sleeping dogs lie". Also "What goes around, comes around". I never leave the gun I use to shoot someone lying around: It may be picked up and used on me and the claim that one does not know his own consciousness is a doomsday device. Hint: Miss Rand was fond of referencing "the mechanism of projection".

I hade a voracious appedite for reading, especially science fiction. I also had the advantage of the "space cadet shows" of the 1950's which projected utopias founded on science and reason and of these, Space Patrol was the most adult (deliberately so) and had more depth inplicitly. Asimov's Foundation trilogy was also a projection of the value of science. I was already atheistic. Top that off with THE FOUNTAINHEAD as my intro to Rand and you have it all there. So maybe I kind of cheated. Much of ATLAS SHRUGGED's premise material was an inherent part of our cultur http://www.spacepatrol.us/firstpage.htmll

According to Miss Rand, the purpose of art is to provide "emotional fuel", it's primary appeal is to the sense of life. not directly the intellect where understanding occurrs. Given all of this, it can be niether necessary nor sufficient to provide understanding except as a by-product, since the main target is the emotions and the emotions are not tools of cognition, Reason is the sole tool of cognition. Are you impying that I am dishonest? About 6 months before I read ATLAS SHRUGGED, I had sufficient knowledge of Objectivism to want to make it mine and did so.

Two: 1) If you start looking for too much, you find it. 2) History can take strange twists and turns.

All you've done is prove that it is beneficial, not essential. In fact if you have the abstracts, you do not need any of the particular concretes since they will apply to any concretes If one person can come to a sufficient understanding of Objectivism without doing so, then the "essentiality" of it is refuted. Given human nature, it would seem to me that if you are reading AS to understand Objectivism, then you're so busy trying to "get it" that you're missing out on the fun of the ride: And that test of the Readen Metal tarck was quite a ride. Things were going so faxt that I was duzzy at the end of it. I can just see it: The year is 2793 and the big thing is "the hidden prophetic codes in ATLAS SHRUGGED; Pay attention to the thred letter in 'Dagny' and 'Taggart'. It was clear that Rand meant 'go galt'". then comes the blockbuster THE D'ANCONA CODE. Then we find out that Roark dynamited the Courtland becasue it was being used as a staging area for alien abductions; etc, etc, etc.*.. Why I bet if I select any two pages of ANTHEM at radom, I can find a combination of letters that will yield either "twin towers" or "AIG bailout" In "Gail" the G goes away, transpose the i and l. and add the "e" and "n" in "Enrigh" voila!

Since I became an Objectivist I have not had one bit of doubt about the core principles or doctrine. That's what happens when you don't ask persons to believe in elves, ghosts and goblins. In fact, if you were to ask me, I'd be willing to believe that the philosophical system was custom designed for me the fit is so perfect

Get what you can. If the dufus had been minding the store then he'd not be in the fix. the fact that he fled just adds to the appearance of malice and certainly is irresponsible. Getting whacked for a princely sum may teach the dumb schmuck a lesson that will stick. Ayn Rand said. "The aggressor is responsible for the consequences of his action" and the consequences here were life-threatening so he's all yours.

Maher Aher Raz Bani ufak how you say? dumb schmuck? Ok; ukiwah iki dumb schmuck? okidoki The Maher says: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03/30/anoth...er-troop-smear/

The 2011 Obamobile by Government Motors; a wholly owned subsidiary of Congress and the UAW

In 1988, Mark Scott, an avoewed Objectivist ran a show called IMPACT on WOR 710 AN NYC 3-7 PM. then vanished from my area. It was on this show, during the Lisa Nussbaum case that Leonard Peikoff endorsed the death penalty, reversing the stand held by official Objectivism (which often differs from that of the "foot soldier", as on gun confiscation, so I am told), held since the 1960's (see the IAD in the Objectivist Newsletter by Branden). Does anyone know what became of Mr. Scott?

Isn't that the case of "Let he who is *with* sin bigtime not only cast the first stone but make it a boulder fired from a friggin' catapult?

Well, I did put in a request to one of our Canadian members to burn a couple of killowatts for me, since I live in the Peoples' Republic of Messatuschitts:)