rebelconservative

Hoping against hope that this is a good movie that is an honest recreation of the book, portraying the characters accurately. Even if there is no philosophy, it should still be able to generate a positive, capitalist sense of life and hopefully inspire some people to actually read the book. I doubt it will be as good as it should be, but I'll be happy as long as it is a good movie and not a hack job.

They are rights violators, vile thugs staking everything on innocent people being too scared and intimidated by them to report them (and other criminals being equally implicated).

Here in the UK we have gay 'civil partnerships' and have seen a successful civil case brought against Christian hotel owners for not allowing two gay civil partners to sleep in the same room. This was not specifically an anti-gay rule, they did not allow any unmarried couple to sleep in the same room. They were forced to pay £3600 (around $5800) in compensation. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8266097/Gay-couple-awarded-damages-after-Christian-hotel-owners-refused-to-let-them-share-double-room.html Further, Catholic adoption agencies were left with forced to compromise their principles or close when the government forced them accept gay adoption. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7806780.stm

The Israelis didn't bombed the Egyptian airforce because of rhetoric - the Egyptian army was massed on the border.

I could not agree more, training in a martial art is brilliant for children - and adults. I am grading for my 4th kyu in Shotokan later this month, I've been training for over a year, it has done me the world of good, I could not recommend it enough. Not sure what you mean by body-building though, young kids should not be lifting weights as their bones are not strong enough.

I've been reading the Paleo diet book and it has gotten me thinking about the wider implications. What impact has our evolution and Paleolithic past had on our psychology and on our social and political behaviours? We know evolution has an effect on our brain - for instance our tendency to find faces in obscure patterns. Is it unreasonable to suggest it may have affected the way we approach individualism/collectivism too? The way I see it, during our evolution, we sought the protection of the group, the family, the tribe. Our survival was under threat, from starvation, from other animals and from other human tribes. The collective helped the species to survive. However, we have evolved beyond that, we are capable of initiating a rights-protecting government - yet we are still the same creatures, biologically indistinct from our paleolithic ancestors who needed the comfort of the tribe, our brains have not changed. Humans still create in-groups and out-groups, collections of "people who are like me" and "those who are not like us." The tribe has gone in the West, but people form many collectives whether based on nation, sporting team, musical preference, religion, sub-culture etc, the collective impulse is still strong - groupthink afflicts even the brightest minds. Obviously I am not a determinist, we have developed the power to reason, we can overcome these collective impulses by making ourselves aware of them and acting logically, I am just not sure a sufficient number of people are willing to listen to reason, instead they are guided by primitive emotions to content themselves with bromides and floating abstractions about 'society' and 'fairness' as they unwittingly seek the safety and comfort of the collective. Is this a possibility?

I don't know that I understand the question, surely it is blatantly obvious that logic is superior...? Intuition is nothing more than unreliable feelings within an individual, utterly subjective. How could intuition be superior to logic which deals with the cold, hard, non-contradictory facts of reality? The intuition of two people may tell them two different, contradictory things - who is right? Either one of them is correct and the other wrong, or they are both wrong, there is no other option. I know TV shows and movies typically show the hero as a heart-on-his-sleeve, intuitive, emotionally driven, going by his 'gut' and things always work out best for them... but that is just TV and the state of our culture is another issue entirely.

The facts are plentiful and so patently obvious that you have to deliberately and consciously ignore them; facts are irrelevant to the critics of Israel. They hate Israel because it stands for nationhood, in an era where old-fashioned notions of national sovereignty should have been washed away by the benevolent forces of the EU/UN kumbaya chorus. See above.

Kant vs. Israel - http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=185087 Reminded me of this talk: A good analysis of the reasons and motivations behind the hostile Western, liberal approach to Israel.

I agree, but it can be difficult to predict longevity - the Scottish government released al-Megrahi on the basis that he had three months to live (don't get me started) that was a year ago and he is still alive and kicking. My grandad died a year after he was told "upto a month" by the doctors. In cases where there is doubt, you have to be upfront with the loan company - here is the situation, I have X condition, my prognosis is Y... I want to pay you back, but I may die, do you still want to issue the loan? (perhaps at a higher rate of interest to reflect the risk)

You are correct that Google and Verizon are collaborating with the state in this matter to protect their own businesses and should not be sanctioning this (though the state is to blame for putting them in that position). However, the example you use is incorrect, the British healthcare system (NHS) is funded through direct taxation of income and provided entirely by the state bureaucracy (I think it is what you call 'single-payer' in the US), there are no private insurance companies working within the British national healthcare system (though some exist outside of it, e.g. BUPA, AXA PPP Healthcare). I think that France has something similar to the system you are talking about.

ARI (or even someone here) should debunk the most common fallacies about Objectivism in one article/blog post, such as the idea that selfishness or rational self-interest means only caring about satisfying your whims and trampling on the rights of others in the process. Having a quick rebuttal to mindless, biased, second-handed stereotyping would be very helpful. I had a quick look on ARI and Google, but didn't find anything - the nearest thing it probably the Lexicon. If such an article exists, I'd love to see it for future reference!

That is what you get when you don't select the right school for your child, they should be taking their child here:

used to...? speak for yourself! I guess I am showing my age, but I don't think it is possible to get over Winnie Cooper...

I am not sure what to make of this thread. I have been studying Objectivism for around a year, I would not have expected anyone on here to actually suggest that a property-owner should not be allowed to build on their own land because it might hurt someone's feelings. I am shocked at the suggestion that Dr. Peikoff would approve (unfortunately I've not been able to listen to the podcast) - I would love you hear his reasons. I think the problem is an underlying cultural nationalism, the perception of an enlightened 'us' vs. savage 'them' situation, even when 'they' are citizens of 'our' country. I understand the desire to protect Western civilisation, however, until there is evidence that this Mosque is being used to fund terrorism, defending our way of life means holding firm to freedom of speech, right of association, property rights and allowing accepting that Muslims have a right to build Mosques the same as Christians can build Churches and Walmart can build mega-stores. Would those who oppose the Mosque also be in favour of further restrictions on the liberty of Muslims? However, it is possible to interpret the present situation as "war" thereby enabling Muslims to lie to the West whilst maintaining their own ethical standards. I am not suggesting all Muslims would hold to this, though extremists certainly would.

I see, I do apologise for jumping to conclusions. There is no contradiction between supporting Israel and opposing the UN - indeed, today, the contradiction is in supporting both. The UN relentlessly criticises of Israel for minor or non-existant crimes whilst ignoring or paying lip-service to the worst rights abusers around the world.

The founding of the state of Israel could be told in volumes, it is a fascinating story, but I will be as brief as possible. Israel was founded not on the back of a UN resolution, but on the hard-work and determination of thousands of Jewish immigrants from the 1880s to the 1940s. They turned what was largely a barren, swamp-filled wasteland into a habitable area able to support hundreds of thousands of people migrating from Eastern Europe. The early Zionists settled in land that was not owned by anyone, it was deemed worthless, they transformed it and they then bought land at vastly inflated prices and created many more communities. By 1949, the Jews of Palestine (the name given to the region by the Jews themselves, rather than the arabs) had developed most of the institutions of a state, through the Jewish Agency / Palestine Zionist Executive, they maintained relations with the British (who occupied the area at the time) on behalf of the Jewish community, they had an army (the Haganah) to protect their people from arab attacks and they built schools and hospitals etc (as the occupier with legal mandate, the British were responsible for maintaining general law and order). The UN did vote on a plan to partition the land of Palestine (or rather the 25% of it that hadn't been given to Emir Abullah to form Jordan) creating a Jewish state in the areas were the Jews were a majority and an arab state where they were a majority (the Jews accepted it, the arabs rejected it, but it still passed the UN). That is beside the point though, the fact is that the UN simply acknowledged de jure what was already de facto, the resolution did not create Israel, it simply recognised the reality of a Jewish state. By 1945, there were around 600,000 Jews in the region, this is up from 80,000 in 1922 and as little as 10,000 (mainly in Jerusalem) in the late 1800s, it was not the UN that enabled Jewish migration or the creation of the state of Israel. If you were genuiely mistaken, then I do apologise, perhaps I jumped to a conclusion too readily. However, the status and origin of the founding of the state of Israel is, at best, tangential to the OP. Why would you bring up Israel in this thread? What was your motivation for doing so?

You are right, 'love' is an emotion. Perhaps I should have said 'relationships in film' as the idea being presented is that one rushes headlong into romance on the whim of the moment, rather than through rational assessment and exchange of values.

The question is not what you were taught, but what you now hold to be true. I trust that, as an intelligent person, you now realise this was a woefully inaccurate representation of the facts. I accept that it is possible for someone to be mistaken if they have not subsequently engaged with the conflict and history of the region, however, the fact that the creation of Israel was brought up by this poster in an unrelated thread indicates more than mere misunderstanding, there is malicious intent towards Israel.

Utter tosh. Israel exists because of the hard-work, struggle, determination and sheer bloody-mindedness of the Zionist movements, the settlers, the Haganah as well as the Irgun and Lehi. When the British army left in 1948, Israel was a de facto state irrespective of any UN decision - international acceptance was simply an acknowledement of reality. As I refuse to believe that an intelligent person could hold that Israel would not have come into existence without the UN, I can only conclude that your statement was simple-minded, anti-Israeli rhetoric and that it is not worth my time or effort trying to educate you.

I was watching 'Enchanted' with my step-daughter and the love-story element got me thinking of the portrayal of love on the big (and small) screen. The ideal of love that they present is primarily emotionally driven, with little or no regard for rational consideration. Enchanted essentially argues that emotional whim is a better and more solid way to a long-lasting, happy relationship than a rational, considered decision based on mutual interests etc, this is explicitly stated as criticism to one of the main characters... Am I totally off-base thinking that this could be incredibly damaging to a child's development and view of romantic relationships for the future - particularly when if that is the single message they get consistently from television? This made me think about some other movies I have enjoyed as an adult with a romantic theme, such as "Before sunrise" & "Before sunset" (- though I've not seen them since discovering Objectivism) and "In search of a midnight kiss." They portray love and romance in such a way as to suggest that decisions taken are purely emotional and mystical, based on feelings without regard for rationality - the basic premise of these films revolves around being caught-up in the moment. That seemed to be the view presented in most films, I couldn't think of any films that show love as rational. Thought it might be an interesting topic, had a quick search and didn't see anything similar. Thoughts?

The 6th "dangerous idea" the site lists, namely that many people are going to university when few actually need it. In the UK the government looked at the fact that people who went to university earned much more, on average, and concluded that getting more people to go to university would raise living standards rather than simply dilute standards.

Not exactly an in-depth discussion there, or anything new really. It is quite clear from all the available evidence that government aid to Africa is not only immoral but counter-productive. For more info, this interview with the author is much more detailed, http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/1112/full I found #6 quite interesting too, I've been saying that the UK government has had an utterly irrational policy on University for a long time.

This is a Shia practice called nikah mut‘ah which, to be fair, is opposed by Sunnis (90% of Muslims) who recognise it as fornication and prostitution.

It appears to me that the OP is essentially saying that the ends don't justify the means. Whilst gays should be able to marry (due to their individual rights) the ruling in California was nevertheless wrong and mistaken - the decision of the court was based on a 'gay rights' agenda (i.e. collectivist) rather than on the principle of protecting the individual rights of people who happen to be gay. Therefore, he is arguing that it does not establish a rights-protecting precedent that extends to other areas, but rather reinforces the subjective within jurisprudence which could have widespread problems down the line - i.e. the example he uses is of some judge deciding that the Federal government has to run free hospitals because of his or her own political views or feelings that everyone has a right to healthcare. However, I don't know enough about the ruling to comment on whether he is right or wrong in his contention.