2046

In the objectivist view, conflict over the use of goods is solved by adherence to strict private property rights. The function of government is to organize a body of law based on that principle. 
1. Pollution is the export of harmful particles onto someone else's physical body or property. Just as if I came and dumped my garbage on your lawn, if I am exporting harmful air onto your property I can be made to stop via a legal injunction, and sued for the damages. Indeed, historically this was the legal tradition, the problems involving pollution have been caused by the governments failure to live up to this role and to allow certain producers to export pollution in the name of the "public good." 
2 and 3. Again, in a free society people will always have conflicting values. Differing opinions regarding the use of scarce resources is part of human nature. I want to do this on some property, you want to do that, who decides? Private property rights involves a kind of meta-ethical space in which people can seek their interests without coming into physical confrontation.
In a market economy, individual choices and tastes prevail. Not all members of society will approve of the choices of others. But, by and large, the mass of the consumer choices will determine the way in which resources are used. 
Ifa library or retail store started allowing dress (or non-dress) far out of line with cultural value systems of the mainstream, consumers will be quick to express dissatisfaction with these management decisions. 
Same in education services. Some prefer Catholic schools, creationism, others a liberal arts education, or progressive education. Who decides what the schools should do? There is not one monopoly decision. Parents, as consumers, decide with their money, and the owners pay the price of their decision in terms of profit or loss.
That is the beauty of the market system, when there is not one single monopoly decision. Let a million different flowers bloom, as the Maoists say.

Running naked through the park:
Yes you've identified a crucial problem with "public property," that is, property that has no clear owner, there is no way to regulate conflicts regarding its use without resort to arbitrary solutions. Now, Rand describes a free society in which all property is privately owned. But let's make an allowance here for some sort of land as you stipulate.
Private property has its foundations in the Lockean homesteading principle, that which is unowned and I mix my labor with becomes my private property. Note that this doesn't mean all property has one single individual owner, that would be the fallacy of composition. There are of course "group owned" properties and corporate entities allow for a legal method to deal with this.
Legal doctrine has traditionally allowed for some sort of "commons" area or such associated with small towns or villages. A village is built, and there is a small space in the center reserved as a "town square" that people agree is available for general use. Or consider a fishing village near a lake, in the early days of the community it was hard to get to the lake because of all the brush and debris, but the path was slowly cleared over the years and not by any one single effort, but by the combined effort of walking through the path over time. I think there's also records in England of private roads that were built during the 19th Century and then donated to public use (the builders had businesses alongside.)
So there's a public space in each of these, but what is the sense in which it is "public?" Surely it isn't truly "unowned," the village or townsfolk own it. And surely it isn't "government owned," or "owned collectively by the human race" or some such nonsense. It would simply be corporately owned by the actual village and they can set the community standards for their space. Surely I, as an outsider, cannot just come to their square or path and block it off for my own personal use, nor can I start streaking. As to how they go about decision making? They can vote, they can set up a board, they can have meetings, they can take disputes to arbitrators, they can form a homeowners association. They can leave rules real loose, or they can really get down and dirty and decide who the real owners are: Sam, he didn't really clear any brush, and Jones, he was lifting fallen branches every day, Sam gets a single share, but Jones gets a 20% share, whatever. You get the point.
On the last point, pollution: certainly you have to provide proof of harm. And certainly our understanding of what is harmful changes over time. That's why issues are solved through tort law, not legislative law. This specific person harmed this specific person. And multiply it many times for class action suit, even for hypothetical massive cases. Objectivists accordingly view these issues like climate change as scientific issues, not political ones. One looks at scientific evidence, in a court of law, and if the plaintiff proves their case, then the court stops the pollution. Environmental crusaders are always looking for problems to solve, instead of becoming lobbyists and trying to buy influence from politicians, their efforts would be better served in a more Randian society as litigators for the aggrieved. But what Rand was truly opposed to was the ones that claim humanity must subordinate itself to instrinsic value of nature, or that civilization's progress must be stopped. 

Personally, I am somewhat sympathetic to this position. I don't think it follows from the fact that animals are sentient that animals can reason. Certainly they don't have conceptual thought and language, not even remotely the way humans do. And if they did posses full rights, it wouldn't follow that you shouldn't just kill them, but you couldn't compel them at all. I want to clear out some land and build a farm, well I can't because some muskrat of some sort has made it his home. Silliness follows from this.
But I am somewhat sympathetic, like I said, to some sort of basic animal rights, to be differentiated from human rights. It is clear that they are sentient beings, and have some sort of basic level of awareness and free will, they have emotions and personality, research shows even that some of the more intelligent ones can abstract and even form some first level concepts. I think this leads to a certain very basic level of protection, that you can be compelled by the law not to cause unnecessary suffering and cruelty to animals. They can still be killed and eaten, can still be used for our ends and purposes, but that has to be done within certain cruelty laws. 
Idon't think most objectivists believe this, unfortunately, they believe it to be monstrous and immoral, of course, just that the law cannot address it.
Interestingly enough, it seems that Ayn Rand was also very sympathetic to the idea of animal rights, she just thought ultimately it couldn't be proven, according to Barbara Branden in an interview in Liberty Magazine.
 
Source: http://mises.org/journals/liberty/Liberty_Magazine_January_1990.pdf

I love Nietzsche.  I suppose it comes from a familiar unbridled rebellion that runs in my family.  I was raised by teenaged alcoholic drug addicts.... I love my family.  A thousand generations of prostitutes daughters got to this point in time just as surely as a thousand generations of preachers sons.  Any time you are faced with the stanch pride of an idiot arrogantly defending his right to his beliefs, remember his DNA is 3.8 Billions years as old as you are.  Remember also, your children's DNA is 14 to 75 years older than yours. 
The same rebellion that drove us across the ocean in rat infested wooden ships, the same rebellion that drove us across the prairies... makes us gaze at Mars in strange anticipation.  Forever running from the controllers.  Nietzsche explores the intricacies of rebellion with such a playful rhythm.  Irrationality as a necessity of evolutionary adaptation.  Imagination can get you through years of imprisonment and a few dark ages.  
"Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music" - Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil begins: "What if the truth is a woman?  What then?"  By the time I get to the end of it, I think maybe a woman wrote this book, used his name, and she is the reason Nietzsche went crazy and spent his last ten years in isolation.  If you go through the whole book and replace truth with false, false with truth, man with woman, woman with man, woman with truth, man with false....  And pay extra special attention to the very intricate broad abstractions he punctuates with a "WHAT?" throughout.  Its just breathtaking how many ways I can imagine him meaning everything and its opposite.  It is an Olympian sized exercise in exploring any given topic from as many angles and positions as possible, you find the truth in there, and she is not such a weakling as to need rescuing.  
I forgive his shortcomings thinking you can only do so much, on your own, during the times in which you live.  

In the objectivist view, conflict over the use of goods is solved by adherence to strict private property rights. The function of government is to organize a body of law based on that principle. 
1. Pollution is the export of harmful particles onto someone else's physical body or property. Just as if I came and dumped my garbage on your lawn, if I am exporting harmful air onto your property I can be made to stop via a legal injunction, and sued for the damages. Indeed, historically this was the legal tradition, the problems involving pollution have been caused by the governments failure to live up to this role and to allow certain producers to export pollution in the name of the "public good." 
2 and 3. Again, in a free society people will always have conflicting values. Differing opinions regarding the use of scarce resources is part of human nature. I want to do this on some property, you want to do that, who decides? Private property rights involves a kind of meta-ethical space in which people can seek their interests without coming into physical confrontation.
In a market economy, individual choices and tastes prevail. Not all members of society will approve of the choices of others. But, by and large, the mass of the consumer choices will determine the way in which resources are used. 
Ifa library or retail store started allowing dress (or non-dress) far out of line with cultural value systems of the mainstream, consumers will be quick to express dissatisfaction with these management decisions. 
Same in education services. Some prefer Catholic schools, creationism, others a liberal arts education, or progressive education. Who decides what the schools should do? There is not one monopoly decision. Parents, as consumers, decide with their money, and the owners pay the price of their decision in terms of profit or loss.
That is the beauty of the market system, when there is not one single monopoly decision. Let a million different flowers bloom, as the Maoists say.

Folks, here's the video of the actual discussion between Yaron and Sargon that was scheduled to take place before the attack. The "free speech marshalls" of King's College shut down the talk after anti-fascists used fascism to silence it, they relocated to a backup venue. 
 

Hot off the presses, boys. Yaron's forum talk with the liberal YouTuber Sargon of Akkad at the King's Libertarian Society, when ironically they were literally in the middle of denouncing the Alt Right and discussing the objectivist critique of fascism, the thugs burst in the room to shut down the forbidden wrongthink.
Looks like they were more interested in Sargon than Yaron, but they seem to have held their own against the masked effeminate commies, even though security was rather inept at removing them. Yaron posted a follow up video afterwards.
Some good comments on there. Yaron heroically stomping on the captured Antifa flag, just warms my heart. ❤️
 

Hot off the presses, boys. Yaron's forum talk with the liberal YouTuber Sargon of Akkad at the King's Libertarian Society, when ironically they were literally in the middle of denouncing the Alt Right and discussing the objectivist critique of fascism, the thugs burst in the room to shut down the forbidden wrongthink.
Looks like they were more interested in Sargon than Yaron, but they seem to have held their own against the masked effeminate commies, even though security was rather inept at removing them. Yaron posted a follow up video afterwards.
Some good comments on there. Yaron heroically stomping on the captured Antifa flag, just warms my heart. ❤️
 

I'm not sure on what you base your view of the psychology of middle-class Americans. 
What Trump saw was the the number of whiny whites had grown to a point where they had become a voting bank that nobody was speaking to. He saw that the Democratic party had started ignoring these people, and not been giving them enough hand-outs. These people felt invisible. In the wake of the great recession, they were also scared.
For 40 years, ever since early Japanese competition, people have been telling these cohorts that the world is changing and they'd better adapt. Many did. But, too many pouted and refused to adapt. As if the world owed them a living! Japan came, the Asian tigers came,...and there was blowback each time, but net-net the system adjusted. Then the Chinese came -- a billion workers. And these Americans, still competing mostly on their low-skilled labor -- and having not heeded a few decades of warnings -- were finally scared. The great recession was the final straw.
These loser Americans were then looking for someone to blame for their folly. Trump saw that. And, trump is a master of blaming others. And truth has no meaning to him, so he was the right person at the right time. Hillary was seen as "status quo", so these unthinking Americans -- clueless about right and wrong political ideas -- wanted to kick out anyone conventional. A bit to his surprise, trump found himself leading.
Being the zero-ego that he is, he was expert in reflecting back the emotions of the crowd. A populist in the worst possible sense. He does not represent self-reliance, self-esteem and independence. He won because he pandered to the whining low-middle class white voters who think the world owes them something, and who think any type of intellectualism is just trickery.

1. They believe in an Aristotelian conception of a soul as a natural faculty of biology. A soul or consciousness is a capacity of certain animals' neurological systems which gives it motor functions and awareness, as well as a selective focus and, in humans, the ability to abstract and form concepts and language.
2. A common argument of determinists is that since free will is conceived of in a Platonic or religious manner, in order for free will to be valid, it would have to be a magical or infinite. This is called libertarian free will. The law of identity certainly does refute this type, but not a naturalist version. Free will, like vision or hearing, being a biological function, is dependent on organs, is finite and limited.
3. Again, much like the same dichotomy, we can either have moral relativism on the one hand or a substantive, but mystical morality. But in an Aristotelian-Randian conception, morality isn't random emotiveness or appeals to the supernatural, it is common sense principles for achieving a good life and well being. Since man is a being with a specific nature, and that nature is governed by laws knowable by rational inquiry and investigation, just like say a tree or an elephant, humans are capable of investigating the conditions and principles necessary for survival, continued growth and success of living entities. It is, again, a naturalistic view of ethics.

I fear we're reaching the point of repetition and consequently diminishing returns. Thus, this may be my last contribution -- at least, for a while...
In any event, the context for rights? Is that what we're looking for? Yes, I think the intended context is human society, any society. I don't think it's any more "restrictive" than that. (And to search for societies in which individual rights are somehow held not to apply, I think, is to abandon the Objectivist Politics entirely.)
"Individual rights is the only proper principle of human coexistence, because it rests on man’s nature, i.e., the nature and requirements of a conceptual consciousness."
and
"The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work."
That's the context. If we're looking for "human coexistence" in such a society as you would devise, then individual rights apply:
She spoke directly to the case of not finding a sufficient number of volunteers, and elsewhere that rights are not alienable in an "emergency." And while I think it's fine to disagree with all of that, can we at least acknowledge that you are doing so? I mean, earlier 2046 had quoted Rand asserting, "You cannot say that 'man has inalienable rights except in cold weather and on every second Tuesday,' just as you cannot say that 'man has inalienable rights except in an emergency,' or 'man's rights cannot be violated except for a good purpose.'"
To that, it seems to me, you're saying the equivalent of, "but what about every second Wednesday?"
You're both welcome and encouraged to figure things out for yourself, but in trying to determine what Rand meant with respect to the NAP, and individual rights, and her politics more generally, I do find her thoughts about the draft and taxation meaningful. This is also why I was interested in her reasoning for supporting a subpoena (granting that she did).
It may yet be the case that there's an inconsistency between her support for subpoena and her theory of rights, generally; in such a case, I'm inclined to keep the latter over the former.
"The precondition of a civilized society is the barring of physical force from social relationships—thus establishing the principle that if men wish to deal with one another, they may do so only by means of reason: by discussion, persuasion and voluntary, uncoerced agreement."
I think the way you're phrasing things (e.g "in the service of human life," etc.) serves to obscure Rand's meaning: she means to eliminate force so that men deal with one another as described above, via reason. Yes, there will still be criminals -- those who continue to initiate the use of force -- and the role of government is to respond to those criminals with retaliatory force.
One of us seems to misunderstand, at least.
"No right not to provide the government what it needs"*? Yes, I think this is your position, stated essentially. I continue to disagree.
I know you don't care what Rand had to say about the draft, yet I do (and others reading this thread might as well), so:
Yet I think you're saying, indeed, that "rights impose obligations." The existence of government -- which man needs for the protection of rights -- imposes obligations upon the individual, in terms of subpoena and taxation and conscription. You must give the government what it needs, and after all, you have "no right not to."
You adopt this selfsame argument and imagine that it somehow only applies to subpoena, and not to the rest, but it is what it is. It is statism.
___________________________
*  And I understand you've appended "to be objective," by which you mean information, and you hold this to be more fundamental to the role of a government than funding or manpower. Though later you say, "In the case of a population that won't supply sufficient funds or manpower...all bets are off," so...

Right. Agreed.
I'm not certain that this stance is justified (more or less than we would take anyone else at their word, at least).
Well, all right. If his rationale requires individual attention, then I don't think that we should make an off-the-cuff or prejudicial decision that a trans person has something terribly wrong with him or that he cannot be taken at his word. I believe those sorts of things should yet be assessed individually.
It may be a mistake to try to answer for someone else, hypothetical or no, but suppose that the purpose is to manifest physically in a way that is consonant with one's sense of being or identity? To look in reality how one envisions one looking, ideally.
Honestly, there are a lot of things I don't understand about the choices people make in terms of appearance, personal style, and what not. Fashion, as a rule, is beyond me. I further do not understand the tie, or why one would ever wear such a thing... (except in response to threats, cajoling and peer pressure, which seems to me to be how that particular wear survives into the modern era.)
I do understand that how one appears has something to do with both personal expression, and also how one is received by the world. If I saw myself as female, fundamentally (whatever that means to me; though speaking personally, I don't expect it would mean a hell of a lot), then I guess I could understand the desire to both express myself as a female, and for the world to respond to me accordingly, as I see myself.
I don't want to say that it's as simple as fashion -- I don't think that's it (if, in fact, fashion is all that simple... which despite my ignorance of the subject, it might not be). But I suspect that there may be commonalities.
Exactly.
And, not to speak for him, but I believe that these are the issues that 2046 is driving at when he refers to "social construct."
The penis, and whether one has one, is a metaphysical condition. But everything that we associate with "being a man"? That, I suspect, is a grab bag of metaphysical and man-made. And if we hold these ideas of "being a man" or "being a woman" above and beyond the simple possession of certain physical genitalia, and etc., and if one is identified in one category but considers himself to belong to the other, on the basis of these other qualities, that's the point at which I say that we can at least begin to understand the desire to "transition."
This is largely what I'm referring to by "the state of the science."
But -- and this may be the tip of the iceberg here -- I'm not certain that the possession of all of the physical genitalia is central to our idea of "sex," or to most people who seek to transition. For instance, the ability to nourish and develop a fetus. I don't know whether that's of genuine importance to this subject (though of course it may be very important to a given individual), but my initial inclination says that it is largely immaterial.
In saying "I consider myself a woman," I don't think that most trans folks are saying that they desire to have a functioning uterus, though perhaps they would avail themselves of that, if the science made it possible; and when some people respond, "no -- you're not a woman," I don't think they're saying that they don't have a functioning uterus, or that it would matter to them if science did make that possible.

But social constructs are not imaginary things. There are tons of things that are social constructs. Culture, language, institutions, none of these things are imaginary or nonobjective. Race and gender identity are just part of those things. What you appear to think is "innately" a part of gender identity (genitals) and race (presumably color, body structure, hair type, etc.) aren't non existent, they're just not significant or essential to these psychological and social concepts as you seem to want them to be.
Wheb someone says "I identify as" a man, woman, trans, black, white, whatever, they aren't saying the identify in those ways which are biological only. That would be subject to your criticism. But rather, they are saying they identify in those ways which are not regarding biological sex, or race or whatever, those ways to which they are perfectly entitled to claim, those ways in which gender roles are conventional practices or accepted cultural values and norms.
And regarding things like acting appropriate for an objectivist... an argument from intimidation isn't becoming of an objectivist either, nor is knee jerk reactions against perceived heretical opinions. Let us avoid ignorant kneejerkism and dogmatic pronouncements on what an objectivist should act like.

I come back to the fundamental question of the topic which is: "Is objectivism consequentialist?" This time I've read most of the topic (not all because a lot of messages seem to deviate from the original subject) and I felt trouble in the force.
Sorry if I made mistakes in English, it's not my primary language.
As 2046 rightly said, the point of Grames (page 5), which says consequentialism is an "empty doctrine" is invalid in itself, because consequentialism is not a moral doctrine as such, but simply a category of moral doctrine. The generally opposite category, deontology, is also "empty" and silent about on what the good is. Grames (and others) makes another mistake in believing that "every theory of good and of the virtues is trivially consequentialist" and that one can "bolt the standard objectivist of value - your own life - onto consequentialism" because Objectivist ethics is actually incompatible with the consequentism, I will explain why. It's pretty simple.
I will use quotations from Rand and Peikoff that have already been given several times in this topic, but which, I think, have not always been clearly understood.
The reasoning of StrictlyLogical (who, if I understand well, thinks that Objectivist ethics is compatible with consequentialism) are sometimes brilliant, but he has just missed a crucial point.
Objectivist ethics can not be classified as consequentialist for exactly the same reasons that Ayn Rand rejected utilitarianism and hedonism.
What is consequentialism? Taking the consequence as the sole standard of good.
YES, the Objectivist ethic deals with causality, so it fully takes into account the consequences (which is why some people seems troubled), BUT it does not consider the consequences as the standard of the good. The pursuit of values does not imply consequentialism.
To know whether Objectivist ethics is consequentialist or not, the crucial question is not: Should the consequences be taken into account in a moral theory? (The answer is YES, of course, otherwise we fall back anyway into the intrincist theory of value). The crucial question is: WHERE does morality lies? In the action? In the consequences of the action? Both ? In the relationship between the two? Or elsewhere?
Here is why, in short, Objectivist ethics is not consequentialist: Consequentialism confuses the consequences of morality with morality itself. In other words, it confuses the standard with the purpose of morality.
Consequentialism says: morality does not lies in action, but exclusively in the consequences of action. Objectivist ethics does not say that.
Think about the relation between morality and consequences like the relation between knowledge and emotions, because it's exactly the same kind of relation. Values are knowledge, and emotions are consequences. Ayn Rand used to say: "Emotions are not tools of cognition." because emotions are consequences of ideas or knowledge and not idea or knowledge by itself. We can also say somehow : "Consequences are not tools of morality".
Back to the fundamental question: Why does man need a moral code? (Any moral code.) In order to guide his action. And action is always a mean. In other words, morality always deals with means.
Of course it is necessary to have a goal, values (to give meaning to the action-means), but the goal alone is not enough (contrary to the consequentialist view), there must be a standard for discriminating actions that are consistent with this goal and actions that are not. In other words, a standard is needed to identify the virtues.
Why do we need a standard? Why do our actions need to be guided by a moral criterion? Because man does not have automatic knowledge. He does not function by instinct, and he is not omniscient, a human being can not fully foresee the future when he acts, he do not know in advance all the consequences. (Which would be a pre-condition of consequentialism ...) So he needs a guide, that is to say a moral code. As it has been said by many of you, we can not evaluate actions post-facto ...
We must therefore identify a standard that accords with the purpose, where we can rationally show the necessary dependency relation between the standard and the purpose as a cause-and-effect relationship (life is the cause, the effect is happiness, as Ayn Rand says in the following quote).
According to Objectivist ethics, life is not the consequence or the purpose of morality, it is the standard. The purpose is happiness.
Life is the ultimate value because it is the condition of happiness. Without life, there is no happiness. But life is not an action. Life is the standard that makes it possible to judge the morality of an action, in other words, whether it is virtuous or not. Moral action is virtue, and it is practiced by choice.
A consequentialist morality such as utilitarianism for instance, says: What is the purpose of morality? Happiness. (We agree.) But then immediately it says: So, everything that makes you happy is good. Happiness is the good.
But it is not happiness that is moral as such. Happiness is a consequence of a proper morality. In other words, happiness is not the good, happiness is a consequence of the good. There is confusion in utilitarianism between standard and purpose.
To say: "the consequences are the moral standard" is a contradiction, it's like saying: "morality is useless" or "morality does not serve to guide action" or "man does not need a guide to action." To say, as consequentialism claims, that morality does not lie in action is to say that virtue does not exist. There is no moral code, no moral principles.
For example, imagine that I am faced with an alternative. To determine how I should act, I will think, "I must choose my action according to such consequence." (happiness for instance) This is the consequentialist morality in its totality. This is not wrong in itself, but there is no morality yet: it is obviously insufficient to guide the action. Then I have to think and tell myself: "What actions would cause this consequence?" How to know? (In other words, what virtues should I practice?) In short: I need a moral code.
In itself, having a purpose (happiness for example) is necessary, but not enough to determine a rational action plan. How do you determine what makes you happy? The moral code (life for example) is used to identify how to achieve this purpose. The purpose of your life.
 

Not to mention, Hitler and the Nazis used the political tactic of "entryism" to gain parliamentary control. He and his tiny cadre started by infiltrating the center left DAP (German workers party) and began slowly filling it with antisemetic and racist ideology, partly by alluding to allegedly "scientific" studies done in the early 20th century regarding IQ and eugenics. We should be aware of alt-right collectivist attempting to do the same with libertarianism and objectivism for our own tiny movement sake, even if it's not for the sake of argument, as of right now, a political threat.

From Journals of Ayn Rand:
Shall we believe that tiny groups of collectivists are nothing special, or do something about the future?

So, you have identified a political proposition which conflicts with rights, and are prepared to jettison rights. Whereas I am inclined to jettison the political proposition. 
I would agree with Rand's epic statement:    
When we say that we hold individual rights to be inalienable, we must mean just that. Inalienable means that which we may not take away, suspend, infringe, restrict or violate -- not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever. 
    You cannot say that "man has inalienable rights except in cold weather and on every second Tuesday," just as you cannot say that "man has inalienable rights except in an emergency," or "man's rights cannot be violated except for a good purpose."
What are the reasons for thinking this? Well if you believe, which I do, that philosophy is hierarchical, then you believe that rights both are formulated and exist prior governments, then that is prima facie reason to resolve any conflict between a government policy or construction in favor of rights and not the government. 
If how to properly construct a legal system depends on facts about my rights, and my rights are more fundamental, then any conflict between the two should generally lead me to favor my rights. Nor could I appeal to the existence of a contradiction as a reason for favoring the govermental construction over my rights, since what kind of governmental construction I want to have depends on what my rights are. 
Now you certainly could come down on the view that we need to reformulate our understanding of our rights, but you can't appeal to needs of the government in order to do so.
Nor would your specific argument work. The government isn't a person, it's an institution or organization, it therefore has no needs other than the needs and interests of individuals. And my needs and interests include not being forced to think or act, as a potential victim of your compelled testimony government, for to quote Mises, at the end of every government policy is the gendarme, the hangman, and the firing squad.
If your government is subjecting innocent people for the sake of its "needs," then sorry, it loses out. The "objectivity" in objective law has no needs outside of and against the needs of the individual, that is what makes it objective, if objective law is subjecting nonaggressors to violence, it has lost its objectivity. Yes it's true that sometimes jurors, judges, and arbitrators do not possess enough information as they need to make a judgment, but that's just how it is in a free society sometimes. As the great liberal Sir Thomas Moore stated, I give the Devil the benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
 

I really don't know what you mean by "obligated to accept that meaning into our own brains," unless you're trying to describe the process of "understanding"? If so, then yes: to understand what another person means, you are obligated to accept that meaning (i.e. what they intend), with reference to relevant context, into your own brain. That's how you are able to understand another human being.
Look, I'm sure you get this with respect to other things... it's like... take "Black Lives Matter." Is it a true statement that "black lives matter"? I'd guess (or hope) that we can all agree that it is. Yet in 2017, in our society, when someone says "black lives matter," they mean more than the simple identification of a true statement. And participating by, say, having a sign on your lawn which reads "black lives matter" is a political act which goes beyond the mere utterance of a true statement.
It's not that you have to "use some guy's hateful screams" or have the idea that "black lives matter" redefined for yourself, or whatnot, it's just that you have to... you know, be aware of what's going on around you, and be aware of what you're communicating to others. If you're naive and ignorant, and wear a "Black Lives Matter" shirt because you say to yourself, "well, it's true enough that black lives matter... no harm in saying something true," then that's fine as far as it goes. You'll suffer the consequences you were ignorant of, as you lend support to that movement (even unawares) and as other people (in reason) group you together with that movement.
But it is another thing altogether to be aware of what "black lives matter" means in context, and yet argue that the context doesn't matter. That you should be able to wear the shirt, or post the sign, and not care about the real world consequences of your action. That's arguing for the intentional dropping of context, and it is a very bad idea.

Yes, absolutely, if saying it (in the particular fashion of a meme, like the one we're discussing) helped to further the agenda of that nefarious political group and/or suggested that we were affiliated with it or endorsed it.
Can we continue to make a reasoned case that "profits are good" (in context; given liberty; as opposed to a group promoting "profits are good" for the purpose of supporting corporate subsidies, or etc.)? Of course, just as we can continue to argue against anti-white racism (and in that sense, that "it is okay to be white").
But it would be wrong to participate in the nefarious group's "profits are good" meme campaign, and it would be intellectually irresponsible to pretend like the specific context does not exist or does not matter.

For one, that's the liberal left. The Communist left does not like identity politics and engages in class warfare. For the sake of identifying threats properly, you need to know who you're arguing against - we don't want to fight Communism by fighting liberals. The racial stuff is mostly liberal, filled with contradictions.
The more important thing to do, at least when making arguments, is to state the position rationally. It would be better to dismantle an ideology alongside an alternative, rather than only point out stupid ideas. If people don't engage you, that's their problem. By doing that, you attract persuadable individuals. Yes, they exist. There's no need to say you'd need a therapist to do that. Appeals to rationality are appeals to people who might care, even the minority of good people who in fact will make a difference.
Appeals with memes attracts the lowest common denominator, the people who don't care to think deeply. Sure, they are amusing sometimes, maybe even correct. The issue is that they are still shallow. This is what propaganda relies on, hoping you don't care where it came from, getting you to think the issue is as simple as the image. This is fine to a small degree as motivation where an issue really is that simple. Except, Nazis get that the issue is complex. So they simplify. Make it sound benign. Let people who don't know better keep saying IOTBW, they won't know the point is to slowly make white identity seem important and dominate the race war. No, most people who say IOTBW aren't neo-Nazis. That's the point. It hides the fact that neo-Nazis are running that dialogue. It makes the phrase defendable.
An important thesis of Objectivism is that philosophy drives the course of history. It matters where ideas come from. It matters that IOTBW is from neo-Nazis. For this reason, we need a better strategy than to regurgitate a neo-Nazi phrase. The worst reply would be to say you don't care where IOTBW came from. You'd be saying origins of ideas don't matter.

Interesting. It's as if one points out an example of anti-white bias, ergo joining with neo-Nazi campaign becomes okay. Earlier they said if the campaign was "Air is good" and it turned out to be a Clinton group behind the scenes, they would react with horror and work to expose the propaganda. 
I think there's explanations for this. Wittgenstein said that when otherwise sane and rational people say crazy, obviously false things, it's because they are in the grip of a picture. Thomas Kuhn wrote about an experiment that was performed by some psychologists investigating cognitive biases, where the subjects were given brief, controlled exposure to certain playing cards. Most of the cards were normal, but some had been altered, such as a red six of spades and a black four of hearts. The cards were turned over and the subjects identified them as normal, red or back of whatever. Without awareness of the anomaly, it was fitted into a conceptual category prepared by prior experience. They were not prepared to recognize the aberration because it diverged from a lifetime of prepared conception. Only after repeated exposure did some subjects notice that there was something wrong with it. A few subjects never did.
In other words, a mind accustomed to working with certain frameworks will have trouble recognizing deviations from that framework. If one expects "the left" to be the major threatening force to their political identity, anti white, anti market, and "the (alt)right" answer as pro white, pro freedom, pro borders that is what one will see.
Even if contrary evidence is introduced, it will be dismissed as nonessential. That's why they don't care when I introduce a hypothetical benign Clinton slogan. Clinton is "left," enemy, "white" is what we are, defend, good. It doesn't register as hypocrisy because they are in the grip of a picture. The left is the threat. The neo-Nazis are rightwing and they're not a threat, they're just misguided goofballs of the right. And we are "on the right" because we oppose the left. The fact that neo-Nazis started this campaign can be dismissed then. It literally becomes cognitively invisible.
I think the picture is one where they see a left faction and a right faction, and they see themselves as part of this right faction. They have not dismissed individualism, in their minds, they just can't see the contradictions with it. Those become invisible, we must fight "the left." Doesn't matter if the slogan is neo-Nazi, we expect the left to be wrong and anti white and the right to oppose them. They see what they expect, just like the card experiment.
After all, millions of Americans are in the grip of the same picture, for example when they vote and support Republicans because they are "pro free market" or when they vote Democrat because they are "pro little guy." It doesn't matter when Reps and Dems both support corporate statism, that becomes an invisible background. Reps use free market rhetoric and Dems use humanitarian rhetoric, and so that's what people expect to see.
Im just trying to think of how we can both see the same thing and come up with two different viewpoints.
There is also the concept of "entryism," where a smaller political movement attempts to capture a larger one and seize its resources or divert its message. Left wing radicals have been using entryism successfully, and now white nationalist groups are targeting libertarians. They will inevitably succeed on the margins, as many libertarians and Objectivists too lack rational defense of their views, and see themselves as a part of the same "right" or "anti left" faction, rather than as primarily individualists. As long as you're opposing those pesky "SJWs," they literally blank out the white nationalist connection, it just doesn't even register.

On whether the meaning suggests pride: the context of a slogan has consequences for determining its meaning. If I said "I have a standup view of women," I might be praised for virtue signaling, but if I'm Bill Clinton and I say it, perhaps a different meaning is suggested. Context is a part of meaning.
So while the phrase itself doesn't suggest pride, when said by a neo-Nazi it does now.
And on groupthink, is it true that Objectivist are entirely exempt from this tendency, especially when it comes to pissing "the left" off? Well that's not objective either. Indeed, it's better to identify particular thinkers and particular stated philosophy. Like the alt right and its proponents, the ones who started this campaign: they want to deport all non-whites. Identifying that is a crucial part of examining the ad campaign, ignoring it just sounds like the opposite of rational analysis: a blank-out.

Indeed, however to be fair, it's not as if C theories such as utilitarianism, hedonism, psychological egoism, etc. don't have an answer to this. The point of the term C was to classify broadly between the relationships of moral terms in various normative theories. Each one of those theories may have its own meta-normative grounding for its theory, but here we are just isolating one aspect. 

I think the anarchist, armed with the same understanding of rationality can and should wholeheartedly agree that everyone should not be exposed to the constant threat of force. Historically anarchist have argued along those lines you mention more often than Randian lines, but it need not be so.
The anarchist nor the objectivist should accept this distinction between "natural forces" and government as a "man-made imposition." What does that mean to be an imposition versus natural? It's not as if the government exists in some Archimedean point outside of society and the individuals in it. Likewise, "natural forces" are "man-made impositions" in the sense that it's just individual doing things. Neither government nor spontaneous order has any existence outside of the interactions of actual human beings.

Well yes, I don't think Helfield is valuing the interview as such, but that's not his purpose. Helfield is a master at employing the Socratic method. He doesn't want to allow his debate partner to obfuscate or dance around the topic using rhetoric or sophisms, he has to pin down an answer to the question. Once a thesis is agreed upon, then you can show how assent to that thesis leads to condradictions with other held beliefs. But the questioner has to stick to questions about that thesis, otherwise the interlocutor will spin rhetoric and avoid the question. Of course Matthews is too politically savvy to answer directly, but in the end, he does get Matthews to agree in some vague "will of the people" and then quits the interview. I'd score that one clearly for Helfield. You can't penalize Helfield for staying on one topic and wanting to drive the discussion, it's a necessary part of the method.