SapereAude

The theme of The Fountainhead is that the individual creative mind is the source and ‘fountainhead’ of all human progress and advancement. And that sheep-like second handers who live by and through the judgments and thinking of others amount to little more than road kill in the ultimate scheme of things.

In the world of art, a second-hander would be someone who takes credit for achievements that are not his own. Aglialorro and Kaslow did not do this. They acknowledge that they did the best they could with limited resources. Is every film-maker who does his best to transform a novel into a good movie on a limited budget a second-hander? Obviously not. It is not the case here, but many films turn out to be significantly better than the novels on which they’re based.

Whatever their shortcomings, a number of very brilliant creative thinkers were involved in the creation of Atlas Shrugged Part One. And by helping to spread the philosophy of Ayn Rand, they are clearly succeeding in advancing human life.

Which is quite a bit more than I can say for the film’s ‘Objectivist’ detractors.

Incredibly, it appears that some people are actually condemning the film without seeing it. In other words, they are literally reaching their "independent" opinion by looking at it through someone else's eyes. That is the essence of living life as a second-hander.

What you can or can't say about the film's detractors is probably very limited and largely uninformed outside of their participation on this forum so it's probably best not to embarrass yourself with such inane commentary.

Excuse me but this piece of human filth is an accomplice to the murder of thousands. Every single man in that Camp (in any of the camps) knew exactly what was going on in them and was there because he could be trusted to go along with the wholesale slaughter of human beings.

Soldiers (although I'm loathe to apply that word to this class of vermin) have not been able to claim that they were "just following orders" or "just doing their duty" for a long long time now, and that is as it should be. Men do not surrender their morality or their humanity when they don a uniform, and they MUST be held to account for their actions.

I'm disgusted that the sentence for this waste of skin wasn't life, or better yet, a one way trip to the shower.

I watched a few minutes of Obama's speech and couldn't stomach anymore. It was obviously a campaign speech. He was pretending to be pro American and to have supported our efforts in the middle east all along. He even admitted that Al Qaeda was at war with America. He was clearly moving to the center out of desperation over his approval rating. But then Obama started masturbating to Islam and I had to turn off the TV.

I am very happy that we got Bin Laden. But it sickens me that a President who has consistently opposed and undermined our weak efforts to protect this country would be taking credit for a victory like this and using it to get himself reelected. It also drives me crazy that he wants us to believe that Islam is not dangerous and getting Osama means we're safe. All of the terrorist attacks that have killed Americans over the last few decades - including Osama's attack - were sanctioned/ordered by Iran. And Iran is still out there and getting more dangerous by the minute.

Most people on this forum don't think with their nuts anyway.

Rhodesia was fighting a communist guerrilla insurgy. Your implication that I am somehow a racist is ridiculous. I made no mention of race, but commented on the impossibility, from a military standpoint, of your ability to defend yourself from invasion and destruction, using the example of a well trained military force in the region that failed.

You have to plan and prepare for the worst case scenario. You are operating on the idea that everything will simply fall into place because you have good intentions. The old saying is that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

You do what you want, it's your choice, your funeral.

Bear with me. I am going to try the quote function again.

Thomas Jefferson wrote:



George H. Smith, author of “Atheism the Case against God,” illuminated the above quote by responding:


How about the Repeal Amendment proposal?

What do the Objectivists here think of the *consent doctrine?* Have you given your consent for Obamacare? Most likely not. Yet, if we are living in a Constitutional Government must we abide by the law as we work to change it? Yes, Ayn Rand might say, or protest non violently and accept the legal consequences.

George H. Smith also wrote:


If the various thirteen States already had their “more libertarian” state’s constitutions, weren’t those documents meant to last, complimenting the Federal Constitution, past the time that the signers died, onwards until their children died, and their children died? Weren‘t they meant to secure individual rights . . . well . . . forever?

I can only think that the Founders of the 13 States Constitutions, and the Founders of the United States Constitution were not creating documents to last until they died, or until their kids took over the reins of government. They would have been foolish to not act for posterity. Did they create something wonderful as if they would die tomorrow, or did they create a wondrous thing as if they (and their children’s children) were going to live forever?

With a view contrary to the one I just stated Thomas Paine wrote:


Paine is persuasive. But, isn’t he speaking about the right of each generation to fight tyranny? But what were the majority of the signer’s intents? Didn’t they *intend* to write a document to AVOID tyranny, so that they and their posterity would live in freedom? This wasn’t a contract to build a house. It was a contract to build a country.

When Paine says the deceased signer of the Constitution, “has no longer any authority in directing,” the living, I say he is defending the right for people to always fight any future tyranny! Those were cautionary words. *Multigenerational Contracts,* *Ownership,* and one of Thomas Jefferson’s favorite causes, *Inheritance* were all hundreds of years old common law, and UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED CONCEPTS during that era. They did not live in the moment!

No, I must disagree with Paine. They set no time limit within the Constitution. It did NOT have a sunset clause. They created something to last longer than their own life times.

Look at every painted picture of the Signers. The artists tried to capture that sacred moment. Let me quote the meaning of *Sacred* from the Ayn Rand Lexicon:


Mr. Paine, The founding Fathers did not build a house of cards.

2012 will be a pivotal year to seek a remedy to the “Problem of the Constitution.” I will consent to the right changes.

Semper cogitans fidele,
Peter Taylor

I think 2046 is on the right track, in that egalitarianism is indistinguishable from nihilism in all essential characteristics. To say that the effects should be the same, regardless of the cause(which is what egalitarianism and Obama seek)is to say that values, "that which one acts to gain or keep" are not inherently dependent on the process of acting. The new definition of values becomes simply, "that which one has." Concrete based thinking.

The removal of the action from values, is the elimination of cause and effect and serves not just to destroy values(which it certainly will, wholesale) but to destroy the very meaning of value.

In this sense, egalitarianism in all of it's constructs, from affirmative action to issuing six blue ribbons for the same race, is nihilism with a thin later of frosting on top to allow for the evasion necessary to believe in it.

And that is why new security proposals must be proven to be genuinely effective, rather than creating a false sense of security while being incredibly intrusive.

No airport in the world faces terrorist threats more serious than does Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv and yet it is the most secure airport in the world. Ben Gurion has experienced no serious terrorist incidents for more than 30 years. At the same time we don't hear stories like the one above at that airport.

What infuriates people about TSA and what makes it different from Ben Gurion Aiport's approach, is the repeatedly displayed lack of common sense. A person does not need to have a degree in security screening to see that this family clearly did not pose any security risks.

Ben Gurion Aiport has a very comprehensive security planning but this thread is about the pat downs so I will focus on that.

Are there occasional pat downs at the Ben Gurion Aiport? Yes - there is a chance of that. However, those are implemented in conjunction with behavior pattern recognition. This policy not only satisfies civil liberties questions (I think it would for any reasonable person) but for over 30 years has been meeting their security goals. Racial profiling is not as effective because an enemy of a different ethnic background (but similar beliefs..) could be missed and potentially able to successfully carry out an attack.

I can guarantee you that if TSA airport security staff was well trained in behavior pattern recognition and "given reasonable suspicion...." was in TSA's vocabulary in relation to these pat downs - people like me would have a much easier time accepting this policy.

This is just one example of the kind of improvements which could be made.

Again, it is the lack of common sense, it is the blatant missing of the mark in terms of security like in the above example, which is infuriating. It is for this reason that TSA gets absolutely no sympathy from me even though, similarly to you, I do recognize the need for security.

Oh my God... I just had to laugh at this. Yeah, WLU_Objectivism, my rational faculty went mad at the movie theater! I just threw all my popcorn at the screen, ripped my shirt like a wild beast, immediately went outside and violently asked the person in charge for a refund! I was furious at the number of explosions the movie had! Seriously, and you wonder why we Objectivists have a bad reputation. Okay, so how many explosions should be allowed to be in the movie? Geez... Sometimes I can't believe the things I read in this forum.

Talent call for short film: Self Hate in America

Project Description:

Self Hate in America is a short film about "Brandon" a child from an upper middle class home accustomed to getting blue ribbons for his 6th place performances. After barely getting his degree in environmental science he is unable to find a job, except as a Greenpeace panhandler. People's lack of generosity, his requisite low pay, and his own lack of a sex life brings him to the end of his rope and he attends a more extremest environmentalist meeting where he hopes to get on this bitch, Ashley. Soon he's befriended by "Sebastian" the groups leader. Sebastien takes him under his wing and soon takes over Brandon's life leading him down an path of anger, hate and murder and finally abandons him because Brandon banged Sebastian's slutty girlfriend, Ashley. To redeem himself as a mindless follower of the group, he tries to free monkeys in a medical research lab where he has to kill the postdoc who had just found a cure for HIV.

Character Description:

Brandon: 20-25 multiracial, (black, Hispanic, and islander; no whites, Asians, or other privileged races), good looking. I'm looking for a talented and professional actor that's willing to challenge himself and work for the earth, because I don't want to share the little money I make.

Compensation: This is a low budget short film because I have no capitol and no one willing to back my poor writing with their money because the man is keeping me down. Compensation will be deferred(and by that I mean, non existent.) All meals, and snacks will be provided by potluck and everyone will receive a dvd copy of the film.

In another hard-hitting piece in MIT’s The Tech, Keith Yost responds to the charge, much discussed of late in connection with the Wisconsin union protests, that our society faces a crisis of “inequality”:



Let’s begin with the obvious: the inequality of well-being has drastically fallen since 1967. Bill Gates may have a million times the income of the average man, but he cannot eat a million meals. Despite the enlarged access to medical care that his income enables, his life expectancy is not much higher than his fellow American. . . . Technology and economic growth have brought most significant technologies within buying reach of the masses; the real mean income of the bottom quintile may have only increased by 28.6 percent to the top quintile’s 70.7 over the past 42 years, but the utility that the bottom quintile got from each marginal dollar was much higher. . . .
Between Wal-Mart and globalization of production, low-end consumer goods have become cheaper at a much faster rate than high-end consumer goods. Adjusted for purchasing power, the growth disparity in consumption between the classes becomes miniscule.

This is all true, but Yost makes his argument by way of apologizing for economic inequality when he should be celebrating it. He emphasizes that Gates cannot actually consume much of what he earns. What he neglects to mention is that Gates earns so much more than the rest of us because he has produced so much more, by fostering innovation in technology and in business.

We can only benefit from such surplus production. Consider a separate point made by Yost, that the increasing degree of economic inequality we see today may be amplified by the networking effects of the internet age. As Yost puts it, “Is J.K. Rowling [any] better of an author than Charles Dickens, or is she merely the recipient of a windfall that the information economy has provided?”

This is an especially noteworthy point, because more than most people, it was Bill Gates who made it possible for more and more people to benefit from the economizing influence of information technology. Arguably, without Bill Gates, there may have been no J.K. Rowling. You may not have found your current school or job or boyfriend or wife without the availability of cheap, effective personal computers.

And this reminds us of a passage from the hero’s speech in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:



In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the “competition” between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of “exploitation” for which you have damned the strong.

The old Marxist myth, that in a capitalist system workers bear the burden of the rich who live off the fruit of their labor, is the opposite of the truth. We should not apologize for economic inequality, but celebrate it and embrace it. If we are grateful for the benefits of the modern age, we should acknowledge our debt of gratitude to men like Gates, and the sizable income that is their due.

Creative Commons-licensed picture from Wikimedia Commons



Cross-posted from the multi-author UnderCurrent feed

I received this petition from someone as well and I would advise strongly against signing it without reading the whole thing.

I don't believe there was anything inappropriate in the article. The reporter is doing what reporters are supposed to do- he's reporting the news. He's reporting that these things are being said by people in the community associated with the perpetrators. Personally I wouldn't want the reporting of these attitudes by people in the community where the crime occurred to be whitewashed, censored out, whitewashed or otherwise ignored.

I suggest a careful read by anyone intending to sign this (maybe you'll feel different than I) but I've worked with rape victims and shared this with others who have or still do as well and so far they have been unwilling to sign it for the reasons I stated.

I received this petition from someone as well and I would advise strongly against signing it without reading the whole thing.

I don't believe there was anything inappropriate in the article. The reporter is doing what reporters are supposed to do- he's reporting the news. He's reporting that these things are being said by people in the community associated with the perpetrators. Personally I wouldn't want the reporting of these attitudes by people in the community where the crime occurred to be whitewashed, censored out, whitewashed or otherwise ignored.

I suggest a careful read by anyone intending to sign this (maybe you'll feel different than I) but I've worked with rape victims and shared this with others who have or still do as well and so far they have been unwilling to sign it for the reasons I stated.

I agree that it's false, but the person who said it first (at least on record) was cosmologist Martin Rees. Carl Sagan actually quoted Reese, in his book on the scientific method, as an example of a foolish thing to say. Ever since that book came out, the world has been inundated with maroons quoting Sagan, thinking he actually meant it.

I guess Rummy's one of them.


That's not a general truth either. If you were to go over to a distant planet, for instance, on a scientific fact finding mission, and came back, equipment intact, claiming it's full of docile bee-like insects, but you haven't brought back samples, it would be safe to say that the absence of proof is proof of the absence of the bees you mentioned.

Was I suggesting that? Or was that a joke?

If someone presented a similar piece of art, directed at my beliefs, while at a school I ran, that would definitely make me angry. The notion that I would actually sponsor an exposition with a childish collage mocking Ayn Rand, or any other great thinker or any great idea, in the name of being tolerant towards diverse points of view, is unconscionable to me.

If I blame the people at Pratt for anything, I blame them for being Liberals (to whatever extent they're Liberals, I haven't met any of them). But, since that's not at issue here, I definitely don't blame them for not wanting to help this guy insult them and their guests with an infantile stunt. If they did, I wouldn't stop pointing and laughing at how stupid that would be.

One of two things should happen:

1) only one Dem is needed present to make the voting valid. A republican can switch parties.

2) declare the Dems derelict of duty and hold new elections for their positions.

I would also like to see him go all Reagan v Air Traffic controllers on the teachers.

As depraved as these people are Zoid is correct, Icosahedron.

What is the purpose of freedom of speech if it only protects speech that isn't objectionable?
The purpose of the First Amendment is there to ensure that people can say things that the majority or the government, or the church or any other entity would rather not have voiced.

The problematic aspect of freedom is that people are free to be as scummy as they choose to be.

That said, if a grieving parent were to say..... bludgeon one of these tools into oblivion I'd be the first person on the jury to accept a "fighting words" defense.

As depraved as these people are Zoid is correct, Icosahedron.

What is the purpose of freedom of speech if it only protects speech that isn't objectionable?
The purpose of the First Amendment is there to ensure that people can say things that the majority or the government, or the church or any other entity would rather not have voiced.

The problematic aspect of freedom is that people are free to be as scummy as they choose to be.

That said, if a grieving parent were to say..... bludgeon one of these tools into oblivion I'd be the first person on the jury to accept a "fighting words" defense.

I pre-check my premises before reading the forum. It saves time.

I prefer consistency in my enemies. It makes them predictable and therefore easier to defeat, or to protect agaisnt. The religious right has integrity in spades. The left doesn't.

My experience with girls who have nose or facial piercings is that they are trend followers who have no regard for their bodily integrity or their beauty.I wouldn't want them for fear of hepatitis. Same with tattoos. When they get over the trend, they have a hole or scare hanging there, a lasting mark of their foolishness. When I see someone with a ring through their nose, I see a water buffalo just waiting to be lead around. When I see a tattoo on someone, that's all that I see. The person is reduced to their tattoo. To see a woman with Twitty bird on her ankle is not cute. I sense trash. I wouldn't want that for the mother of my children. My thought is that tattoos do not present individuality, but the destruction of self. "I don't want to be scene. I want my tattoo to be scene." Branden talked about visibility as a key to human intimacy. A tattoo eliminates that entirely. Not every Catholic carries a 3 inch cross around their neck to show their devotion. If a dollar sign is too cliche to show your support for capitalism, maybe the McDonald's arch will suit you. Do you get what I mean? There's a difference between a superficiality of holding a person's natural looks against them versus the bias or revulsion towards those who knowingly and by choice foul their natural endowments, usually for the worse.

I have a hypothesis as to why the republican party is dying off...

I don't get this, these were probably the same people talking about his radical christian beliefs pre election.

If the resource is truly limited, one could make more money by only putting a certain amount on the market each year. Not too little, not too much. For a minute, imagine that the Saudis and every other oil-producer somehow extracted and sold all their oil in a single year and put it on the market. Would this really be the way to maximize their profits? They might earn more in that one year, but it would not be enough to compensate for their loss of revenue in subsequent years.
If they did do this, wouldn't it make sense for someone to build huge warehousing facilities and buy up oil, that they could then sell next year at a large profit? And, if warehousing the oil makes sense to a third party, it makes even more sense for the original owner to "warehouse" it at a much lowest cost by not extracting it in the first place.

There's an important factor that a owner has to ask himself: how long will I own this? If the Saudi's think their monarchy is going to last for just another decade, it might make sense for them to exhaust their supplies over that decade. If you look at Russia, you'll see very speedy exploitation of reserves. I suspect those who control Russian assets realize that their tenure is not secure and that they have to take all they can as fast as they can.

In contrast, if a private owner holds the asset and if his tenure is secure, he can look to an extremely long-term profit-maximization. Even if he wants to get out of the oil business, it makes sense for him to work it as if it is run for maximum long-term profit. Then, whenever he wants to get out, he can capitalize the future stream of earnings, by selling to a new owner. Capitalism allows a stream of earnings to be exchanged for a lump-sum and vice-versa. In turn, this allows profit-maximization over an extremely long time-horizon.

Well, in many ways there is. But not for the reasons she thinks.

I find it deeply offensive to my very core that Obama would dare talk about what is constitutional and what isn't given his utter disregard for it on all other occassions when the Constitution presents an inconvenience to his collectivist, regressive agenda.

As someone who happens to be gay I find deeply and personally offensive his disingenuous about-face pandering. He has always waffled on the issue but usually come down on the side against gay marriage. This turn about comes at a time when the Democrats can no longer take the gay vote for granted.

There is no "victory" here whatsoever for "gay rights" or individual rights. All there is is a lying opportunistic politician whoring himself to a demographic he was starting to lose.