Dante

I think you have an inflated sense of the presence of Ayn Rand and Objectivism on the American political stage. Most American voters, if they recognize her name, probably couldn't tell you much about her, certainly nothing accurate. She's not an issue in the campaign, and Objectivists are not a voting block that politicians care about pandering to. Of course you can find these stories, and we as Objectivists pay attention to them, but most Americans do not. Flip-flopping on the individual mandate, as Romney has had to do, is big news. Flip-flopping on one's view of some political thinker from the 50s? Not news. Consider that even the story you link to at the end has to explain to the reader who Rand is and why this is a story at all. Most people simply won't pay attention to this. I see the same kind of thinking in your earlier statement: Catholics are numerous enough to be seriously considered a voting block to be pandered to. Objectivists are not. Sorry, but no politician is courting our vote. And it's ridiculous to think that his supposed flip-flopping on whether or not he likes Ayn Rand is bigger news than the "Ryan budget."

I think the movie did a good job of adhering to show-don't-tell in that area. It doesn't need to be stated to be clear that all of Bane's statements about giving Gotham back to the people were just a thin smokescreen for his revenge plot.

There is no reversal of his position on atheism. He has always been an outspoken Catholic, even speaking at length about his interpretation of Catholic teachings and how that can be squared with cutting social programs. In the past when he spoke in favor of Rand, it was always in regards to her moral individualism and her politics, never her religious views. He simply responded to attempts to describe him as a Rand "devotee" (with possible atheist implications) with a disavowal of Objectivism, which makes sense because he has never accepted the entirety of Objectivism in the first place. There is no flip-flop, nor is their any perceived flip-flop in the eyes of the public. Ryan's religion is not the issue. He is not an evangelical and his main focus in the public sphere has been on fiscal issues, not religious ones. Of course the GOP was going to pick some flavor of Christian; that's not the news behind this announcement. The news is that they picked the guy behind The Path to Prosperity.

This topic comes up fairly regularly in Objectivist circles, and I'm sure there's a thread here discussing it. There's an essay in The Virtue of Selfishness addressing the question, written by Nathaniel Branden and entitled "Isn't Everyone Selfish?" If you're interested in this issue, that's a good place to start, as it differentiates psychological egoism (the idea that all human actions are inherently selfish) from Rand's egoism.

He's confusing rights and morality. The fact that anyone with a concern for human life would at least stop and call 911 does not mean that rights are being violated if someone does not. Rights serve a particular purpose in political philosophy, and this is simply a misapplication of them.

I think this is actually quite an interesting question. I don't think it's as simple as the person who swings first is in the wrong. Take the obvious case of someone explicitly asking you to punch them. With their explicit permission, you're not violating their rights if you hit them, whether or not it would actually be rational to do so. The question is, whether such a desire to get hit or to get into a fight can be conveyed implicitly, such as through baseless insults. The phrase, "he was asking for it" comes to mind. Obviously, this idea can be misapplied by someone just looking for an excuse to punch another person, but the question is whether it can ever be correctly applied. Can someone be implicitly "asking for it" through baseless insults or other means?

Why doesn't the point about the importance of composition count as objective value gained from such a work? It's my understanding that a lot of modern and postmodern art seeks just that type of value. It is introspective; the artist's goal is to delve into the issue of which features of art are necessary and which are not. Call it meta-art if you want, but isn't there value in exploring the issue of music without composition? If all the music I hear around me is made from certain fundamental elements, I might (not being a musician) never stop to think about why those elements are there, what purpose they serve. A work of music that causes me to do so might just have enhanced my life. I'm confused because you later say the following: "Six people blowing hard randomly for three minutes does not add value and can objectively shown to be destructive since it is impossible for values to be built out of it. It is objectively not art. " And yet, you yourself identify a value that could result from hearing such music without composition.

Yup. That was easy.

The justification for a particular state does not come from its democratic nature. Plenty of democratically elected governments have done things which put them firmly in the illegitimate category. It is a fiction that democratic means free. What makes a government legitimate is whether or not it actually respects fundamental rights. If you have a government that does so, there is no right to 'compete' with it, in the sense of carrying out one's own retaliatory force which is not subject to objective procedure. Such action presents a valid risk to the rights of the citizens of such a government, and it is justified in shutting down said operations.

Wrong. Bernie Madoff was motivated by seeking profit, yet he was not justified in his actions according to Objectivism. Please don't pretend to understand Objectivism if you truly don't.

... Do you actually think that a company that literally and publicly stood by and let people die in a fire like that wouldn't suffer economically? Can you say boycott?

Consider this quote from Roark in The Fountainhead: “I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.” The only person whose values you can live out is yourself. Another person can fit into that value structure, even at the highest place, but the foundation of it all is your own life, your values. It can't be any other way.

SA, more on the issue of originating in the House vs. the Senate: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2012/06/29/if-the-health-care-law-is-really-a-tax-law-is-it-doomed-on-procedure/

This is actually quite interesting. Under a government without animal cruelty laws, I could definitely see such clauses becoming widespread, even ubiquitous in pet sales. That might actually be a way for civil society to erect animal protection without rights-violating legislation.

Also, technically different species can reproduce; what they cannot do is produce offspring which are themselves capable of reproduction. An example would be donkeys and horses mating to produce mules. Although, now that I'm looking it up, on very rare occasions mules can actually have offspring. Nature's a complicated thing.

Yeah, getting old is unnatural. It only happens to everyone ever. Face it. If your argument is 'don't touch what's coded for in your genes,' there's a whole more than gender reassignment surgery that's off the table.

Dierdre McClosky (formerly Donald McClosky) is pretty well-known in the economics world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deirdre_McCloskey

But someone whose gender identity doesn't match their sex couldn't possibly be getting such a greater value by going through gender reassignment surgery. >.<

I'm not seeing a rational principle underlying the distinction here. What does it matter what percentage of one's body one decides to alter? At what percentage does the self-harm appear? Why?

And also including your hair color. Should we not change that? Your argument needs more than the elementary biological observation that our DNA codes for our sex. It's telling that Peikoff (incorrectly) states in his podcast that gender reassignment surgery destroys the patient's capacity for normal sexual pleasure. Without the idea that there's something fundamental and important being lost in the process, the argument falls apart.

But as soon as you say "positive emotions" you've already assumed an implicit standard right there, without which your 'fundamental' provides no guidance. I'll use your other example of a positive emotion here, remorse. Now, in both these cases (Voldemort and Grindelwald), the remorse would be over things deserving of it, which makes it a positive emotion. However, plenty of people feel remorse over things they shouldn't; they feel remorse about being born with more opportunities than others, about surviving incidents in which others have died (survivor's guilt), about having to kill another when the situation required it (the remorse a soldier often feels coming back from war), etc. In each of these cases, remorse is a negative emotion, because it is directed at something it shouldn't be. The good, proper course in each of these situations involves the person really coming to understand that the remorse isn't deserved, and shedding it. This is what I (and Rand) mean when we say that this is why emotions cannot provide fundamental guidance, that they are not "tools of cognition" in her words. We need a preexisting standard of the good in order to evaluate our emotions. Now, let's be clear that Lily Potter sacrificing her life for her son is entirely appropriate and moral according to Objectivism, even though it resulted directly in her own death. This comes from the difference between (long-term) survival as the standard and survival as the goal. We should choose our values during our lifetime according to what is good for our lives and happiness. We should choose careers that are fulfilling; friends and romantic partners that treat us well and make us happy; etc. As we live our lives, naturally we become emotionally invested in these particular values. We would bear great cost to protect them (isn't this part of what it means to care about someone or something?). Ultimately, with the things we care about the most, we might even be willing to die for them. This is a result of how much we are invested in the things and people we care about. The point of the Objectivist ethics is not that, at this point, we should choose our own lives over the things we care about, if they are in peril, simply for the sake of 'survival.' The point is to make sure that we've formed our values the right way, that we've invested all this in things that are actually worth dying for. And the meter for that determination has to be our own lives.

Can we agree that one person, alone, is physically incapable of overthrowing a government like that of Iran, without convincing large numbers of others to help? If so, then holding each individual living under a government responsible for not overthrowing that government is collectivism; it is judging an individual based on the actions of the people living around him. Those who protest and resist evil regimes from within, whether they are successful or not, are innocents in war, and it is a tragedy when they die as a result of it.

Certainly there are innocents in war. Now, because of the nature of war, the defensive country cannot always afford to worry about the lives of those innocents; the actions of the aggressor state sometimes make it inevitable that in order to defend yourself, you must take military actions that have the potential to harm innocents. However, this doesn't mean these innocents don't exist. The conclusion to draw here is that the moral blame for what happens to these innocents falls on the aggressor state that rules them. However, it is a far cry from recognizing this necessity of war, to claiming that a war being declared somehow makes everyone in those borders complicit, including small children and those actively protesting the government (whose existence you note in the case of Iran). You sure this is what you mean?

So, I'm going to reply to the OP here, although probably some of what I will say has been said already in another way. Also let me say that I share your regard for the philosophy underlying Rowling's HP series. So here goes. First of all, I think you have to see the same sentiment in Rand's writings. Her ideal characters are willing to live life only on their own terms, not on anyone else's. They are clearly not aiming at 'mere survival,' but something more. So let's explore this a little. She certainly states that her morality is based on the alternative of life and death, and yet her morality does not seem to result in people who are willing to prolong their life at all costs. Whence the disconnect? When she says that the fundamental alternative is life or death, she is attempting to give some guidance as to what is a value or not. It's fine to say that love is what is worth living for, but that leaves the deeper question: what is worthy of love? Even love can be directed at the wrong people or things. There are any number of people who would swear that they love people who treat them badly; abuse them, cheat on them, etc. Voldemort himself harbors a love for power (which Rand herself illustrates as wrong through the character of Gail Wynand). We need standards for love just like any other emotion; this is what Rand means when she says that emotions are not tools of cognititon. You write as though it's a crime for Objectivists to say that emotions are what's worth living for, but Objectivism does not denigrate emotion. Emotion is critically important, and those that disregard it do so at their own peril. And yet, we need standards to tell us what it is proper to feel positive emotions for, and we know from experience that emotion itself does not provide these standards. So what is the ultimate standard that tells us, no matter how good it might feel, that things that detract from our overall well-being are not good? What tells us that (to use an extreme example), no matter how good heroin feels, it's not ultimately a value? It's our long-term well-being; as Rand would say, our own life, lived over the long term. Survival isn't precisely the right word, because once we invest in a certain value that is concordant with our long-term well-being (like a person, or an ideal), we might very well sacrifice our own life for that value. Rand gives numerous examples, such as John Galt, who is willing to die to save Dagny, or a rational soldier who might be willing to die for the sake of preserving freedom in his nation. The Harry Potter series gives us more: defeating an enemy who seeks to subjugate all before him. In all such instances, what is common among the things worth dying for? It is the fact that these are the things that promote human life, or the kinds of people or relationships that promote our own individual lives. Those things that promote human life (as over the alternative of death) are the things ultimately worth fighting (and dying) for. In that light, let's look at some of your HP quotes (quotes that I wholeheartedly agree with): Rand seeks to provide the philosophy for living a truly human life. Her ultimate goal is to provide the philosophy for achieving happiness and success on this earth. All of her characters accept the fact that they will eventually die; and yet, their achievements in their own lives are of paramount importance to them. She goes one step further in asking, what is the root of human achievement? Her answer: it makes life better for us all, it prolongs our life on this earth, it furthers the goal of human health and well-being. And what is the root of the concepts of health and well-being? It is the fundamental alternative of life or death. That's what she means when she says that all we do should be ultimately to promote our own lives.

You can make it apply to others through might; but do you think that fundamentally there is something self-defeating about others using force to achieve their own individual goals? That is the kind of sentiment underlying the Objectivist political philosophy.