AshRyan

Jeez. I'd hate to see what you thought of Hobbiton in The Lord of the Rings.

No doubt. Look, Stephen, I am sure you are a very well-read man, and I have a lot of respect for you based on many of your posts in other threads in this forum. I apologize for my previous remark, it was a little over-the-top (though not as much so as your retorts). I am just upset because it seems like most of the people participating in this thread are not even trying to consider any points that differ from their own opinion. In several cases, it seems that these people have gone so far as to construct straw men to avoid dealing with the issue. These kinds of "religious bogeyman" remarks are also arguments from intimidation, as far as I can tell, ridiculing anyone who holds the position that religious ideas and the people who advocate them are dangerous, without actually arguing for the opposite conclusion. And it is a straw man in that it attributes a much stronger position to your opponents than they have actually stated. I do not think there is a "religious bogeyman" or that religious fundamentalists are going to stage a violent revolution in this country or anything like that, so I'd appreciate it if you would cut the hyperbolic misattributions. My point is simply that, in the long run, religious fundamentalist ideas are at least as dangerous to this country as are the stale socialist slogans spouted by the left these days--and that we should therefore actively oppose those ideas now. Now, do you disagree with that? A simple yes or no will suffice. And while you say that you "vociferously object" if it is a matter of ideas, I certainly do not see you doing so in this thread. What I see in this thread is quite the opposite--most posters are glossing over the distructiveness of those ideas and going so far as to suggest or insist that the people who hold and even advocate them are our allies (sort of like how Saudi Arabia is our "ally" in the war on terror, I guess). My whole point in this thread is that most of you aren't "vociferously objecting" to those ideas, and you ought to be. That said, I want nothing more to do with this thread. I am tired of having my statements ignored, ridiculed, and distorted and thrown back at me as sneering straw men. So the rest of you can carry on, but I am done with this b.s. And I am going to talk to David about having this thread closed, although that probably won't happen. But let me reiterate that, aside from what I regard to be the nearly inexplicable behavior I have observed in this thread (and you are not the main offender in that regard, Stephen), I do appreciate your often insightful posts elsewhere on the board and respect you greatly--and that goes for most of the other people in this thread with whom I disagree.

Sure, but instead of saying that Darken Rahl is "selfish," equating that term with "evil" and adding to the confusion about the issue, why not just say that he's a power-luster (or something along those lines)? Granted, many of his readers will take that to mean the same thing as "selfish," but then at least the error will be theirs and not his.

Notice that his posts are nearly a year old. He has already long since been banned. But you're welcome.

I thought the dialogue was great. It certainly wasn't "naturalistic." Some of the best dialogue was between Lucius and Ivy in the scene on her porch. That's ridiculous. She doesn't want a life outside of the village without him. But now that she's saved him, the two of them are clearly not going to remain in the village forever. How is it supposed to be a betrayal of him to save his life, so that they can leave together at a future time?

What are you talking about? How did you get that message out of this movie? The mysticism of the elders turned out to be a fairy tale, and they were shown to be severely mistaken at best and malicious at worst. He was not advocating this village as a good thing, and I can't imagine how you got that idea. The message of the film was exactly the opposite of what you attribute to it on almost every point.

The religious right is at least as responsible for such symptoms, given what they teach their children under the guise of "morality."

So has religion. Much more quickly than Objectivism is, in fact. The wider trend in academia is toward mysticism (including a strong influx of Christianity), not Objectivism. Yet.

While I don't fully endorse all of MisterSwig's statements, I don't understand how you can so flippantly disregard the threat of religious fundamentalism. Maybe you should look beyond the past decades of your life and read a history book. The Ominous Parallels isn't a bad place to start.

I'm not going to bother responding to them at this point, but I just want to say that these two posts-- and --by Betsy in response to my lost post in this thread take my statements out of context and neglect to address my actual points.

I'm a current OAC student.

Well, I hadn't even read your previous post, and was responding to argive99's initial one. But now that you are addressing me directly, I have to say that I disagree with you as well. I don't understand the motivation behind some of these criticisms, especially since they are mostly wrong or pointless. I still hold that the objection to the Olympics that it is largely a matter of genetics is completely overblown. To the extent that it's true, it completely drops the relevent context, and seems to be a complaint based on some kind of egalitarianism. So perhaps not everyone is physically capable of becoming an Olympic-caliber athlete. So what? And this one about the Olympics being "relegated to the young" is even worse: Again, all I can really say is: SO WHAT??? If you don't personally get much out of the Olympics, fine--it's an optional value. But to actively denigrate the achievement of people who should in fact be admired is very questionable in my opinion.

That's true--which is why I said that, although I thought the influence was obvious from the start, it was inconsistent. And the line you cited is not the worst of it--at the end, he actually goes so far as to say that the villain's problem is that he is too "selfish." But as I mentioned, there are other parts of the story where he defends rational selfishness, and shows collectivism to be the horror it is. And I am sure that the later books do get progressively better. I am looking forward to reading them. (Still on the second one at this point.)

I've ordered it. I can't wait to see it. I'm especially looking forward to seeing the filmed performance of Ideal.

This is the one criticism of this film that I just can't understand. What twist ending? There wasn't much of a "twist" at the end, and I don't think there was supposed to be. So what? Do people just expect the movie to have a twist ending because it was directed by the guy who did The Sixth Sense, and then are disappointed that it's not the exact same damn movie? I just don't get it.

Based on the above, I would just say: If you are left somewhat uncertain about the "joyous" energy or sense of life of the film, shouldn't you then ask in what that joy is being taken?

Neither will allowing conservatives to further prove their degeneracy--and call it "capitalism." In fact, that would set us back a good deal more. Then we not only have to advocate capitalism, but take great pains to differentiate it from what most people view as capitalism because it is what the conservatives have offered to them as such. Plus, then we have to fight to undo all the damage the conservatives have done on such fronts as pro-abortion, stem cell research, etc.

No. Peikoff claimed that Weimar Germany was anti-intellectual--and Nazi Germany cashed in on that, able to offer the most irrational philosophy just to fill the void (because people need some philosophical guidance, some answers). The liberals today are anti-intellectual--and it is the conservatives that we have to worry about filling that void.

That review could have been written by my father. He hasn't read Atlas Shrugged either (although he, too, tried to claim that he had at one point). The second, rave review sounded, from the excerpts alone, like the worst book of all time. To hold that trash above Atlas Shrugged is just sick.

Free-market...but not free-mind. But of course, you can't really have one without the other.

Indeed. It's not simply a bit hard to make out--it does not say any of the things in the bit we see in the photo that the caption claims the paper says. All we see is their names and a couple of other unrelated words with no context whatsoever. (And given that it's in a Russian paper, that's already reason enough to doubt the truth of the claims in it--if such claims were actually made, which we can't tell from this. Russian journalism is notoriously non-objective.)

Full-time student and security officer (to pay my way through school). Hope to be a novelist eventually, and maybe teach philosophy for a while in the meantime if it's necessary by the time I finish school.

Welcome to the forum, BetTheFarm!

Of course intellectual achievements--such as, say, Atlas Shrugged--are more inspiring than "merely" physical achievements. You're not going to get much argument about that here. But that doesn't mean that physical achievements aren't inspiring. And regardless of whatever role genetics may play, that does not mean that it is simply a matter of a "genetic lottery," and someone simply "hits the jackpot" and that's it. These athletes train incredibly hard to be able to do what they do. That kind of training for this kind of competition also takes tremendous mental effort. They have to know what they are doing, and be able to perform under pressure--a largely mental skill. Plus, they are constantly pushing the limits of the performance of the human body. New records are set at every Olympics. Do you think it's the case that the genetics of the competing athletes have just been getting steadily better somehow? Because your argument rests on the truth of that premise--but I for one am skeptical. I love to watch the Olympics. I wish the procedures for judging were better, but even if the medals aren't always awarded to the right people, it's a pleasure to watch the athletes perform.

Hi Durande! (Love that screen name, btw.) Why not post something about yourself in the "Introductions" forum?