freestyle

That's pretty great!  Is there a word that means "sacrificing others"?  
I did a quick google search and saw a suggestion of "utilitarian"...   But I'm certain the Utilitarian would disagree.  🙂 

If you read the draft opinion you will see that the court's reversal on Roe and Casey is based on the legal grounds that those decisions were unsupported by law, precedent, or practice and that what legal history was covered in Roe was irrelevant or simply wrong.  The Supreme Court's assertion of judicial power to attempt to settle the abortion controversy by decree was unconstitutional because the Court has no such authority.  Mystical metaphysics has nothing to do with it.  No metaphysical hypotheses of any kind is offered.  

Another possible description is "sacrificing others".  This gets at a key confusion in popular concepts of "selfishness".

In other words, you can defeat Ayn Rand's arguments by refusing to grant meanings to words.
 
Is that it?

Freestyle just shifted my paradigm.

Last year, I read one of Trump's Entrepreneurial books which drew heavily on anecdotal evidence from his own life. This is what I gathered.
 
His saving grace seems to be his sense of life, which is very thoroughly the American kind of outlook that Ayn Rand praised so highly. He aims high (in every concrete or practical endeavor) and refuses to accept failure as permanent or inevitable. I think this is a large part of his appeal.
That being said, he has absolutely no explicit grasp of what makes those traits valuable, why one should strive to have them nor even that they can be gained or lost. He chalks his own bravado up to some sort of innate idea, which he just can't help.
 
What's worse, he makes no distinction whatsoever between the public and private sectors. In one part on brainstorming business ideas he included nonprofit, charitable and political organizations together as different kinds of "businesses".
That's the real danger I see - that he's going to wield his guns as if they were dollars, and we will all be on the hook for it.
 
And I think he's going to win.

Hey, I'm of the opinion that anyone inflicting pain on a sentient being just for the hell of it is immoral. Anyone who derives his self-esteem from tormenting a weaker, captive creature is essentially a second-hander, not to say a tyrant and bully, and possibly psychopathic.
 
Now you've come back to ethics, I think you are on stronger ground.

The below quote is more about religion in politics, but she does make a pretty clean statement contained with regard to this topic.  (bolded for emphasis)
I saved this when I saw it first, it surprised me a bit as it shows Rand was not purely antagonistic toward people of faith.  
 
From Ayn Rand Questions & Answers:
 

If your book club includes non-fiction, my I suggest, Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. Of the published works of Ayn Rand, this was the second book I read, after The Virtue of Selfishness. It depends on whether you prefer fictional literature, or ideological essays. I prefer straight non-fiction to the former.

If you initiate force via an agreement with an agent (or third party), you are still initiating force.  Hitler is guilty of initiating force.

I haven't read this whole thread, but here's my take on Paul Ryan as VP with Romney:

http://www.meetup.co...925312#80683292



There is a very interesting story about Paul Ryan and Objectivism now that Ryan has been chosen to be the Vice-Presidential candidate along side Mitt Romney for President come this November election cycle. In the story, it is claimed that Ryan has rejected Ayn Rand in favor of Thomas Aquinas to be his intellectual guidance for national policy. When Ryan first announced that he liked Ayn Rand, the Marxist / Leftist jumped all over him trying to get him to drop her in favor of the policies of the Left -- which is more Socialism and a government run economy. Looks like to some extend they succeeded in that Ryan has explicitly dropped Rand as an intellectual guidance position. However, Ayn Rand still had some influence on him and he has spoken out in favor of capitalism due to this influence.

That Ryan has chosen Thomas Aquinas as his new intellectual leader is also encouraging, in that it was Thomas Aquinas who brought mankind out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance, where reason was held in high esteem for the first time since Ancient Greece and Athens. I'm not really sure if Aquinas would have been in favor of capitalism or not, but he was most definitely in favor of reason as an absolute, bringing forth the argument that God gave you a mind and that it is important to use it to understand His Creation based upon the evidence of the senses which give us a direct connection to the Beauty and Rational Operations of God's Universe. And Aquinas helped to re-introduce Aristotle to the West, thereby setting up the grounds for a rational culture based upon reason and reality. These positions did eventually lead to The Age of Reason and The Enlightenment, and to the founding of the United States of America and the full recognition of individual rights. So, Ryan is in great company to defend capitalism and man's rights qua individual against the collectivism and unreason of the Marxist Left, even though he will waver a bit here and there due to his dropping of Ayn Rand as an explicit guide.

But even if Ryan does waver in his support of individual rights and capitalism, the very fact that he was once in support of Ayn Rand will help to bring the ideas of Objectivism to the forefront of intellectual debates this election cycle. The Leftist will bring it up against Romney and Ryan in order to throw selfishness into their face, but they will bring it up. This will give Objectivist intellectual activists a great setting for exposing more people to Ayn Rand and to hit upon key issues that might be made more explicit due to the mud slinging. And I certain encourage admirers and followers of Ayn Rand and Objectivism to take full advantage of the intellectual debate that will ensue due to this attempt to cower Romney and Ryan into dropping capitalism in favor of socialism.

Added on Edit: In this context, it is worth noting that The University of Dallas, my Alma Matter, and a staunch Catholic university, has a pretty decent Masters of Business degree program. While I was living in the Dallas area, I often thought about joining that degree / career course, and my career would have been entirely different had I done so, but the costs and the fact that I thought getting a degree in Physics and Philosophy might get me into management without an MBA prevented me from taking advantage of this course. Besides, I didn't really want to get an MBA from a Catholic perspective, but the point is that at least they do have a business oriented degree program.

I would love to hear your thoughts about my art.
ifatart.com
The paintings, sketches and drawings in my site are works that I've done over the last 6 years or so.
My older paintings are more in the style of Fantasy art, or what I call Symbolic art, and my later paintings describe real life situations. A few of my works are directly related to Ayn Rand's novels.
The quality of the technique also varies according to age of the painting (the later ones are better).
Here is one of my best works:


Hope you enjoy, and please tell me what you think.

http://www.youtube-n...bed/4JeNIX2x9j8
Interesting discussion here (in all 4 parts too)

I think there may be some errors in his analysis of what is/is not a threat, but his principle is what is Constitutional. His position is sufficiently basic: "If you want go to war with Iran (or take war-like actions against them), make your case to the public and generate the support for a congressional Declaration of War."

If you cannot make the clear and convincing case to the people, validated constitutionally with a congressional vote, that an action is necessary for the defense of United States citizens, then the option should not be to figure out a way to take the action anyway with out clearly legal and constitutional authorization.

Yes government has a valid function. "In the market" is not precise. Government has a valid function in a civilized society.

I specifically spoke of laws that protect individual rights. Many labor laws have nothing to do with protecting rights. The minimum wage law is a perfect example.

And yes, the government is obligated to enforce the laws, whether or not I agree with those laws.

Read these two short essays and it will help you understand the Objectivist position on the purpose of Government and the definition of rights.

The Nature of Government by Ayn Rand (December 1963)
Man's Rights by Ayn Rand (April 1963)

People trade to mutual benefit. I give you X in exchange for Y, because I value Y higher than X, and you value X higher than Y. They are not of "equal value" because values are agent-relative. We are both better off as a result of the trade. Thus the free market is not a zero-sum game.

Regarding your equations, my signature seems fitting.

My experience with SIRI thus far is that this is unequivocally untrue. There are quite a few things that are MUCH easier to perform with SIRI. Setting reminders, alarms, timers, notes, meetings, basic web searches, texting, searches for the type of data on wolfram alpha, searching for nearby locations .... ALL easier with SIRI. SIRI has changed the way I use my iPhone in a very practical sense and I expect it will only improve.

Good find. But the thing about Objectivism is that once you understand it, you realise it's not just an opinion, it's actually true - something she discovered.
But on that page he says he is not an Objectivist. So assuming he values truth, he mustn't have understood it yet. So he is teaching a course on something he doesn't understand.

A is A. Fail is fail. Effort is good, but results matter more.

Speaking of fail, there are now nine threads on the Atlas Shrugged movie counting this one. Some consolidation is in order. I would leave the thread about the trailers alone, it is not active.

Most of them are in the Movies, Shows, and Theater subforum, but this one is not. There may be more threads elsewhere and more may be created as the release broadens to more cities.

A few respondents seem to be assuming that one can simply look at the term "all powerful" to divine its meaning. The reasoning seems to go like this: "the phrase 'all powerful' includes the word 'all,' so it must mean the ability to do absolutely all things, including contradictory things."

Well, you can't do that. If you don't want to create a straw man, you have to look at what theologians have said about the concept of "all powerful." The term has a technical meaning in Christian philosophy.

I think that most people know this, so I'm not sure why you have chosen to address a concept of "all powerful" that very few theologians have held to.

In the culture war we have going on, it is very important for successful individuals who are self-made to come out for rational self-interest, even if they are not going to be completely consistent in what else they have to say. Morality is more fundamental than politics. So if you want capitalism, you must have some successful individuals coming out and praising self-interest and capitalism. Of course, his and other Conservative's stance regarding religion and this country being founded on Christianity completely contradicts the call for rational self-interest, as the Bible is about self-sacrifice and not self-gaining. But it is a debate that needs to be out in the open so Ayn Rand's ideas can be discussed. Besides, he is not speaking for Objectivism, but rather speaking for his own understanding of the issues at hand; which is very mixed. But him coming out and saying he doesn't operate from a self-sacrificial stance is great, and I wish other successful individuals would come out and say it as well.

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.

Not only that, but "God" already has a definition. Trying to remove "supernatural being" from the definition is inevitably a pointless compromise. The people who are emotionally attached to the concept that the word "God" represents will not discard that concept no matter what you attempt to equate it with.


I know where you're going with that... Although I was never a religious person, for a long time, I held on to the notion that I was an "agnostic". Objectivism lead me to understand that to acquire knowledge, there is absolutely no place for the arbitrary. I make all my choices and decisions without consideration of an arbitrary deity. Therefore, I am clearly not a theist.
http://aynrandlexico.../arbitrary.html


As many have pointed out, the initial premise (God=Universe) is simply confusing as it asks for one to discard a known definition and concept.

That said, I would alert you to an observation I've made about a number of stated Objectivists -- Quite a few tend to take Ayn Rand's very direct and critical view of religion and expand it into something that seems emotional and even hostile. There is a noticeable antagonism that you'll find towards religious people. (i.e. Check the Oo home page today with the Zombie Jesus... lol)

I have found most religious individuals to be pleasant to talk to and don't find it of value to antagonize them.

Self esteem

Boobs....oh wait....non-physical....yeah, definitely boobs.

I assume you meant that you live there, not that you are property. I understand how, living in India, at least old style, you might say "belong to" .

But did you know that it was wrong to attend a state school? Was it a fundamental principle of life which you acknowledged, that it was absolutely wrong to accept anything from the government other than protection of rights? If so, and you went to the state school, then to be brutal I would say you were being immoral (moral remenption is always possible). But people often do not really grasp these subtleties until they are much older (Fred used to be a commie!). The basic question is whether you knew that you were doing wrong, and consciously sought the unearned. Failure to consistently integrate all of your knowledge at age 18 is not the worst crime in the world.
I would suggest concentrating more on choices, rather than actions as absolutes.

Volition really should be conceptually separated from force, though they aren't totally unrelated. Force is where a volitional being uses (or threatens to use) violence against you. Force is relevant to choice because it presents a metaphysically non-obligatory alternative between life and death. By "metapysically non-obligatory" I mean that reality itself does not necessitate a choice -- the man-made is not metaphysically necessitated. Volition simply refers to the fact that our choices are free -- they are not metaphysically given.

Yup. I decided to be brief there.
Yes, it is a volitional choice, but that's not the real issue. What does that choice represent, when you make the choice? Are you implicitly claiming a right to the lives of other people, or are you simply recognising that because of the massive incursions of th state into what should be the domain of free enterprise, the plausible options for you are (1) stay at home, forever -- i.e. curl up and die; (2) somehow overthrow the socialist state and sell the roads (good luck) or (3) deal with the probem that the state has used force to preempt human rights, handing you a contaminated deck of cards.

The one note of caution I want to append to Eran Dror's Rand quote is that the fact that you've paid taxes which support the state should not amount to a universal entitlement card. If the government taxes you and offers free education, free medicine, free daycare, free vacations, free transportation, free water, free phones, free electricity, free food... (oh, plus some occasional police protection), the fact of paying taxes should not be taken to be an automatic "anything from the government is my right, I'm a taxpayer!" immunity. There has to be a point at which a moral person says "I will not accept this handout from the state".