Hairnet

There is no such thing as a world view without a viewer. If we want to talk about justifications for the NAP (or similar ideas) we should talk about specific people. The article posted in the OP was attacking a monolith, which is essentially attacking a strawman. So who has posited the NAP without justification? Sure we can all agree that Natural Rights or Utilitarianism are incorrect, and thus not ultimately good justifications for the NAP, but its unfair to not give libertarian authors credit for their own ethical ideas on property rights. The author was of the article posted was wrong to not have looked at Ayn Rand's, John Stuart Mills, Herbert Spencer's, or Murray Rothbard's ethical arguments.

A history of poverty is pretty bad. Are the policies in place in Tennessee hurting or helping this situation though?

So why is Tennessee poor? Its supposed to be an economically free state (#3 according to the Mercatus Center). http://freedominthe50states.org/overall/tennessee

Excellent response Nicky. I would like to add that I find the whole idea of socialist property rights is ahistorical. The first problem with this is that historically, socialists have not produced societies based off of the political structure of liberalism. Socialists put their system in terms of nationalism (even the so-called Anarchists Proudhon & Bakunin had nationalist strains). When socialist and fascists started taking political power in the 20th century neither side respected human dignity or rights. Some property rights may be illdefined, but that is a matter of legal philosophy, not radical politics.

I do not have an opinion on any of the mentioned books. However I did not think that those book were actually anti-Rand. Are they? Maher is a sellout and a tool. At this point "Intellectual Dishonesty" is inaccurate because it implies intellectual work. He exists so fat, drunk, underachieving liberals can have someone to laugh at after their bad day at work. There is nothing more to him than his entertainment value to a group of people who are kind of smart, but not really. Anyways, every time I remember that Maher exists I think of this video.

The Buddhists call this "Eternalism" . You want to find something permanent in reality to dedicate yourself too so that in some sense, you won't have to die. Its a way to escape your mortality. I understand, totally. However its not valid. I don't know of anything that is eternal. Even a Holy Individual will die, become broken, and fail. She will become dust, and even her greatest achievements will fade in the greatest scheme of things. http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=24800&hl= Anyways, the point of selfishness is to avoid this fallacy. To live your life to the fullest because there is no other rational option.

It has everything to do with the topic. Guns in the hands of wrong people get people killed. At the very least a private citizen can be avoided if you think he or she is irresponsible. However, children who are forced by and large by the state (and the situations it creates) to be around these people no matter what. Government agents who are intended to act as defenders during an emergency need oversight beyond that of a private citizen. @Nicky "In general" always meant "when it makes economic sense". What would it even mean for someone to argue otherwise (which I did not).

You said it yourself. The public education system protects the irrational and incompetent. A cop can't carry a gun on the job unless he maintains a certain code of conduct (ideally). Even cops have problems with corruption and acting irresponsibly with weapons. Teachers don't even have the oversight that cops have. . Here is another lovely story from Oklahoma. This boy wasn't killed because of anger, or because he wouldn't have sex with someone. This boy was killed by rank incompetence. http://www.koco.com/Funeral-Set-For-Noble-Boy-Accidentally-Killed-By-Officer/-/9844716/10765774/-/13ewqaj/-/index.html EDIT: If you find my link about the cop confusing, I am drawing attention to the fact that we should be careful about which people in the government are allowed to carry guns. Also I am drawing attention to the kinds of things that can happen when you have incompetent people using guns

We aren't talking about your house, we are talking about institutional arrangements. If you could afford it you might buy a robot that would vacuum your house so you could have more time to do other things. You are basically saying "Its too expensive". However I was not even arguing that schools should increase their spending on security. I said that people whose profession is security or law enforcement have a better idea of how to handle an emergency than people whose profession is teaching. If you want to have a teacher whose roll is also to actively address an emergency with a firearm while acting as a government official, he or she should be put under the same scrutiny as any other member of the government who is allowed to carry firearms while on the job.

Haven't been able to look at the forum all week. So sorry for late replies. I don't want a "Gun Free Zone". Ultimately it should be the choice of a private institution an who gets to carry guns and who doesn't. I suspect that most businesses would opt for restrictions on guns for their customers, members, and employees and would hire out their security needs to specialists. However public schools are not private institutions. So now the issue is political. When it comes to government workers carrying guns, I would prefer that the people who do carry guns be professionals whose task is the security of the campus. The reason is two fold. 1) A giant public sector union that is filled with irrational and incompetent people should not be encouraged to carry weapons. I cited the scandal at my high school as evidence of power corrupting and irrationality. 2) There is also the fact that the division of labor is just a good thing in general. The government has the right to defend its institutions and people who are trained specifically to do this job are much less likely to endanger others while on school grounds. Leaving the defense of institutions to its individual members only exacerbates the issues I stated above. The fundamental difference between private action and governmental action—a difference thoroughly ignored and evaded today—lies in the fact that a government holds a monopoly on the legal use of physical force. It has to hold such a monopoly, since it is the agent of restraining and combating the use of force; and for that very same reason, its actions have to be rigidly defined, delimited and circumscribed; no touch of whim or caprice should be permitted in its performance; it should be an impersonal robot, with the laws as its only motive power. If a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled. Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted. - Ayn Rand

Well that isn't even true. They really couldn't have. Most teachers are either too old, fat, or frail to chase down anything but a little kid. However if a teacher did want to shoot up a school, he or she could do so if he wanted too in the long term. I am not worried about that danger. In my experience, http://trendyme.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/teacher-vicky-lynn-lewallen-charged-with-rape-sodomy/ That happened at the high school I graduated from. Oklahoma in general have a lot worse stories, and i could talk about some other stuff that didn't make the news. I just don't see how guns are going to make things any better. The system is irrational and a lot of the people in it are irrational. Whats giving them a quick and easy way to kill people going to do?

Teachers are the last people I want to have guns. I have seen so many teachers have emotional breakdowns in the middle of class. Its depressing how imbalanced some of the teachers in my childhood were.

This wouldn't be an issue of the president would properly define his conflicts. The WSJ video that the president does actually have the right to kill people without trial during war. Its not a fifth amendment issue, the danger comes from the altruism and pragmatism inherent in main stream foreign policy discussions.

Unless you have any actual reasons to think he is planning this I would say it is paranoid. Lets consider that Hillary Clinton is already in the minds of a lot of people as their next candidate. I don't know why the democrats would risk the reputation as a parry on a coup for one guy. The kind of emergency that would allow Obama to become a dictator would most likely make Obama and the presidency as a whole irrelevant. (Nukes, Zombies, Plague).

Well mostly we are in agreement (Your post is kind of confusing, you should edit it) . You call them "The Science of Philosophy" and "The Special Sciences", whereas I would call them "Philosophy" and "Science". Just because I use those terms does not mean I think that "Philosophy" is any less of a fact base pursuit than "Science". I was just describing the hierarchy of knowledge in contemporary terms.

I think this needs to be said for the sake of a few discussions here. When people use the word science today, they typically mean a rigorous application of logic and method to a group of data. Experimentation and analysis is performed that can be replicated by any other person. This is usually done to create predictive models. These methods and the institutions surrounding them are subject to the arguments between philosophers of science. Those men argue about which methodologies are the best, which are the most valid, which can be said to get to the bottom of issues. These men and women often rely on the works of more general philosophers. This is different from reason. Reason is available to all people. Innduction, deduction, reduction, integration, and limited experimentation. This is how people learn every day. Philosophy can only be based in reason, and science can only be based in a reasonable philosophy. There is no philosophy that can claim to be based in science. A serious philosopher will appeal to facts that any person can induce for themselves when discussing ethics. Numerous ancient philosophers operated this way. They would observe a fact of life (sometimes imagined) , and then explain what this means for us. They would appeal to ideas about birth, life, death, sex, pain, suffering, children, work. Any person intent on living life will already have attempted to learn a little about those things. The philosopher can hopefully rely on the reasoning abilities of his audience when he proposes an ethical idea. I don't think that the fundamental questions of ethics require the specialized knowledge of science. Psychology, economics, and the medical sciences may be able to help us understand certain ethical ideas better, but those sciences are best understood separately from the branch of philosophy known as ethics.

The FBI must understand that their case is flimsy. Does anyone think that they charged him just so they could expose him to the public? Even if they don't have a case? Is this wrong?

The context of his quote is the reign of terror right? I don't think that suspending due process to weed out political dissidents is a good idea. His government discredited itself by what it did. You have either won the revolution and you have an orderly government, or you haven't won the revolution. You can't have both states at the same time. Nationalist rebellions such as this are usually filled with paranoia and the sense of a never ending revolution. Russia, China, Vietnam, all experienced the same sort of things during their revolutions because their leaders justified their actions on the basis that foreign colonialists were going to destroy their country. With the french it was Rousseau, with the rest it was Lenin.

He has mentioned Buddhism before in some other talks. I think he is influenced by it. Many Buddhists would argue that their beliefs are based in fact and logic, not faith. Although some forms of Buddhism have mythological structures associated with them, all in all the core belief system is much more convincing without it.

When was it established that this was an unjust action? In what context are you speaking?

If you defend your life, you defend the entirety of it and help preserve "The Good Life" as well as the survival. A total destruction of an enemy populace is painful, but it in no way interferes with my ability to live a good life.

Isn't he just attempting make Buddhism sound more secular? Mahayana Buddhism in particular. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahayana

If you can't respect us enough to take us seriously then don't post here.

What I don't understand about your point moralist is how you connect personal irresponsibility to this. Who are you even comparing the people of today to? We could be living in the most responsible era known to mankind and removing entrenched government institutions would still be difficult. Lets also consider that physical violence is at an all time low. Racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination are on decline. In many ways we are doing a lot better than anyone before.

Then why discuss these issues at all? If you believe that only the life course can show which ideas are true and false, and not discussion, why participate in discussion? How is it that making an argument or attempting to persuade someone is an attempt to violate the volition of others? What makes you think that others here aren't using Ayn Rand's ideas in their life? There are plenty of people who do not believe in Ayn Rand's ideas who post here. Okay? The computer is a tool. The brain is an adaptation.