Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence

Rate this topic


Yes

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, Dupin said:

merjet,

Duh!  But what is the relevance of your remark?  Have you read any of my references regarding the evidence?  How much proof do you need?  I'm not here to read them for you. You don't even need my references, you can use the Internet as well as I can.

Don't be like Yaron Brook and Gregory Salmieri.

Dupin,

Heh. Duh! What is the relevance of your article?

Of course, a statement might be true, or partly true and partly false, or totally false. The same applies to a set of statements. However, when you start with what is largely false and construe it as largely or wholly true, that’s called voluntary derailment. When you assume that the hearsay of Donald Trump, whose standards for truthfulness are far below average, are true, then your speech acts become irrelevant.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

The right way is to use the free speech that already exists. Otherwise, you'll end up pushing for fascism ... fascism over socialism.

So the alternatives are either use free speech or push for fascism? Got it.

How has that philosophy been working for you? Free speech ain't free. You need to fight to keep it. And "electing" Biden and Harris, and defending that "election," is certainly not fighting to keep it. Elections are worthless when they're used to usher in a new era of rights violators. At what point are you going to say enough is enough?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stale by now, one'd think. Anything or anyone slightly right-wards (or 'centrist') of leftism is Fascism or Fascist.

How socialists have used this ploy to great effect! For only about a century.

 

Edited by whYNOT
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, DonAthos said:

Objectivists who support Trump have profoundly lost their way, and work in direct opposition to their stated interests.

It troubles me greatly -- as it should trouble everyone else here -- to witness the degree and depth of conspiracy theory-type thinking which has infected this site (and the country). ... Objectivism proclaims support for Reason and Reality and is supported by them. To sunder this primary relationship in either direction is to leave Objectivism entirely untethered, to turn it into a mockery. 

Huh? An Objectivist who doesn't subscribe to conspiracy theories, that's me. Sure there are others. But if you take your eye off the evident fact (Reality) that people in power co-operate, collude and discuss their concerted moves ahead, you may fall prey to naiviete.

It might be nice to believe that everyone (in the media, politics and business, say) only acts of his own accord, independently, but if there's one thing in short supply it is that type of integrity and independence. I have seen first hand an editor and also politicians discussing with others how to promote a particular angle to the public. And businessmen do it all the time with their competitors on prices etc. .Are these conspiratorial acts?

And losing one's "way", can be as easily done losing sight of the prime identities and evaluations - e.g.  what is of major importance to a country, focusing on the inessentials instead. I have never looked for a "perfect" leader, would rather not have a leader, moral or otherwise. (Apart from in the most strongly delimited fashion, a la Rand). But I will try to recognise is he/she "good" in this or that given context?

"For whom and for what purpose?" - defines the objective good, you know. That eliminates the need to find intrinsicist "perfection" in our imperfect politicians.

Edited by whYNOT
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, necrovore said:

That's an ad hominem.

That would be if he said "you're an idiot, so we shouldn't listen to you".

What he said was basically "your standards of truth are so low that your statements lack any meaning that we can actually think about". Just like I was saying about you in the previous post. You didn't really say anything. 

1 hour ago, MisterSwig said:

Elections are worthless when they're used to usher in a new era of rights violators. At what point are you going to say enough is enough?

I mean, I think what you're really arguing is that the Objectivist view on politics is wrong. The view that a Republic based on individual rights is the best kind and requires defending the rights of all individuals, and banning the initiation of force by anyone. Here, you want to say that individuals must meet some standard before the government should to defend their rights. You are advocating for something that resembles a fascist country. It would resemble Argentina or Chile decades ago. This is the vibe I'm getting from you.

If you just mean to say that saying "freedom of speech!" Isn't enough, sure, I agree. But I certainly don't think this event is the right action in any way whatsoever. There needs to be some kind of broad philosophical response first. Writing, essays, things like that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

48 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

This is the vibe I'm getting from you.

You should get your vibe sensors checked. They're failing you.

48 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

But I certainly don't think this event is the right action in any way whatsoever. There needs to be some kind of broad philosophical response first. Writing, essays, things like that.

There's that fluffy idealism again. The broad, philosophical response started over 200 years ago. The only issue now is the proper tactical response to the current tactical problem.

It's easy to shout from the sidelines, "You're not doing it right!" But if they turn to you and ask how they should be doing it, will you respond like 2046 and tell them to get lost? If so, then you're not in this fight and you're not helping either side. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

41 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

The broad, philosophical response started over 200 years ago.

No, you always need to begin with philosophy when you deal with a particular issue. Would you have told Thomas Paine that the philosophical response started over 1700 years ago in ancient Rome, that he should stop spending his time writing essays? It's not a good idea to say "philosophers did it a while ago, all we have to do is act". Forget the word broad, I should say specifically laying out a philosophically accurate criticism of specific events, and developing a plan of action. This is in contrast to action that requires violating the law, violating the Constitution, without any stated philosophical beliefs.

Not only are these people not doing it right, they are making it worse. I wouldn't say that they are misguided but their intention is in the right place. They are not taking us closer to a more liberty-loving society.

I don't feel especially motivated to find a better plan beyond explaining my principles, because I truly don't feel threatened by socialism. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

False.

As long as one has free speech, there is no justification to use violence. Once violence is the norm, fascism becomes the norm, be it by the left or the right.

Don't know if you've been paying attention, but only the Left has broad free-speech protections anymore. If you're against the Left, anything you say might be used against you, and it doesn't matter what you actually meant when you said it, and the context doesn't matter either. President Trump is now an example of this, and if they can do it to him, they can do it to anyone.

The Left also has broad recourse to "violence," and it is the norm for them, whereas people who oppose the Left don't even have a right to defend themselves, or to call the police.

Fascism is already here. It's not total yet, which is why I can still post here, but it will only get worse.

Edited by necrovore
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, MisterSwig said:

There's that fluffy idealism again. The broad, philosophical response started over 200 years ago. The only issue now is the proper tactical response to the current tactical problem.

So put philosophy a.k.a strategic response aside.

At what point should we legalize murder, robbery, fraud?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

55 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

No, you always need to begin with philosophy when you deal with a particular issue. Would you have told Thomas Paine that the philosophical response started over 1700 years ago in ancient Rome, that he should stop spending his time writing essays? It's not a good idea to say "philosophers did it a while ago, all we have to do is act". Forget the word broad, I should say specifically laying out a philosophically accurate criticism of specific events, and developing a plan of action. This is in contrast to action that requires violating the law, violating the Constitution, without any stated philosophical beliefs.

Not only are these people not doing it right, they are making it worse. I wouldn't say that they are misguided but their intention is in the right place. They are not taking us closer to a more liberty-loving society.

I don't feel especially motivated to find a better plan beyond explaining my principles, because I truly don't feel threatened by socialism. 

 

I don't support "tearing the system down" without having a good idea of what should replace it. Causing random mayhem is pointless (for the good guys, anyway). That's where philosophy and Ayn Rand in particular are absolutely necessary. It would be useless to replace a fascist system with another, or with something worse -- but if we have almost-fascism now, anything with more freedom would be better, and if free speech returns then Ayn Rand has a chance again.

When the bad guys are making the laws, the idea that it will be possible to accomplish anything good "without breaking any laws" is absurd. The Leftists will make it illegal to oppose them. (This may be done by "creatively interpreting" existing laws as well as by making new laws.) While they break the Constitution whenever they want, on the one hand, they will claim that the same Constitution makes it illegal for anyone else to do anything about them.

In order to say that any law is "wrong," you have to put morality "above the law." That's what Ayn Rand said was great about the Constitution, that it was a good attempt to do exactly that.

Tearing a Fascist system down must be done without infringing the very rights that we are trying to protect, but you can be sure the Fascists will not allow it to be done "legally." The only legal option will be to submit to the fascism.

Edited by necrovore
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are two choices.

1.  Live as best we can with the current system of government, including its elections, certifications, and courts.

2.  Overthrow the government by force.  In the short term, live as best we can with the resulting period of chaos and civil war.  Once the civil war is settled, live as best we can with whatever government results.

Does anyone here really think choice 2 is a better bet than choice 1?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/7/2021 at 1:35 PM, MisterSwig said:

the people on the ground desperately trying to preserve whatever remains of the American spirit against the tide of socialists and socialist sympathizers

Blindly following the President, any President, is not preserving or implementing the American spirit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Much action would need be taken by a leader through the present methods and channels of statism to start to reduce statism. Counter-intuitive as it seems, that's the only path possible. And so to slowly accustom the citizens to less statism.

Trump is neither smart enough nor rational enough to bring something like this off.

Actually, the only path possible is to teach more and more people the basic principles involved.

9 hours ago, whYNOT said:

His foreign initiatives bear this out

What about his cozying up to Putin and the dictator of North Korea?

9 hours ago, whYNOT said:

How possibly will the Socialist Democrats ever be voted out?

They were voted out in 2000, in 1980, and in 1968.  They can be voted out again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, necrovore said:

Don't know if you've been paying attention, but only the Left has broad free-speech protections anymore. If you're against the Left, anything you say might be used against you, and it doesn't matter what you actually meant when you said it, and the context doesn't matter either.

It doesn't matter how much the Left smears us.  What we say will still be what it is, and people who are willing to think independently about it can still understand it.  We still have freedom of speech.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The time and place for riots was the day or so after election day at each separate state capitol.  States are responsible for their elections.  It is the state legislators who allowed the 2020 election to be stolen and who should have been the target.

In D.C. on January 6 what could the protesters have hoped to accomplish?

Without agent provocateurs – Antifa and perhaps deep state actors (probably there’s overlap between the two) – if enough protesters had occupied the Capitol building they might have delayed the event indefinitely, and given the public time to realize the election had been stolen.

There were two problems.  The existence of agent provocateurs within their ranks.  That was easily foreseen.  Their purpose was to make the occupation look bad.

The other problem was that Trump was not on the protesters’ side. He could have ordered Capitol security to leave the protesters alone but he did nothing.

All through his presidency Trump doesn't seem to have realized that he was president.  Idiots call him "authoritarian" when his problem was that he wasn't authoritarian enough.  Before the election all he did about mail-in ballots was tweet.  Could he have made mail-in ballots illegal by executive order?  I don't know, but he could have made some real effort instead of just talking.  The same goes for the other methods of election fraud.

Anyway, too little too late.  Events should not have been allowed to reach the point they did.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, necrovore said:

but if we have almost-fascism now

We aren't at almost-fascism, no one's breaking the rules of Constitution, "the bad guys" is a vague generality (which bad guys? Is Bernie Sanders equivalent to Nancy Pelosi? Are bad guys any people that you disagree with?) The principles you state sound fine, but when we get to evidence, and discussing evidence, discussing the concrete things you see in the world, your arguments and reasoning fall apart. I'm fine with breaking the law if the laws themselves are no longer grounded on a legitimate government.

1 hour ago, necrovore said:

Don't know if you've been paying attention, but only the Left has broad free-speech protections anymore.

What you talking about? You can say anything you want except incite violence. Try it. Say anything you want. You'll find out that nothing happens to your ability to act and think. Other people might not like it, but you have every right to say it. Freedom of speech is alive and well, with exactly the intense arguments and debates that are expected when freedom of speech is preserved. I can't prove a negative. I can't provide evidence that there are no protections. 

1 hour ago, necrovore said:

President Trump is now an example of this, and if they can do it to him, they can do it to anyone.

An example of what? Lacking free-speech protection? People alleged that he incited violence, and they are investigating it. Until and unless he is legally prosecuted, is freedom of speech is not been hindered in any way. But it sounds like you're conflating freedom of speech and consequences of speech. Your claims get muddled and confused, smashed together, where I don't even know what you're claiming anymore. All I see is emoting.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...