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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (18559)	12/17/2011 12:34:53 PM
From: Greg or e	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

"A sociopath who ran a cult, was as mean as a junk yard dog and had a bankrupt philosophy." Those are all "qualities" that he admires and seeks to emulate.

To: koan who wrote (18559)	12/17/2011 1:32:00 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

Koan might say that but he won't when questioned comment on the following Ayn Rand quotes. He is as deeply invested in his faith as gregoree and Brumar. "They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man." Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual - AR "When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed." AR "Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with." AR "It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master." AR "Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals -- that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government -- that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government." AR "Look at the moral atmosphere of today. Everything enjoyable, from cigarettes to sex to ambition to the profit motive, is considered depraved or sinful. Just prove that a thing makes men happy--and you've damned it. That's how far we've come. We've tied happiness to guilt. And we've got mankind by the throat. Throw your first-born into a sacrificial furnace--lie on a bed of nails--go into the desert to mortify the flesh--don't dance--don't go to the movies on Sunday--don't try to get rich--don't smoke--don't drink. . . . Kill the individual. Kill man's soul. The rest will follow automatically." AR aynrandlexicon.com

To: koan who wrote (18559)	12/17/2011 2:03:25 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 69300

Koan, Brumar and gregoree don't like this either, not when they are so anxious to save and help people from themselves. "The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government." AR "The American system is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule; the classic example is ancient Athens. And the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was put to death legally, because the majority didn’t like what he was saying, although he had initiated no force and had violated no one’s rights. Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom . . . . The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protection of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights." aynrandlexicon.com

To: koan who wrote (18559)	12/17/2011 6:20:13 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 69300

Scientists Say Greenhouse Gas Fear Overblown [ Hit the dirt, alarmists, dangerous unwanted scientific facts incoming! It's things like this that caused koan to "ignore" me and other alarmist leftys to hide out on closed threads. ] Scientists determine IPCC hysteria about global warming causing Arctic methane gas "tipping point" release to be unfounded - it's not happening Read here. The UN's IPCC, 'Big Green' and Climategate scientists are all about alarming the public and policymakers, actual science be damned. In this case, the usual scare-culprits came up with a theory that CO2 warming of global will cause a super release of the powerful greenhouse gas methane that would lead to a "tipping point" and "runaway" global warming. And as it almost always turns out with the IPCC and Big Green, their hysterical climate change predictions are found to be meritless. The research team of Dmitrenko et al. pretty much defused this blown out of proportion prediction, adding to the incredibly long list of failed IPCC fear mongering prognostications. " So despite a warming Arctic, the feared large methane release has not been manifest. Which fits very nicely into the new results from Dmitrenko and colleagues. They find that the methane observed to be bubbling up from the Arctic seafloor off the coast of Siberia to be the ongoing and long-term response to the flooding of the seabed there that occurred some 8,000 years ago and not a response to recent warming in the region...Dmitrenko et al. write: The CH4 [methane] supersaturation, recently reported from the eastern Siberian shelf, is believed to be the result of the degradation of subsea permafrost that is due to the long-lasting warming initiated by permafrost submergence about 8000 years ago rather than from those triggered by recent Arctic climate changes...The new Dmitrenko result pretty much throws cold water on the “shocking” news that has been making its way through the global media in recent days that reports from a recent survey of the Siberian Arctic Shelf indicate that vast quantities of methane are bubbling to the surface of the ocean and that this is “stok[ing] new global warming fears.” [Igor A. Dmitrenko, Sergey A. Kirillov, L. Bruno Tremblay, Heidemarie Kassens, Oleg A. Anisimov, Sergey A. Lavrov, Sergey O. Razumov, Mikhail N. Grigoriev 2011: Journal of Geophysical Research] http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/12/another-scary-ipcc-climate-change-bomb-defused-scientist-say-greenhouse-gas-fear-overblown.html

To: koan who wrote (18559)	12/17/2011 8:35:02 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

I have read most of the books written about Rand. I was also reading Nathaniel Branden when he was becoming popular as a therapist in the late 60's/70's. I have not read "An Oral History of Ayn Rand" published last year but I have now ordered it. Clearly, she was true to her principles of not compromising her belief system which meant that she made enemies of all those who are devoted to the collective. So she strikes two chords in people: A very positive chord in those who think her philosophy was a necessary and useful antidote to a society which leeches moral choice from individuals and uses collective might and religious guilt to choose what an individual may or must value...and a negative chord in communists, socialists, collectivists, and those who believed her philosophy opposed the spirit of community and cooperation which is an extension of the natural family unit. I have found that most of the hostility to Rand is a knee jerk reaction based on a misunderstanding or a gratuitous misinterpretation of her philosophy. But I want to be fair to your proposition. So let me give this the structure that I think it merits on the basis of my personal familiarity with her work and with her critics. Basically, there are two channels of attack by those determined to undermine her unflagging popularity: 1. They attack her as a person (which even if true would be feckless as an argument against her philosophy), or 2. They attack her philosophy (sometimes fairly rationally in which case we can sincerely examine the validity of their criticisms). Of course, the record shows that much of the antipathy toward her flowed from a collective "self righteousness" in defending what she attacked in her writings. And let it be admitted: She DID ATTACK--and she attacked without mercy and without compromise. So it is not surprising that the people or the things she attacked should coalesce into a defensive core--swinging back viciously...and sometimes with a convenient oversight of the facts. But having stated this for the record, let us set it aside and examine the criticisms leveled against her by others--whether sincerely offered or originating from personal malice. Whenever one takes an extreme position they will be both loved and hated. Many Christians have contempt for Islamic beliefs. Many Muslims think Christians are next to the devil. Many Christians think atheists are evil because their belief system considers "free thinking" to be an affront to the god they were taught to worship. Republicans and Democrats (of course) are superior to one another in almost all respects and there may even be some doubt that they belong to the same order of primates. And other examples are endless. What this means for us is that an extremely hostile opposition to Rand and her philosophy is expected--and indeed the absence of such would suggest a suspension of natural law in the universe. So I would like to look at this fairly because your question was fairly posted. However, tonight I am going to a dance. Perhaps tomorrow I can respond to this. I will separate the grievances levelled against her into personal censure and difference of opinion on her philosophy. I believe we shall find that many of the philosophical arguments are merely a misinterpretation--willful or otherwise.