Happy Independence Day!

On this 4th of July, as we observe the continuing collapse of our economic system and the incipient socialist takeover of the United States, let us try to remind ourselves of the meaning of Independence, its principles and necessity.


"Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgement and nothing can help you escape it -- that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life." -- Ayn Rand

"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 nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers." -- Ayn Rand

"Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel." -- Ayn Rand

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." -- Thomas Jefferson

"He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions." -- Thomas Jefferson

"A man's moral sense must be unusually strong if slavery does not make him a thief." -- Thomas Jefferson

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." -- Thomas Jefferson

"A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man, that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of his friends, and that the most liberal professions of good will are very far from being the surest marks of it." -- George Washington

"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." -- George Washington

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." -- George Washington

"Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de très bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak." -- John Adams

"We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form." -- John Adams



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWv5VZWlwRQ


The Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

John Allison - A Living Example of the Objectivist Ethics

I saw this video lecture today and I was captivated. Allison perfectly synthesizes the Objectivist ethics into a practical, matter-of-fact, and easy to understand presentation. I highly recommend this, especially if you're a new-comer to Ayn Rand's work and are having difficulties understanding what she's really all about. But I also think it would be refreshing for veterans in the philosophy as well. As always, why not check it out and decide for yourself?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twolXLHBmgQ

Obamacare and the Silencing of Dissent

I am livid today after I became aware of an obvious ploy to silence XCowboy2(Richard Gleaves)'s "This is John Galt Speaking" video series on Youtube. A company just issued copyright complaints against all 28 videos of the new and old series. They have also effectively wiped out 2 full years of view counts and discussion attached to the videos. That is 2 years of people questioning Objectivist issues and being debated or tutored by practiced Objectivists in the youtube community. Also, the videos were targeted on the very same day that Richard came out with this little parable about the nature of the current health care debate:

The Parable of the Octopus Man

Coincidence??? I'm sure it will all have been a mistake...to be cleared up after the vote goes through. But the tragedy is really the loss of that corpus of open, free Objectivist discussion. I find it ironic that the liberals claim to be champions of liberty while they seek to silence any opposition by whatever means.

"If the "liberals" are afraid to identify their program by its proper name, if they advocate every specific step, measure, policy, and principle of statism, but squirm and twist themselves into semantic pretzels with such euphemisms as the "Welfare State," the "New Deal," the "New Frontier," they still preserve a semblance of logic, if not of morality: it is the logic of a con man who cannot afford to let his victims discover his purpose. Besides, the majority of those who are loosely identified by the term "liberals" are afraid to let themselves discover that what they advocate is statism. They do not want to accept the full meaning of their goal; they want to keep all the advantages and effects of capitalism, while destroying the cause, and they want to establish statism without its necessary effects. They do not want to know or admit that they are champions of dictatorship and slavery. So they evade the issue, for fear of discovering that their goal is evil." --Ayn Rand

[Update 3/25/2010: It would appear that WKH didn't really have anything to do with it at all. As such I took out the link to their YouTube page and removed direct references to their company name. It appears that some computer hack was filing claims under their name, probably some automated attack. The videos were attacked by a different publisher soon after the other complaint was taken down. Some automated hack that relies on targeting chained videos? Anyways it DOES seem that some liberal with an axe to grind is probably behind the attacks. So I'm leaving the informative part of the article up and cutting out my invective.]

Searching for Fascism in Atlas Shrugged

I thought this might be of some interest to fans of Atlas Shrugged of a more academic bent. I stumbled across it in my internet wanderings. It appears to be that a linguist at the University of Birmingham did a study of Atlas Shrugged to try and objectively examine the charges of fascism that we hear so often on the net. It's more than a little dry and very heavy on the linguistic terminology but it makes for an interesting intellectual read. Here's a link to the site it's on:

Corpus Tools and the Linguistic Study of Ideology: Searching for Fascism in Atlas Shrugged

Happy Birthday, Ayn....

I just wanted to say happy birthday to Ayn Rand. She was born on February 2, 1905. She's dead now, so my wishing her happy birthday has nothing to do with her personally. She'll never hear my wishes now. No, it has more to do with my hope for a future modeled on her sense of virtue, her sense of life. We are still so very far from that world. There are still so many sleeping their indolent dreams of empire while the gates are molding on their hinges. America is dying. It is our ignorance which is the poison in its veins. While the politicians wax pompous and self-important, our country is falling apart. Oh, yeah, you won't feel it for a while. America really was that powerful. It really was that great. There's still a lot of energy to bleed off. But as long as we stick our heads in the sand, let ourselves bleed out in denial of our wounds, America doesn't have much of a future ahead of it. I hope that my children, when I have them, may still be able to have enough opportunity to become educated and have access to a Montessori school so that their minds can evolve unmolested by those who would imprint their egos on the helpless minds of children...and would imprint them with only obedience. If America collapses completely into either the darkness of fascism or the darkness of communism, then a great light will have gone out of the world. And who can say when next it will be born anew? So Happy Birthday, Ayn. Atlas is shrugging and the socialists are choking on the ideal world of their own making. Maybe the rest of them will listen enough to what you had to say to learn something yet.

Cheers,
American Antitheist

Happy Galt Day!!

November 22nd is the day when John Galt made his speech to the world. A good way to celebrate it may be to watch XCowboy2's "This is John Galt" video series. He has the first version mostly completed and is halfway through revamping his second version. As an added salute to XCowboy2 (Richard Gleaves) and his efforts to spread the word on objectivism and Ayn Rand, I recommend you read his short story "Dinner at the White House". Happy Galt Day!

Maria Montessori and Ayn Rand: A foundation for a complete model of human development

The famous although largely academically ignored Montessori method and the increasingly relevant philosophy of Objectivism have many things in common. The Montessori method provides the foundation for the formation of an integrated and individual intelligence, and Objectivism provides the philosophical explanatory framework and the model for its extrapolation into the adult formation of ethics, work, and personal life. While roaming the internet I happened to find this particularly insightful article which discusses the relationship of the two in detail. I highly recommend it. Enjoy!

http://www.expert-tennis-tips.com/maria-montessori.html

Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest 2009

Just got the word that I didn't place in this year's Atlas Shrugged essay contest. I look forward to reading the winning essays when they're posted on ARI's website. Anyways, here's my entry from this year. Hope you enjoy reading it. -- American Anti-theist

BUSINESS & PLEASURE: Vice and virtue in the life of Hank Rearden

Hank Rearden runs his business with ruthless efficiency. The standard of value by which every aspect of his foundry is decided is one simple principle: What’s best for making metal? The wage of every worker he employs is balanced against the cost that wage adds to the production process and the necessity of that worker’s labor to the creation of product. The prices of materials are balanced against the market price of steel. The market price of steel is driven up by customer demand for his steel and down by the prices offered by his competitors. The only way to survive, the only way to prosper, is to minimize costs, to increase quality, to honor contracts, to expand his production so that he can further minimize costs, increase quality, and so on. In order to accomplish this he must pay his employees wages commensurate with their value. He needs quality workers to create quality product. He must buy quality materials. He cannot satisfy his customers with defective product. He must constantly refine his production process. He must condemn waste. He must reward efficiency. The highest value, the benchmark of all these other contributing elements, is simply the extent to which it enables him to produce better, faster, cheaper steel in greater quantities and make the greatest profit while doing so. This profit is his reward for organizing the resources of his business in such a way as to generate surplus. It is his reward for creating that which would not exist were he not to have created it. In business, this reward takes the form of money, a measure of the value he has added to the lives of all those with whom he does business.

If Rearden were to live as he ran his business, he would deal with all the people around him privately the same as he would deal with them professionally. Every emotional investment would be balanced by an emotional gain. If every process and function of his professional life is to render him a greater producer of steel, then every process and function of his personal life would be geared to render him a greater producer of his life’s highest values. The virtues of business are to minimize costs, to increase quality, to honor contracts, and to expand production. The virtues of his life would thus be frugality, integrity, honesty, and ambition. Just as he cannot settle for hiring just any worker for any job at any wage, so too he cannot afford to accept just any stranger into any given role in his life as only justified by their just having shown up. Friends, lovers, wives, and even family relationships cannot be based solely on chance, on the arbitrary advent of circumstantial proximity. They must be evaluated in terms of the value they offer and the price they demand. If they demand too high a cost for the value they offer, then they are not worthy of the role. On the contrary, the significance of the meaning of the words ‘friend’, ‘lover’, ‘wife’, and ‘family’ rests on the value that the people who fill those roles contribute to one’s life. A businessman cannot afford to promote an employee to a position of importance in his organization which outweighs that employee’s worth to the company. So, too, no man can afford to promote a chance acquaintance to a disproportionate position of importance within his own life. The objective measure of the success of his business is monetary profit, the value created by the practical implementation of his business philosophy. The objective measure of the success of his personal life is happiness, the value created by the practical implementation of his personal philosophy.

Rearden does not, however, initially adhere to parallel philosophies in his business and private life. Instead, Rearden follows a diametrically opposed moral code in his private affairs. His brother Philip, his wife Lillian, his mother, his “friend” Paul Larkin…these characters all represent the philosophical opposites of who should fill those roles were Rearden’s values applied consistently in both modes of his life.

Philip is devoid of ambition and produces nothing. He lives only to beg resources off others for the sake of others. He is an empty vessel, a conduit to be used by other men. He takes no pleasure in his existence nor deserves it. He has so little integrity that he has the audacity to undermine the brother who has supported him without complaint, to accept his money but condemn his character. Rearden would not even consider him for the job of a cinder sweeper, yet he considers him worthy of the title “brother”. Rearden would not even let him inside his mills, yet he allows him into his home and supports his every endeavor.

Lillian taunts Rearden with her sex. She uses it as a weapon to disarm him and to break him with guilt. Rearden is tortured by his own sense of guilt and hypocrisy every time he succumbs to her wiles. Yet he does not recognize that the source of the guilt is not the act of sex itself, but the act of sex with someone so completely devoid of any of the values he holds dear. His relationship with Dagny is the one truly worthy of the title “wife” but he does not recognize this inversion for what it is—that he has made the whore his “wife” and the woman who should be his wife into a whore.

His mother, completely dependent on her son for subsistence can do nothing but condemn him for the virtues which enable him to support her. His childhood “friend”, Paul, is simply someone he happened to know as a child and now is still somehow a friend despite the fact that there is nothing Rearden can conceivably respect him for and that he actively works against Rearden’s interests. Among these characters who hold the highest titles of honor in his life—friend, wife, mother, brother—not a single one is deserving of any respect. If his highest ideals are indeed frugality, integrity, honesty, and ambition, then Dagny should be his wife and Francisco D’Anconia should be his best friend. Yet those who scorn everything he believes in are his most valued relationships and he must view with contempt those who most closely reflect his own values.

Rearden is guilty of a terrible sin, a gross error of judgment. As Francisco tried to warn, "You're guilty of a great sin, Mr. Rearden, much guiltier than they tell you, but not in the way they preach. The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt—and that is what you have been doing all your life. You have been paying blackmail, not for your vices, but for your virtues. You have been willing to carry the load of an unearned punishment—and to let it grow the heavier the greater the virtues you practiced” (421). Rearden’s willing acceptance of blame for pursuing his highest values has chained him to a philosophical system which will mean his destruction. He has accepted that the values that make him an excellent businessman, an inventor, and an entrepreneur are values which also make him a vile and loathsome human being. He has accepted a false dichotomy which states that productive activity which supports and enriches your existence is evil and that the only good is to support the lives of others. He has accepted the rule which condemns the fulfillment of one’s own desires but praises the fulfillment of the desires held by others. To the exact proportion that Rearden excels in his work, he is evil in his life. This is Rearden’s central error, the one that turns his life upside-down, that tortures him throughout his marriage, that tortures him throughout his affair with the only woman he has ever truly loved, and that eventually forces him to turn over his life’s work and greatest achievement, Rearden Metal, to a thankless mob of thugs as impudent as they are undeserving.

Then, Rearden realizes the weakness of his enemies. That weakness is that they have no power over him except what he has conceded. His sanction is necessary for them to continue their deception. His validation of their moral code is essential to enable them to brand him immoral. Once Rearden withdraws his sanction and aligns his personal moral code with his professional one, he removes the only device by which he could be chained, his own sense of guilt. Guilt is only possible to someone who has virtues, who feels that they have betrayed those virtues and sacrificed a greater value to a lesser one. By removing his acceptance of the slanders against him, he removed the ability of his enemies to pressure him with the guilt he had willingly accepted. By refusing to allow his virtues to be branded as vice, he was at last set free to feel his full worth, to embrace the self-esteem which had been rightfully his to claim from the very first. He was free to embrace his ethical peers as friends and to truly love them selfishly. With that simple realization, he was also set free of the world of decay. For him, the doors of Atlantis were at last opened and his place in the world of the future secured. That simple realization was that one’s virtues really are virtues and that it doesn’t matter who says differently. The only true measure is in one’s own happiness, the profit of a virtuous life.

Ayn Rand: The Mike Wallace Interview

This interview was first aired in 1959. I wasn't able to figure out exactly when, but since it's 2009, I figured it would be nice to post it here on it's 50th anniversary. I hope you enjoy hearing Rand's views in her own words. Enjoy.

Part 1



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukJiBZ8_4k

Part 2



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMTDaVpBPR0

Part 3



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEruXzQZhNI

Bioshock: The Hype

OK. Well, quite a few people in the gaming community will have heard of the game Bioshock, a first-person shooter which touts itself as a philosophical simulation engine. Actually the philosophical element seems to be little more than a smear job of objectivism. With the advent of a sequel to the game and a possible movie, I thought it would be fair to point out that Bioshock does not have anything to do with objectivism in practice. If the objectivist government of Rapture had done their jobs, by protecting people's rights, punishing robbers and murderers, and yes by stopping the fraudulent sale of poison as medicine, then the catastrophe most likely would never have happened. However, the creators fail to understand (as do many) the difference between anarchy and capitalism. Anyway, XOmniverse did a nice piece explaining exactly why the "argument from Armageddon" isn't a decent argument to address any social theory. Bioshock is just a smear job. It's amazing that people are interested enough in objectivism to make the smear job into a movie, but Atlas Shrugged keeps getting put off. Anyway, here's the vid. Enjoy:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=k2kw51Q1kr8&gl=US