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.
Translator
Showing posts with label morality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label morality. Show all posts
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The Health Care Debate: Splitting Families Down the Middle
This is an exchange between me and my sister. I've posted it here because I feel it represents clearly the split in the nation on healthcare. Also due to the way she has handled our differences and her choice to cut all ties and continue to denounce me in forums where I cannot defend myself and behind my back, I have decided to end all connection with her.
I'd like you to note the tone of contempt with which she starts out and then notice as she gradually becomes more and more blatantly abusive the more I try to debate the points she brings up. She accuses me of not being civil, but I maintain that all I have done is restate exactly what she has claimed. The exchange ended with her defriending me and severing all contact, which I assume gives me full license to reproduce this conversation on my page so that she doesn't have free-reign to distort the issue any further. If you're interested, please feel free to read this and comment freely. I would be interested in other perspectives on the exchange. You be the judge--who was being rational? Who was flying off the handle with vague accusations?
[Further note: she decided this was hilarious enough to repost this on her page as a note with the heading: "Call me a liberal, but I thought this conversation was fun enough to share...", that was right before I responded with "Well, at least you're being a little more honest now" Let's just say she lost her sense of humor soon after that.]
[Names have been removed to protect the identity of those involved--a courtesy she did not extend to me.]
AmericanAntitheist joined the group WE THE PEOPLE will NOT COMPLY with SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE!
Sis
Some of us people want socialized healthcare.
Also you've never lived in a country with socialized healthcare :S
Sis
True, but there should be a public option because it is the only way to actually control costs. Today, a given portion of the population is not covered by insurance, these are the same people who both lack preventable care, and will wait until they are sicker before going to the ER and hence need more treatment and more expensive treatment. The hospital can try to bill them, but may not suceed, causing the hospital to absorb costs. The hospital in turn raises thier fees, which causes the insurance to raise thier premiums. Fact is, we are already paying for the uninsured's treatment, just ineffectively.
AmericanAntitheist
Cost control doesn't work. It just drives down quality. You're ignoring the fact that one of the major reasons insurance and health care expenses are so high is because of the confused nature of and depth of government presence in the health care industry already. Inconsistency in application of malpractice law has driven malpractice insurance through the roof. In the absence of any transparent and explicit guidelines, doctors often feel they have to assign extra tests just to cover their liabilities. This drives up the premium of general diagnostic care. Other hidden costs associated with corporate and small business taxation drive up the cost of employment so that more and more companies shoulder less and less of the benefit cost. Add to this that federal law prohibits insurance companies from competing across state lines and thus eliminates the possibility of developing an economy of scale. Also, one more thought...if socialism worked so great, then wouldn't soviet doctors have been the best in the world? Oh, that's right, most of them risked life and limb to get out. Over regulating the medical industry creates the very serious risk of driving skilled professionals out of medicine and into other fields, or of creating "bubbles" of certain kinds of practitioners. Japan is constantly dealing with these problems. Not enough maternity specialists, so pregnant women die in the ambulance as it runs round in circles for hours trying to find an open maternity ward. Not to mention the complete lack of preventative care. Doctors can only claim a certain amount from the national insurance per visit, so they have to drag out your care as long as possible. I had to go to the dentist 5 times before one would actually pull my wisdom tooth. I get back to the US and my dentist takes care of everything in a couple months. Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.
Sis
They call it an option because it is optional - you can still get regular insurance if you want it. And nobody's saying cold-war Russia was better (tell me you aren't a tea-bagger, please tell me that). But, one way or another, we the people are still shouldering the cost. Do you really think that the insurance companies aren't also driving the MDs out of their fields with pre-authorization clauses and deny-first policies and endless phone trees just to get paid for a single office visit? Why do office visits cost a 120$? Because you see the doctor for 15 minutes, and it takes an additional 1.5 hours of work to get the claim paid. And, it's almost always for profit. So every dime the insurance company can take and not pay out, goes into a golden bucket for the CEOs, whose greed is usually limitless and guilt-free. It is therefore not in their own best interest to pay your claims, it is in their best interest to cancel your policy if you are *too* sick. Once you are retroactively canceled on a technicality, you are well and truly screwed, because your hospital stay was twenty thousand dollars and since you weren't technically insured to begin with, now a pre-existing clause applies on any new policy you try to purchase - meaning they will not cover any future expenses for your illness. Now, you must claim bankruptcy, assuming you are alive, and the burden of that cost goes back to the hospital who passes it on in a never game of hot potato. All I'm saying is that since we are shouldering the cost anyway, and since it isn't truly a free market, but is instead nearing a monopoly, we may as well have it regulated and standardized. Besides, there is medicare and social security and the ER but if you are not old enough and neither sick enough nor poor enough, you fall between the cracks because these programs do not cover everyone. I'm looking out for my own best interests, when I say let's get a public option in place before the potato lands on me.
AmericanAntitheist
I'm not a tea bagger in that I've never been to one of the tea parties, but I am an Objectivist, which means that I hold that the responsibility of the government is to protect individual liberty and little else. The notion that somehow the government has the ability to magic health care to every body at no cost is ridiculous. Health care is not a right. Insurance is not a right. We cannot be entitled to services which require a living being to bestow them. We can only negotiate terms to mutual advantage. The notion that somehow we will be saving money by having the government handle it for us ignores the reality that every single government entitlement program adds a the burden of running a new bureaucracy to the real cost of all the services involved. It also ignores that evry single government move into the provate sector has had negative repurcutions across the economy. Is the current system corrupt? Yes. But the reason is not the unfettered greed of private corporations, the reason is the stinking cronyism of corporations propped up by government bailouts who are endorsed and subsidized into continuing unprofitable activities and who then pass that loss onto the consumer. Just as public education drives up the cost of private education and provides a mediocre product, you can expect the presence of a public insurance program to drive up the costs of private insurance even more and to manifest itself in all sorts of hidden taxes (i.e. the value of our currency, inflation, and the other possibilities I stated previously.) Is reform needed? Certainly. But the reform we need is to move away from the statism socialist society into which we seem to be slipping and back towards our laissez-faire roots.
Sis
I'm not going to go into the objectivism thing with you, I already know that you vehemently believe whatever you believe.
It is not by virtue of it being government run that makes the public option magic. It is by virtue of having the burden of the sick, which I firmly believe we are already paying for indirectly, spread more evenly across the population. All insurance is by nature already socialist - it's just socialist on a per company scale. Short version is that as a healthy worker you are likely to pay more into the insurance program via premiums per year than you are to withdraw via claims (and the employer often subsidizes this to help keep it affordable). But, if an employee has a severely ill child, they are likely to take out more than they put in, and if it's a small company, may take out more than the entire company puts in. If at any time insuring a company is costing more than they are bringing in, then the insurance simply says - pay a higher premium or cut your benefits. Paying a higher premium just distributes the costs across everyone, however, if a company cannot afford to do that, then they may just cut benefits. Cutting the benefits is great because in addition to the $2400 premium each year, a healthy worker now cannot see any payout until they've met the $1000 deductible. If you are relatively healthy, you may not meet the deductible at all. Meaning, that you are paying into a system which does not benefit you one dime on a yearly basis - but we all do it because we fear being the one who is sick. Where the burden of one sick child can astronomically increase the cost of insurance for a small company, larger companies are able to shoulder this burden better because they have more people paying in to the system. A larger base to draw from, means a lower expense to everyone. If said system were nationwide, the base to draw from would be much larger. Hence, why a public option would help small businesses (and sick children with little puppies). The current system is already socialist, it's just uneven in it's distribution, placing a higher cost on small business and a lower cost to conglomerates. Bureaucratic costs will always exist - the question is, do the costs outweigh the benefits of having a public option? No, I don't think they do.
AmericanAntitheist
It's curious to suggest that more of a bad thing will somehow make it better. As for the nationwide economy of scale, that could be realized through free-market principles as well, were it not made illegal by the very same government that you suppose will make it all work out. I am well aware of how insurance works. Insurance is not socialist by definition. There are free-market solutions to these problems. I don't see how you can support further government control of these systems when you already concede that the system (which is already heavily government controlled) is contradictory and wasteful. I have never seen a government organization which was not so. Do you seriously think that an insurance company simply run under the government's name will be more respectable, trustworthy and less prone to abuse and "unfettered greed" than a private company? If you haven't noticed, the government doesn't seem to have a lot of money left to fund these things. Perhaps you didn' notice that the very greed mongers that you berate are those companies propped up by the government already. Remember AIG? How much money did we sink into floating that organization and for what?
Sis
Now, now, don't get angry just because I'm challenging your assumptions. I'm only discussing a public option, not whatever other stupid things the government has been doing lately. I'm expecting you to counter me with logic. Try to educate me as to why your path is better, rather than just saying blanket statements that a free market would solve everything and that the government is evil.
Insurance is socialist on a small scale because it is a system where a bunch of people pay into it and only those who need it withdraw out.
A free-market does not work in this instance because it is not in the insurance industry's best interest to insure everyone on thier own, even if they did compete accross state lines.
You are very quick to try to shoot down the public option, but haven't told me your solution. I mean, a practical solution that could get through Congress and make improvements in the lives of the uninsured or underinsured. Obviously you aren't going to overthrow our existing governmental system any time soon, so what solution do you support? Keeping the devil you know vs the devil you don't?
AmericanAntitheist
Well, I did say. Withdraw governmental controls on the insurance and banking industry, stop bailing out failing businesses and financial institutions, allow insurance companies to market across state lines thus developing the same economy of scale, dismantle the FED and return interest rates and currency to a real standard rather than arbitrary political manipulation. (For starters...) All of these things have been changes mandated by government which created the problems we are now experiencing. It is just as simple to unmandate them.
Insurance is a VOLUNTARY enterprise. This is not socialist. Socialism is by definition "a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole."
Insurance companies are private businesses which set the terms of coverage and collect premiums to fund that coverage in the event it is needed. It is funded by voluntary contributions to the whole and is paid out along the terms mandated in the insurance contract. If insurance companies are not meeting the terms of those contracts, then it is within the province of governmental authority to hold those companies accountable to the terms of their contract under existing fraud laws. Insurance prices are driven by the risk and reward generated by market, legal, and political conditions. It is the presence of government guarantees to failing megacorporations which incentivizes unprofitable activities. It is the support of those corporations which pass the costs onto the taxpayers.
A socialist insurance system would be one where the insurance is owned and managed by the government, where it is funded or at least partially supported by government through taxes on the people and the government establishes the terms of payment. Interestingly enough, social security and medicare were intended to be socialist insurance paradigms and they're going bankrupt. I wonder what is to keep this new mandate from following the same path? It seems very noble to suggest that a socialized insurance option will somehow make healthcare available and affordable to all, but it doesn't explain how it will be paid for, and it fails to make an accounting of the numerous side-effects that the introduction of such a program will have on the cost of health-care and private insurance.
Also, since the government is in the business of enforcing contracts, it seems like a conflict of interest to have the government so tightly entwined with the insurance industry. The reason being is that if the government decided to change the terms of the coverage due to fiscal insolvency or political maneuvering, who will enforce the contract? It will be exactly like social security where the government can shift the terms at will with impunity, after of course it has already collected all the payments and spent the funds. When an insurance company goes bankrupt, there are legal procedures in place to dissolve the assets and pay back the investors (as well as the aforementioned legal procedures for determining fraud). At least that was until Obama decided that bondholders don't have any rights and that the taxpayers should be burdened with propping up zombie corporations.
It is not the business of insurance companies to ensure 100% of the people. They offer insurance on the terms of risk they are willing to accept. It is unprofitable to insure high risk cases, just as it is unprofitable to make loans to high risk clients. Incidentally it was exactly for this reason that the housing crisis occurred which started this whole mess. A complex tangle of government regulation mandated that banks lend to high risk borrowers. Obviously they couldn't pay back and it sparked a chain-reaction throughout the financial system. The same thing happens when you insure regardless of risk, too many inevitable payouts and before you know it the system is bankrupt. You may think that worrying about how we are supposed to pay for this is incidental but I insist that it is fundamental.
Inevitably, those who produce more, who have less need of insurance will be burdened with maintaining the depleted reservoirs of the needy. The disincentive to productivity this will incur is profoundly socialist and flies in the face of everything a society based on individual choice and responsibility stands for.
You seem very quick to shoot down the free-market option, and yet you have not explained how this public option will be maintained. You also seem to resist the challenging of your assumptions. I have explained that I do not assume that it is the obligation of insurance companies to insure everyone regardless of risk and in spite of taking a loss. And yet you seem to assert that the public option will guarantee coverage of everyone regardless of risk. I think that makes it incumbent upon you to explain how this principle can be maintained in reality. You are after all supporting a large fiscal commitment on the part of the government, which btw is an imposition on all of us who pay taxes. I am simply advocating that people pay their own way.
Sis
Your "free market option" isn't an option at all. It doesn't insure everyone, which is what we're discussing, and no amount of deregulation and free competition would make them. So, your way of insuring everyone, is to... not. It costs too much.
I think healthcare IS a right. Surely "life" is one of our unalienable rights. What you fail to understand is that no man is an island, we all live within a community of people, not all of whom can afford healthcare. The bus boy(/self employed designer/ recent college graduate/ homeless person in the bus/ fast food worker/ etc)'s health is very much my own issue if only because of physical proximity. One sneeze and I get swine-flu.
I refuse to believe the money doesn't already exist - we all know about government pork, which could be eliminated to pay for healthcare. Even if not, I wouldn't mind paying a little more on taxes if I felt I was getting a tangible benefit from it, like healthcare for all (of course adding a commuter train system locally would also be nice). I definitely wouldn't mind a tax on those earning over 250,000 a year to pay for it - even if some day I earn that much.
"It takes a neighbor to raise a barn", no one is completely self-sufficient, and no matter how much you'd like to believe otherwise, we are all in this together. The common good doesn't just benefit someone else, if benefits me, too. Someone who is in good health is less likely to burden other programs which already exist (welfare) and is more likely to work for a living - a better life for them, means more income into the program. I fail to see how healthcare for all does not benefit us all.
American Anitheist
(I'm copying my reply to this last bit here just in the interest of keeping this fair)
[Note: At this point she had decided to repost this discussion as a note where she would have the ability to delete the entire conversation at her sole discretion]
AmericanAntitheist
Well, at least you're being a little more honest now. You DO advocate a socialist state then. You think it is fine to appropriate the labor and productivity of all to give to a few. You see doctors,bankers. insurance providers, not as humans with the right to the fruits of their own productivity but as reservoirs to be tapped to fulfill your wishes... See More. I am interested to see how you would feel, were someone lower on the food chain to propose that your freedoms should be sacrificed to provide them with more. But at least I think we understand each other. Don't pretend to want to live in a free society and then suggest that "other" people are resources to be stolen from at will (taking without consent is stealing) and distributed as you wish. I maintain that social rights cannot exist in the absence of individual rights--a society is simply a group of individuals, if individuals have no rights to their earnings, then the society doesn't either. And that is socialism.
This is why it is impossible to debate this without getting into the deeper moral issues--and that would mean getting much deeper into Objectivist morality. If you are sincerely interested in learning more about it, then I would be glad to talk with you on it. If not, then there's not much more to be said. I believe that socialism is immoral. We could get into a deeper discussion on why if you're game, but it would require a sincere interest in reading some of Ayn Rand's philosophical work to get a full and honest picture.
PS: The fact that you wouldn't mind pitching in to help others is not the point at issue. The problem is that you're taking that as moral vindication to steal from others to support your goals. How do you justify stealing from people? You claim the greater good as your justification. So did Stalin, so did Hitler. How is this any different?
Sis
Who is stealing? If we voted Obama in on a platform of healthcare reform, that means that most of us want it. If we are consenting, then how is it stealing? We all knew what we were getting in for during the election, and I'm sorry, but one side has to loose. If you don't like the electoral process as created by the framers, leave. Go somewhere where your ideals are being upheld. Where everyone must work for every single service they have and any random chance accident or illness could mean failure, starvation, and death. Let's call it Isla de You, current population 1.
Thankyou for your kind remarks upon my character, they were perfectly logical and not incendiary at all. Why I sure hope the cops aren't coming for me! You don't seem to understand that a person can be both free and conscientous. Just as you don't understand that a person can be moral and disagree with you. You are an extremeist, yes, every bit as extreme as the far right, the anti-abortionists or the al Quaeda. There is no middle ground for you. And because of that... Have you ever gotten a book from the Library? Surely a free and public library would not exist in your philosophy since there is no financial incentive to running a service like that. Have you gotten a free and public education? It may have been mediocre, but at least you got an education adequate enough to get you elsewhere. Have you driven on a public highway or ridden on a public transit system? Have you been to a public park? Have you received mail? When you retire, if social security is still available, will you take that money and live off it? Will you take medicare, too? For all of these things that you have recieved by your own definition, you, yourself, are a theif for you took them from the pool of available socialist resources, and then you went to Isla De You from whence there is no return.
Yes there is government waste, yes there are problems with our current government, and yes, I do want a free society. I think perhaps our definitions of freedom may differ. You seem to like a sheriff-less laissez-faire (from the french meaning do nothing) wild west town where everyone can be free to exploit each other at will. You see I'd like to be free to do what I want within the law (which I currently can) and not live in fear of loosing my insurance (which I currently cannot). The way I see it, we are being held hostage by the insurance companies, because there is no alternative to them. It's either insurance or steep debt. Isn't the public option in that sense providing much needed competition into the market? If the insurance companies then go under, wouldn't that be because they failed to offer a better product at a better price?
You have found an excellent way of writing off all personal responsibility towards your friends, neighbors, colleages, and yes, strangers. But luckily you live in a place where your freedom to be an ass is protected. So quit whining about stalin and hitler - there is simply no comparison there. Adding healthcare to the list of currently available services would free people from the unrelenting weight of private insurance coverage. It would not turn the country into a fascist regieme. Or is Canada fascist now? It's so hard to tell.
And, finally, you know you have a problem when you find yourself on the side of Glen Beck.
AmericanAntitheist
I didn't vote for Obama, a lot of people didn't either. Simply having a majority of people decide to steal from a few isn't rule of law, and isn't consent. Unfettered democracy was not intended by the framers of the constitution. They understood it leads to exactly one thing...mob rule. That is why we are a Constitutional Republic and not a Democracy.
Why were my remarks incendiary? If you believe that socialized healthcare should be enacted regardless of opposition because you have the "might" to make "right" then I don't see my remarks as anything other than stating the facts of your viewpoint as you present them. You ARE advocating stealing from people. You simply don't want to use just those words. You are entitled to your belief, but at least let's be honest about what socialism in any form means.
I do not advocate for socialism. I am not asking for socialist programs. Simply because they force them on me does not make me an active participant in their realization. That is why I actively oppose these programs (including public education, public welfare, public ownership of property), because I realize that if I were actively involved in creating these programs then I would be morally responsible for their effects on other human beings. You ARE actively advocating for these programs so you ARE morally responsible for their outcomes.
Some things do not have a middle ground...like mathematics. Like life and death. When we are talking about life and death it is a very black and white issue. Any amount of death injected into the social system is bad. Period. Every penny that the government takes from people makes it that much harder for those very same people to improve their lives. The government is less efficient than the market at providing services for an appropriate cost. But beyond that, the government (i.e. any mass of people) does not have the moral right to take by force the earned product of a person's labor.
I do not advocate anarchy. And I am not a fan of Glenn Beck (he is far too religious). I advocate the terms of a Constitutional republic wherein are guaranteed the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But the right to life is not a guarantee of life itself and cannot exist without the right to liberty and property. By surrendering the latter you do, indeed, surrender the former. They are inseparable.
And no, I do not write-off helping people who need it, whom I am within my power to help and who I deem worthy of such help. But it is MY choice who to support with my labor, not yours. It is MY choice how much to give and when and under what conditions. If you presume to suggest that you have any right to dictate by force of government how any other person should dispose of their assets then you ARE in point of fact and by DEFINITION advocating thievery. The responsibility of social reformers in a free society is that of argument, of convincing people to donate their assets to a given cause. It does not entitle anyone to just take them by force or fiat.
If you are upset with the label, then perhaps you are the one who should reassess their values more closely. You haven't demonstrated at all how my assertions are in error. If you remember, YOU were the one who started attacking my beliefs in this matter. I have shown just what the systems you support lead to. If any of this is in error, please address the point in question. And no, Stalin and Hitler are very much still relevant. They ruled on the basis of imposing government controls and appropriating private assets for the "greater good". Simply because that is what statists assert will happen, it doesn't make it so. You tell me how I am supposed to trust our government with the same powers and ill-fated philosophy of those other regimes. If the philosophy is different, then tell me where. Are you suggesting "it can't happen here?" I would remind you that Hitler was elected. The suggestion that America must be free by definition is naive in the extreme. People can be legislated into slavery just as surely as they can be conquered into it. Are you suggesting that "but this time it'll be different?"
Sis
Sorry, are you still talking? cause I stopped listening once you called me a thief. Sorry, not even gonna read your post, nope. Don't care, you're an ass. Your opinion is meaningless because you can't even discuss it with civility. So, bite me.
I'd like you to note the tone of contempt with which she starts out and then notice as she gradually becomes more and more blatantly abusive the more I try to debate the points she brings up. She accuses me of not being civil, but I maintain that all I have done is restate exactly what she has claimed. The exchange ended with her defriending me and severing all contact, which I assume gives me full license to reproduce this conversation on my page so that she doesn't have free-reign to distort the issue any further. If you're interested, please feel free to read this and comment freely. I would be interested in other perspectives on the exchange. You be the judge--who was being rational? Who was flying off the handle with vague accusations?
[Further note: she decided this was hilarious enough to repost this on her page as a note with the heading: "Call me a liberal, but I thought this conversation was fun enough to share...", that was right before I responded with "Well, at least you're being a little more honest now" Let's just say she lost her sense of humor soon after that.]
[Names have been removed to protect the identity of those involved--a courtesy she did not extend to me.]
AmericanAntitheist joined the group WE THE PEOPLE will NOT COMPLY with SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE!
Sis
Some of us people want socialized healthcare.
AmericanAntitheist
Also you've never lived in a country with socialized healthcare :S
Sis
True, but there should be a public option because it is the only way to actually control costs. Today, a given portion of the population is not covered by insurance, these are the same people who both lack preventable care, and will wait until they are sicker before going to the ER and hence need more treatment and more expensive treatment. The hospital can try to bill them, but may not suceed, causing the hospital to absorb costs. The hospital in turn raises thier fees, which causes the insurance to raise thier premiums. Fact is, we are already paying for the uninsured's treatment, just ineffectively.
AmericanAntitheist
Cost control doesn't work. It just drives down quality. You're ignoring the fact that one of the major reasons insurance and health care expenses are so high is because of the confused nature of and depth of government presence in the health care industry already. Inconsistency in application of malpractice law has driven malpractice insurance through the roof. In the absence of any transparent and explicit guidelines, doctors often feel they have to assign extra tests just to cover their liabilities. This drives up the premium of general diagnostic care. Other hidden costs associated with corporate and small business taxation drive up the cost of employment so that more and more companies shoulder less and less of the benefit cost. Add to this that federal law prohibits insurance companies from competing across state lines and thus eliminates the possibility of developing an economy of scale. Also, one more thought...if socialism worked so great, then wouldn't soviet doctors have been the best in the world? Oh, that's right, most of them risked life and limb to get out. Over regulating the medical industry creates the very serious risk of driving skilled professionals out of medicine and into other fields, or of creating "bubbles" of certain kinds of practitioners. Japan is constantly dealing with these problems. Not enough maternity specialists, so pregnant women die in the ambulance as it runs round in circles for hours trying to find an open maternity ward. Not to mention the complete lack of preventative care. Doctors can only claim a certain amount from the national insurance per visit, so they have to drag out your care as long as possible. I had to go to the dentist 5 times before one would actually pull my wisdom tooth. I get back to the US and my dentist takes care of everything in a couple months. Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.
Sis
They call it an option because it is optional - you can still get regular insurance if you want it. And nobody's saying cold-war Russia was better (tell me you aren't a tea-bagger, please tell me that). But, one way or another, we the people are still shouldering the cost. Do you really think that the insurance companies aren't also driving the MDs out of their fields with pre-authorization clauses and deny-first policies and endless phone trees just to get paid for a single office visit? Why do office visits cost a 120$? Because you see the doctor for 15 minutes, and it takes an additional 1.5 hours of work to get the claim paid. And, it's almost always for profit. So every dime the insurance company can take and not pay out, goes into a golden bucket for the CEOs, whose greed is usually limitless and guilt-free. It is therefore not in their own best interest to pay your claims, it is in their best interest to cancel your policy if you are *too* sick. Once you are retroactively canceled on a technicality, you are well and truly screwed, because your hospital stay was twenty thousand dollars and since you weren't technically insured to begin with, now a pre-existing clause applies on any new policy you try to purchase - meaning they will not cover any future expenses for your illness. Now, you must claim bankruptcy, assuming you are alive, and the burden of that cost goes back to the hospital who passes it on in a never game of hot potato. All I'm saying is that since we are shouldering the cost anyway, and since it isn't truly a free market, but is instead nearing a monopoly, we may as well have it regulated and standardized. Besides, there is medicare and social security and the ER but if you are not old enough and neither sick enough nor poor enough, you fall between the cracks because these programs do not cover everyone. I'm looking out for my own best interests, when I say let's get a public option in place before the potato lands on me.
AmericanAntitheist
I'm not a tea bagger in that I've never been to one of the tea parties, but I am an Objectivist, which means that I hold that the responsibility of the government is to protect individual liberty and little else. The notion that somehow the government has the ability to magic health care to every body at no cost is ridiculous. Health care is not a right. Insurance is not a right. We cannot be entitled to services which require a living being to bestow them. We can only negotiate terms to mutual advantage. The notion that somehow we will be saving money by having the government handle it for us ignores the reality that every single government entitlement program adds a the burden of running a new bureaucracy to the real cost of all the services involved. It also ignores that evry single government move into the provate sector has had negative repurcutions across the economy. Is the current system corrupt? Yes. But the reason is not the unfettered greed of private corporations, the reason is the stinking cronyism of corporations propped up by government bailouts who are endorsed and subsidized into continuing unprofitable activities and who then pass that loss onto the consumer. Just as public education drives up the cost of private education and provides a mediocre product, you can expect the presence of a public insurance program to drive up the costs of private insurance even more and to manifest itself in all sorts of hidden taxes (i.e. the value of our currency, inflation, and the other possibilities I stated previously.) Is reform needed? Certainly. But the reform we need is to move away from the statism socialist society into which we seem to be slipping and back towards our laissez-faire roots.
Sis
I'm not going to go into the objectivism thing with you, I already know that you vehemently believe whatever you believe.
It is not by virtue of it being government run that makes the public option magic. It is by virtue of having the burden of the sick, which I firmly believe we are already paying for indirectly, spread more evenly across the population. All insurance is by nature already socialist - it's just socialist on a per company scale. Short version is that as a healthy worker you are likely to pay more into the insurance program via premiums per year than you are to withdraw via claims (and the employer often subsidizes this to help keep it affordable). But, if an employee has a severely ill child, they are likely to take out more than they put in, and if it's a small company, may take out more than the entire company puts in. If at any time insuring a company is costing more than they are bringing in, then the insurance simply says - pay a higher premium or cut your benefits. Paying a higher premium just distributes the costs across everyone, however, if a company cannot afford to do that, then they may just cut benefits. Cutting the benefits is great because in addition to the $2400 premium each year, a healthy worker now cannot see any payout until they've met the $1000 deductible. If you are relatively healthy, you may not meet the deductible at all. Meaning, that you are paying into a system which does not benefit you one dime on a yearly basis - but we all do it because we fear being the one who is sick. Where the burden of one sick child can astronomically increase the cost of insurance for a small company, larger companies are able to shoulder this burden better because they have more people paying in to the system. A larger base to draw from, means a lower expense to everyone. If said system were nationwide, the base to draw from would be much larger. Hence, why a public option would help small businesses (and sick children with little puppies). The current system is already socialist, it's just uneven in it's distribution, placing a higher cost on small business and a lower cost to conglomerates. Bureaucratic costs will always exist - the question is, do the costs outweigh the benefits of having a public option? No, I don't think they do.
AmericanAntitheist
It's curious to suggest that more of a bad thing will somehow make it better. As for the nationwide economy of scale, that could be realized through free-market principles as well, were it not made illegal by the very same government that you suppose will make it all work out. I am well aware of how insurance works. Insurance is not socialist by definition. There are free-market solutions to these problems. I don't see how you can support further government control of these systems when you already concede that the system (which is already heavily government controlled) is contradictory and wasteful. I have never seen a government organization which was not so. Do you seriously think that an insurance company simply run under the government's name will be more respectable, trustworthy and less prone to abuse and "unfettered greed" than a private company? If you haven't noticed, the government doesn't seem to have a lot of money left to fund these things. Perhaps you didn' notice that the very greed mongers that you berate are those companies propped up by the government already. Remember AIG? How much money did we sink into floating that organization and for what?
Sis
Now, now, don't get angry just because I'm challenging your assumptions. I'm only discussing a public option, not whatever other stupid things the government has been doing lately. I'm expecting you to counter me with logic. Try to educate me as to why your path is better, rather than just saying blanket statements that a free market would solve everything and that the government is evil.
Insurance is socialist on a small scale because it is a system where a bunch of people pay into it and only those who need it withdraw out.
A free-market does not work in this instance because it is not in the insurance industry's best interest to insure everyone on thier own, even if they did compete accross state lines.
You are very quick to try to shoot down the public option, but haven't told me your solution. I mean, a practical solution that could get through Congress and make improvements in the lives of the uninsured or underinsured. Obviously you aren't going to overthrow our existing governmental system any time soon, so what solution do you support? Keeping the devil you know vs the devil you don't?
AmericanAntitheist
Well, I did say. Withdraw governmental controls on the insurance and banking industry, stop bailing out failing businesses and financial institutions, allow insurance companies to market across state lines thus developing the same economy of scale, dismantle the FED and return interest rates and currency to a real standard rather than arbitrary political manipulation. (For starters...) All of these things have been changes mandated by government which created the problems we are now experiencing. It is just as simple to unmandate them.
Insurance is a VOLUNTARY enterprise. This is not socialist. Socialism is by definition "a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole."
Insurance companies are private businesses which set the terms of coverage and collect premiums to fund that coverage in the event it is needed. It is funded by voluntary contributions to the whole and is paid out along the terms mandated in the insurance contract. If insurance companies are not meeting the terms of those contracts, then it is within the province of governmental authority to hold those companies accountable to the terms of their contract under existing fraud laws. Insurance prices are driven by the risk and reward generated by market, legal, and political conditions. It is the presence of government guarantees to failing megacorporations which incentivizes unprofitable activities. It is the support of those corporations which pass the costs onto the taxpayers.
A socialist insurance system would be one where the insurance is owned and managed by the government, where it is funded or at least partially supported by government through taxes on the people and the government establishes the terms of payment. Interestingly enough, social security and medicare were intended to be socialist insurance paradigms and they're going bankrupt. I wonder what is to keep this new mandate from following the same path? It seems very noble to suggest that a socialized insurance option will somehow make healthcare available and affordable to all, but it doesn't explain how it will be paid for, and it fails to make an accounting of the numerous side-effects that the introduction of such a program will have on the cost of health-care and private insurance.
Also, since the government is in the business of enforcing contracts, it seems like a conflict of interest to have the government so tightly entwined with the insurance industry. The reason being is that if the government decided to change the terms of the coverage due to fiscal insolvency or political maneuvering, who will enforce the contract? It will be exactly like social security where the government can shift the terms at will with impunity, after of course it has already collected all the payments and spent the funds. When an insurance company goes bankrupt, there are legal procedures in place to dissolve the assets and pay back the investors (as well as the aforementioned legal procedures for determining fraud). At least that was until Obama decided that bondholders don't have any rights and that the taxpayers should be burdened with propping up zombie corporations.
It is not the business of insurance companies to ensure 100% of the people. They offer insurance on the terms of risk they are willing to accept. It is unprofitable to insure high risk cases, just as it is unprofitable to make loans to high risk clients. Incidentally it was exactly for this reason that the housing crisis occurred which started this whole mess. A complex tangle of government regulation mandated that banks lend to high risk borrowers. Obviously they couldn't pay back and it sparked a chain-reaction throughout the financial system. The same thing happens when you insure regardless of risk, too many inevitable payouts and before you know it the system is bankrupt. You may think that worrying about how we are supposed to pay for this is incidental but I insist that it is fundamental.
Inevitably, those who produce more, who have less need of insurance will be burdened with maintaining the depleted reservoirs of the needy. The disincentive to productivity this will incur is profoundly socialist and flies in the face of everything a society based on individual choice and responsibility stands for.
You seem very quick to shoot down the free-market option, and yet you have not explained how this public option will be maintained. You also seem to resist the challenging of your assumptions. I have explained that I do not assume that it is the obligation of insurance companies to insure everyone regardless of risk and in spite of taking a loss. And yet you seem to assert that the public option will guarantee coverage of everyone regardless of risk. I think that makes it incumbent upon you to explain how this principle can be maintained in reality. You are after all supporting a large fiscal commitment on the part of the government, which btw is an imposition on all of us who pay taxes. I am simply advocating that people pay their own way.
Sis
Your "free market option" isn't an option at all. It doesn't insure everyone, which is what we're discussing, and no amount of deregulation and free competition would make them. So, your way of insuring everyone, is to... not. It costs too much.
I think healthcare IS a right. Surely "life" is one of our unalienable rights. What you fail to understand is that no man is an island, we all live within a community of people, not all of whom can afford healthcare. The bus boy(/self employed designer/ recent college graduate/ homeless person in the bus/ fast food worker/ etc)'s health is very much my own issue if only because of physical proximity. One sneeze and I get swine-flu.
I refuse to believe the money doesn't already exist - we all know about government pork, which could be eliminated to pay for healthcare. Even if not, I wouldn't mind paying a little more on taxes if I felt I was getting a tangible benefit from it, like healthcare for all (of course adding a commuter train system locally would also be nice). I definitely wouldn't mind a tax on those earning over 250,000 a year to pay for it - even if some day I earn that much.
"It takes a neighbor to raise a barn", no one is completely self-sufficient, and no matter how much you'd like to believe otherwise, we are all in this together. The common good doesn't just benefit someone else, if benefits me, too. Someone who is in good health is less likely to burden other programs which already exist (welfare) and is more likely to work for a living - a better life for them, means more income into the program. I fail to see how healthcare for all does not benefit us all.
American Anitheist
(I'm copying my reply to this last bit here just in the interest of keeping this fair)
[Note: At this point she had decided to repost this discussion as a note where she would have the ability to delete the entire conversation at her sole discretion]
AmericanAntitheist
Well, at least you're being a little more honest now. You DO advocate a socialist state then. You think it is fine to appropriate the labor and productivity of all to give to a few. You see doctors,bankers. insurance providers, not as humans with the right to the fruits of their own productivity but as reservoirs to be tapped to fulfill your wishes... See More. I am interested to see how you would feel, were someone lower on the food chain to propose that your freedoms should be sacrificed to provide them with more. But at least I think we understand each other. Don't pretend to want to live in a free society and then suggest that "other" people are resources to be stolen from at will (taking without consent is stealing) and distributed as you wish. I maintain that social rights cannot exist in the absence of individual rights--a society is simply a group of individuals, if individuals have no rights to their earnings, then the society doesn't either. And that is socialism.
This is why it is impossible to debate this without getting into the deeper moral issues--and that would mean getting much deeper into Objectivist morality. If you are sincerely interested in learning more about it, then I would be glad to talk with you on it. If not, then there's not much more to be said. I believe that socialism is immoral. We could get into a deeper discussion on why if you're game, but it would require a sincere interest in reading some of Ayn Rand's philosophical work to get a full and honest picture.
PS: The fact that you wouldn't mind pitching in to help others is not the point at issue. The problem is that you're taking that as moral vindication to steal from others to support your goals. How do you justify stealing from people? You claim the greater good as your justification. So did Stalin, so did Hitler. How is this any different?
Sis
Who is stealing? If we voted Obama in on a platform of healthcare reform, that means that most of us want it. If we are consenting, then how is it stealing? We all knew what we were getting in for during the election, and I'm sorry, but one side has to loose. If you don't like the electoral process as created by the framers, leave. Go somewhere where your ideals are being upheld. Where everyone must work for every single service they have and any random chance accident or illness could mean failure, starvation, and death. Let's call it Isla de You, current population 1.
Thankyou for your kind remarks upon my character, they were perfectly logical and not incendiary at all. Why I sure hope the cops aren't coming for me! You don't seem to understand that a person can be both free and conscientous. Just as you don't understand that a person can be moral and disagree with you. You are an extremeist, yes, every bit as extreme as the far right, the anti-abortionists or the al Quaeda. There is no middle ground for you. And because of that... Have you ever gotten a book from the Library? Surely a free and public library would not exist in your philosophy since there is no financial incentive to running a service like that. Have you gotten a free and public education? It may have been mediocre, but at least you got an education adequate enough to get you elsewhere. Have you driven on a public highway or ridden on a public transit system? Have you been to a public park? Have you received mail? When you retire, if social security is still available, will you take that money and live off it? Will you take medicare, too? For all of these things that you have recieved by your own definition, you, yourself, are a theif for you took them from the pool of available socialist resources, and then you went to Isla De You from whence there is no return.
Yes there is government waste, yes there are problems with our current government, and yes, I do want a free society. I think perhaps our definitions of freedom may differ. You seem to like a sheriff-less laissez-faire (from the french meaning do nothing) wild west town where everyone can be free to exploit each other at will. You see I'd like to be free to do what I want within the law (which I currently can) and not live in fear of loosing my insurance (which I currently cannot). The way I see it, we are being held hostage by the insurance companies, because there is no alternative to them. It's either insurance or steep debt. Isn't the public option in that sense providing much needed competition into the market? If the insurance companies then go under, wouldn't that be because they failed to offer a better product at a better price?
You have found an excellent way of writing off all personal responsibility towards your friends, neighbors, colleages, and yes, strangers. But luckily you live in a place where your freedom to be an ass is protected. So quit whining about stalin and hitler - there is simply no comparison there. Adding healthcare to the list of currently available services would free people from the unrelenting weight of private insurance coverage. It would not turn the country into a fascist regieme. Or is Canada fascist now? It's so hard to tell.
And, finally, you know you have a problem when you find yourself on the side of Glen Beck.
AmericanAntitheist
I didn't vote for Obama, a lot of people didn't either. Simply having a majority of people decide to steal from a few isn't rule of law, and isn't consent. Unfettered democracy was not intended by the framers of the constitution. They understood it leads to exactly one thing...mob rule. That is why we are a Constitutional Republic and not a Democracy.
Why were my remarks incendiary? If you believe that socialized healthcare should be enacted regardless of opposition because you have the "might" to make "right" then I don't see my remarks as anything other than stating the facts of your viewpoint as you present them. You ARE advocating stealing from people. You simply don't want to use just those words. You are entitled to your belief, but at least let's be honest about what socialism in any form means.
I do not advocate for socialism. I am not asking for socialist programs. Simply because they force them on me does not make me an active participant in their realization. That is why I actively oppose these programs (including public education, public welfare, public ownership of property), because I realize that if I were actively involved in creating these programs then I would be morally responsible for their effects on other human beings. You ARE actively advocating for these programs so you ARE morally responsible for their outcomes.
Some things do not have a middle ground...like mathematics. Like life and death. When we are talking about life and death it is a very black and white issue. Any amount of death injected into the social system is bad. Period. Every penny that the government takes from people makes it that much harder for those very same people to improve their lives. The government is less efficient than the market at providing services for an appropriate cost. But beyond that, the government (i.e. any mass of people) does not have the moral right to take by force the earned product of a person's labor.
I do not advocate anarchy. And I am not a fan of Glenn Beck (he is far too religious). I advocate the terms of a Constitutional republic wherein are guaranteed the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But the right to life is not a guarantee of life itself and cannot exist without the right to liberty and property. By surrendering the latter you do, indeed, surrender the former. They are inseparable.
And no, I do not write-off helping people who need it, whom I am within my power to help and who I deem worthy of such help. But it is MY choice who to support with my labor, not yours. It is MY choice how much to give and when and under what conditions. If you presume to suggest that you have any right to dictate by force of government how any other person should dispose of their assets then you ARE in point of fact and by DEFINITION advocating thievery. The responsibility of social reformers in a free society is that of argument, of convincing people to donate their assets to a given cause. It does not entitle anyone to just take them by force or fiat.
If you are upset with the label, then perhaps you are the one who should reassess their values more closely. You haven't demonstrated at all how my assertions are in error. If you remember, YOU were the one who started attacking my beliefs in this matter. I have shown just what the systems you support lead to. If any of this is in error, please address the point in question. And no, Stalin and Hitler are very much still relevant. They ruled on the basis of imposing government controls and appropriating private assets for the "greater good". Simply because that is what statists assert will happen, it doesn't make it so. You tell me how I am supposed to trust our government with the same powers and ill-fated philosophy of those other regimes. If the philosophy is different, then tell me where. Are you suggesting "it can't happen here?" I would remind you that Hitler was elected. The suggestion that America must be free by definition is naive in the extreme. People can be legislated into slavery just as surely as they can be conquered into it. Are you suggesting that "but this time it'll be different?"
Sis
Sorry, are you still talking? cause I stopped listening once you called me a thief. Sorry, not even gonna read your post, nope. Don't care, you're an ass. Your opinion is meaningless because you can't even discuss it with civility. So, bite me.
[An interesting addendum, is that Sis couldn't calmly defend her views in our discussion, had an emotional fit, and then severed all contact...only to then write a scathing bit of character assassination on her personal blog where I presume any defense of mine will also be ignored. It's interesting that she accuses me of refusing to see things from anyone else's standpoint, but I am actually the one trying to explain my views and asking her to defend hers. She's the one who has cut off contact so that she can villify me with impunity. I'd link to her blog entry, but she also doesn't have the courtesy to anonymize personal conflicts in public. In the interest of protecting my family from potential wackos who may take umbrage at my anti-theist views I cannot publish my identity openly like that. Too bad, it's some really one-sided stuff, published in a venue where I cannot debate or defend myself. It's just like I've always said, it's very difficult for liberals not to resort to ad hominem and character assassination, because they really don't have a logical, rational argument to support their stance.]
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
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
Corpus Tools and the Linguistic Study of Ideology: Searching for Fascism in Atlas Shrugged
Monday, November 23, 2009
The Montessori Classroom Part I: Practical Life
The Montessori Method is a student-driven, student-centered educational approach which relies on selective control of the environment, peer mentoring, and freedom of choice. The Montessori classroom is divided into curriculum areas, each of which focuses on a specific set of skills and knowledge. The primary curriculum area and the first to which students would be introduced is the ‘Practical Life’ area. This essay will attempt to summarize the purpose of Practical Life, its importance to child development, its principal characteristics and sequence, the role of the teacher in preparing the environment, the concept of ‘sensitive periods’, and how this curriculum area prepares the student for studies in math and language.
All the activities in the Practical Life curriculum serve a function on two different levels simultaneously. On one level, the one the children most readily appreciate, students learn how to perform common household tasks, use common implements, and take care of their person and the environment around them. For example, children may spend their time in this area learning to use scissors to cut along a line, pour water from one container to another, how to use a funnel or eye dropper, dress themselves, or even wash a baby. While this seems to be the direct goal of the child’s action, to the teacher the performance of these tasks are only indirect objectives, not unimportant, but secondary to the directed goals the teacher has in assigning them. The direct objectives of practical life exercises are most commonly to develop the skills of observation, coordination, concentration, and self-esteem. Furthermore, there is a focus on refining the child’s ability to manipulate their own hand musculature in a series of progressively more delicate operations where the hand must manipulate objects in certain ways to achieve desired outcomes. For example, a beginning student may start transferring beans from one container to another by hand. This focuses the child on a specific concrete objective, namely moving all the beans. This procedure is self-correcting. The child knows when the task has not been performed to completion and will strive to perfect its work. This develops concentration. The physical act of moving the beans will develop the hand musculature and coordination. The child will learn to notice spilled beans and beans left in one bowl or the other. They will also notice when other children are doing similar works, whether or not they make the same mistakes. This will increase their observational skills. Successful completion of the task will encourage the child to approach other tasks and build self-esteem paving the way for latter tasks of increased complexity. Once the child has mastered this method of bean transfer, they may be ready for more delicate maneuvers, such as pouring beans between two glasses, and then pitchers. From there, the child may learn to use a strawberry huller to transfer items, and then maybe even chopsticks. At each stage the child develops a greater refinement of manual dexterity, cognitive apprehension, and moral development.
Everything about the Practical Life area is organized to aid the development of these qualities. There is a specific sequence to the materials, top to bottom and left to right. This is meant to assist in the development of eye-scanning habits for later reading. The materials are arranged on trays on shelves. The trays help to separate one task from another so that the child is not lost amongst the arrays of various paraphernalia. There are also themes to the works. There are those, like bean transfer, which focus primarily on hand development. But there are also those which focus on care of the person like the dressing frames. Typically, the shelves would be arranged as follows. The first shelf may contain works devoted to bean transfer. The second shelf may introduce tools such as tongs or scissors. The third may be devoted to water transfer. Moving to the right, the next cabinet may have more refined water transfer works (such as those using funnels or basters) on the first shelf. The second shelf would have tasks requiring finer motor skills like using a clothespin or water transfer using an eye dropper. On the bottom shelf would be more tasks taken from daily life necessity, such as opening and closing jars or lunch boxes. If there was a third cabinet to the right, then it could continue with finer tasks like using nuts and bolts, locks and keys, or can openers on the top shelf. In the middle could be a sorting work, and folding or organizing works, followed by complex works like packing a suitcase or creating soap suds with an egg beater on the bottom shelf.
Once the children had become accustomed to the control of self and body necessary to accomplish these kinds of tasks, they may be introduced to more complicated tasks involving the care of the environment and their own person. They would probably start out with washing small objects like seashells, then move on to leaves of plants which are more delicate and then on to washing a baby doll. They learn to wash windows, tables, and chairs, to polish mirrors, wood, metal, and shoes, and to clean up after themselves. They learn how to dress themselves by focusing on a series of dressing frames designed to focus on specific fasteners for clothing (basically cloth fixed to a wooden frame which must be connected and disconnected using a specific fastening method like snaps or buckles). They learn how to prepare the food they eat and to sew. These works, being left out for the children to freely pick and choose, inspire the children to develop those areas where they are most in need of special practice. Once the child has mastered the skills therein, the child will move on by their own volition, for they will be bored with the task and it will have nothing more to offer them. However, which works will be made available to the children at what time will be something largely controlled by the teacher who bears the vital responsibility to control the environment of the class.
Since the children are free to choose the works they will, the teacher must be aware of the level of work appropriate to the children in the class. If the works are too simple, they will become neglected or be invitations to misuse. If the works are too complicated they will tend to draw the same and worse, they will tend to discourage the students from trying. For instance, a child who cannot transfer beans from one bowl to the other for want of hand strength and coordination cannot be expected to successfully remove the lid from a jar. More likely as not the jar will be thrown in frustration. But if the teacher, patiently observing which works the children are drawn to and how they are used, carefully selects the works to be made available at what time, then the children can be passively directed without infringing on their developing independence by actively assigning them to tasks desired by the teacher.
Also, the teacher has another principal method of controlling the classroom at their disposal. Contrary to what one may think, it is not a monopoly on knowledge. Other children in the classroom may very well be acquainted with all the practical life works and willing and able to instruct their younger peers. Montessori classrooms incorporate a peer mentoring element by teaching children between the ages of 3 and 6 in the same classroom. In this way, children can mentor and be mentored as they gain experience in the various activities available in the classroom. The teacher may be required to conduct larger lessons or to introduce works new to the classroom, but generally the classroom should be self-sufficient in terms of the transfer of knowledge and assuming it has been properly normalized. But the teacher holds authority as the ideal citizen of the classroom and a source of practical knowledge and experience. The teacher models constantly proper behavior consisting of calmness, grace, courtesy and deliberation. The teacher imbues in the students respect for the environment, not through lecture but by example and by maintaining an environment in which the children are able to have access to the tools and techniques necessary to maintain it for their own benefit. The teacher talks politely, and slowly. The teacher moves gracefully and measured. All this serves the double function of modeling polite, civil behavior and also to render one’s actions observable by children. Children, lacking adult proficiency in observation or a knowledge of critical essentials in any given situation, are not as adroit at picking out the salient components of an action, or the critical gist of a lengthy conversation. They need things broken down into readily comprehensible concretes. It is the teacher’s task to tell children what must be done in a way that can be heard and to show them how to do things in a way that can be seen. If a teacher can master these skills of observation and guidance then they will be able to lead children through the critical periods of their development in a way which will enable them to take full advantage of the opportunities they present.
Montessori refers to ‘Sensitive Periods’ of a child’s development. These are spans of time when children are uniquely attuned to a specific sensory input, set of skills, or knowledge. The most apparent example is language acquisition. There is a period of time when children are very young during which the acquisition of language is almost automatic. After this time period has lapsed, other languages can be acquired but it requires a high degree of personal motivation and effort. The same principle can be applied to almost any of the principle skills of human existence. There is a time for the effortless acquisition of gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and even eating and sleeping habits. After these periods have passed, they still may be learned or corrected, but if the proper stimulus is available at the proper time, then the acquisition will be practically effortless. The Practical Life curriculum area accommodates these sensitive periods in several ways. Each exercise in Practical Life is devoted to honing some specific skill. Later exercises build on skills developed in prior ones and create a scaffolding effect which helps children be prepared to successfully engage them. Children are free to select from a wide range of the activities and thus target the areas where they are deficient. As was pointed out before, if they have already mastered the work, it should, in principle, be uninteresting to them and thus something which they would not be engaged with for long. If it is too hard, the task would seem insurmountable. If, instead, the work represented a level of skill exactly in the range where development would be needed, it would also naturally fall in that area of works which would be engaging to the child. The self-correcting control of error present in the works would also help to discipline the child’s movements and help them focus on the tasks which drive their development. Now, especially if the child was in a period sensitive to the skills inherent in the work, they would be even more likely to be drawn to those specific works from which they could benefit the most. The reason is that they are simply more sensitive to and thereby aware of them more than others. As their sensitive period closes and they are drawn to different stimulus, they would move on to more challenging areas. So, too, once they have passed through the periods sensitive to the stimulus of Practical Life, they would be drawn out into the more challenging areas of math and language once they have acquired the basic skills necessary to preparing them to be sensitive to the more abstract works.
Practical Life helps prepare children for the study of math and language in various ways. The focus on hand manipulations in work which involve water transfer using an eye dropper or picking up beans with tongs readies them to physically hold a pencil. The focus necessary to achieving mastery of their work prepares them to focus on the salient variables of a complex problem amidst potential distraction. The social bonds formed during the exercise of their work cycle will also be a motivating influence when they see their peers and mentors investigating the more ‘academic’ works. More concretely, the organization of materials on the shelves and the order of movements in the works themselves are predominantly left to right and top to bottom—the progression in which English and most, if not all, European languages are read. Works like the jars and lids, which involve removing and replacing matching lids from their jars, teach one to one correspondence, an important pre-mathematical concept. This is also found in works which require the matching of nuts to bolts, the counting of steps, or the sorting of objects. Water and bean transfer may even be seen as a preparation for grasping concepts like Piagetian conservation of volume.
On one level, Practical Life prepares children for practical living. On another level, it prepares them cognitively, emotionally, and physically to engage their mind in productive works geared toward enhancing their own existence and apprehension of reality. This curriculum area builds self-esteem, self-awareness, and self control. It develops the child physically and cognitively to go into the world and begin to exert control over themselves and their environment. It also prepares the way for academic study, laying the concrete foundations necessary to ground abstractions in reality—a fitting beginning for an educational philosophy dedicated to unifying intellectual endeavor with physical experience.
For Part II: Sensorial, click here.
All the activities in the Practical Life curriculum serve a function on two different levels simultaneously. On one level, the one the children most readily appreciate, students learn how to perform common household tasks, use common implements, and take care of their person and the environment around them. For example, children may spend their time in this area learning to use scissors to cut along a line, pour water from one container to another, how to use a funnel or eye dropper, dress themselves, or even wash a baby. While this seems to be the direct goal of the child’s action, to the teacher the performance of these tasks are only indirect objectives, not unimportant, but secondary to the directed goals the teacher has in assigning them. The direct objectives of practical life exercises are most commonly to develop the skills of observation, coordination, concentration, and self-esteem. Furthermore, there is a focus on refining the child’s ability to manipulate their own hand musculature in a series of progressively more delicate operations where the hand must manipulate objects in certain ways to achieve desired outcomes. For example, a beginning student may start transferring beans from one container to another by hand. This focuses the child on a specific concrete objective, namely moving all the beans. This procedure is self-correcting. The child knows when the task has not been performed to completion and will strive to perfect its work. This develops concentration. The physical act of moving the beans will develop the hand musculature and coordination. The child will learn to notice spilled beans and beans left in one bowl or the other. They will also notice when other children are doing similar works, whether or not they make the same mistakes. This will increase their observational skills. Successful completion of the task will encourage the child to approach other tasks and build self-esteem paving the way for latter tasks of increased complexity. Once the child has mastered this method of bean transfer, they may be ready for more delicate maneuvers, such as pouring beans between two glasses, and then pitchers. From there, the child may learn to use a strawberry huller to transfer items, and then maybe even chopsticks. At each stage the child develops a greater refinement of manual dexterity, cognitive apprehension, and moral development.
Everything about the Practical Life area is organized to aid the development of these qualities. There is a specific sequence to the materials, top to bottom and left to right. This is meant to assist in the development of eye-scanning habits for later reading. The materials are arranged on trays on shelves. The trays help to separate one task from another so that the child is not lost amongst the arrays of various paraphernalia. There are also themes to the works. There are those, like bean transfer, which focus primarily on hand development. But there are also those which focus on care of the person like the dressing frames. Typically, the shelves would be arranged as follows. The first shelf may contain works devoted to bean transfer. The second shelf may introduce tools such as tongs or scissors. The third may be devoted to water transfer. Moving to the right, the next cabinet may have more refined water transfer works (such as those using funnels or basters) on the first shelf. The second shelf would have tasks requiring finer motor skills like using a clothespin or water transfer using an eye dropper. On the bottom shelf would be more tasks taken from daily life necessity, such as opening and closing jars or lunch boxes. If there was a third cabinet to the right, then it could continue with finer tasks like using nuts and bolts, locks and keys, or can openers on the top shelf. In the middle could be a sorting work, and folding or organizing works, followed by complex works like packing a suitcase or creating soap suds with an egg beater on the bottom shelf.
Once the children had become accustomed to the control of self and body necessary to accomplish these kinds of tasks, they may be introduced to more complicated tasks involving the care of the environment and their own person. They would probably start out with washing small objects like seashells, then move on to leaves of plants which are more delicate and then on to washing a baby doll. They learn to wash windows, tables, and chairs, to polish mirrors, wood, metal, and shoes, and to clean up after themselves. They learn how to dress themselves by focusing on a series of dressing frames designed to focus on specific fasteners for clothing (basically cloth fixed to a wooden frame which must be connected and disconnected using a specific fastening method like snaps or buckles). They learn how to prepare the food they eat and to sew. These works, being left out for the children to freely pick and choose, inspire the children to develop those areas where they are most in need of special practice. Once the child has mastered the skills therein, the child will move on by their own volition, for they will be bored with the task and it will have nothing more to offer them. However, which works will be made available to the children at what time will be something largely controlled by the teacher who bears the vital responsibility to control the environment of the class.
Since the children are free to choose the works they will, the teacher must be aware of the level of work appropriate to the children in the class. If the works are too simple, they will become neglected or be invitations to misuse. If the works are too complicated they will tend to draw the same and worse, they will tend to discourage the students from trying. For instance, a child who cannot transfer beans from one bowl to the other for want of hand strength and coordination cannot be expected to successfully remove the lid from a jar. More likely as not the jar will be thrown in frustration. But if the teacher, patiently observing which works the children are drawn to and how they are used, carefully selects the works to be made available at what time, then the children can be passively directed without infringing on their developing independence by actively assigning them to tasks desired by the teacher.
Also, the teacher has another principal method of controlling the classroom at their disposal. Contrary to what one may think, it is not a monopoly on knowledge. Other children in the classroom may very well be acquainted with all the practical life works and willing and able to instruct their younger peers. Montessori classrooms incorporate a peer mentoring element by teaching children between the ages of 3 and 6 in the same classroom. In this way, children can mentor and be mentored as they gain experience in the various activities available in the classroom. The teacher may be required to conduct larger lessons or to introduce works new to the classroom, but generally the classroom should be self-sufficient in terms of the transfer of knowledge and assuming it has been properly normalized. But the teacher holds authority as the ideal citizen of the classroom and a source of practical knowledge and experience. The teacher models constantly proper behavior consisting of calmness, grace, courtesy and deliberation. The teacher imbues in the students respect for the environment, not through lecture but by example and by maintaining an environment in which the children are able to have access to the tools and techniques necessary to maintain it for their own benefit. The teacher talks politely, and slowly. The teacher moves gracefully and measured. All this serves the double function of modeling polite, civil behavior and also to render one’s actions observable by children. Children, lacking adult proficiency in observation or a knowledge of critical essentials in any given situation, are not as adroit at picking out the salient components of an action, or the critical gist of a lengthy conversation. They need things broken down into readily comprehensible concretes. It is the teacher’s task to tell children what must be done in a way that can be heard and to show them how to do things in a way that can be seen. If a teacher can master these skills of observation and guidance then they will be able to lead children through the critical periods of their development in a way which will enable them to take full advantage of the opportunities they present.
Montessori refers to ‘Sensitive Periods’ of a child’s development. These are spans of time when children are uniquely attuned to a specific sensory input, set of skills, or knowledge. The most apparent example is language acquisition. There is a period of time when children are very young during which the acquisition of language is almost automatic. After this time period has lapsed, other languages can be acquired but it requires a high degree of personal motivation and effort. The same principle can be applied to almost any of the principle skills of human existence. There is a time for the effortless acquisition of gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and even eating and sleeping habits. After these periods have passed, they still may be learned or corrected, but if the proper stimulus is available at the proper time, then the acquisition will be practically effortless. The Practical Life curriculum area accommodates these sensitive periods in several ways. Each exercise in Practical Life is devoted to honing some specific skill. Later exercises build on skills developed in prior ones and create a scaffolding effect which helps children be prepared to successfully engage them. Children are free to select from a wide range of the activities and thus target the areas where they are deficient. As was pointed out before, if they have already mastered the work, it should, in principle, be uninteresting to them and thus something which they would not be engaged with for long. If it is too hard, the task would seem insurmountable. If, instead, the work represented a level of skill exactly in the range where development would be needed, it would also naturally fall in that area of works which would be engaging to the child. The self-correcting control of error present in the works would also help to discipline the child’s movements and help them focus on the tasks which drive their development. Now, especially if the child was in a period sensitive to the skills inherent in the work, they would be even more likely to be drawn to those specific works from which they could benefit the most. The reason is that they are simply more sensitive to and thereby aware of them more than others. As their sensitive period closes and they are drawn to different stimulus, they would move on to more challenging areas. So, too, once they have passed through the periods sensitive to the stimulus of Practical Life, they would be drawn out into the more challenging areas of math and language once they have acquired the basic skills necessary to preparing them to be sensitive to the more abstract works.
Practical Life helps prepare children for the study of math and language in various ways. The focus on hand manipulations in work which involve water transfer using an eye dropper or picking up beans with tongs readies them to physically hold a pencil. The focus necessary to achieving mastery of their work prepares them to focus on the salient variables of a complex problem amidst potential distraction. The social bonds formed during the exercise of their work cycle will also be a motivating influence when they see their peers and mentors investigating the more ‘academic’ works. More concretely, the organization of materials on the shelves and the order of movements in the works themselves are predominantly left to right and top to bottom—the progression in which English and most, if not all, European languages are read. Works like the jars and lids, which involve removing and replacing matching lids from their jars, teach one to one correspondence, an important pre-mathematical concept. This is also found in works which require the matching of nuts to bolts, the counting of steps, or the sorting of objects. Water and bean transfer may even be seen as a preparation for grasping concepts like Piagetian conservation of volume.
On one level, Practical Life prepares children for practical living. On another level, it prepares them cognitively, emotionally, and physically to engage their mind in productive works geared toward enhancing their own existence and apprehension of reality. This curriculum area builds self-esteem, self-awareness, and self control. It develops the child physically and cognitively to go into the world and begin to exert control over themselves and their environment. It also prepares the way for academic study, laying the concrete foundations necessary to ground abstractions in reality—a fitting beginning for an educational philosophy dedicated to unifying intellectual endeavor with physical experience.
For Part II: Sensorial, click here.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
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
http://www.expert-tennis-tips.com/maria-montessori.html
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
An American Anti-theist...No longer Abroad
That's right. I'm coming home. The combination of six years in a heavily socialized nation (Japan) and the horror with which I view the news since Obama assumed power have been the catalyst I needed to refine my vision and understand the duty that lies before me. Don't get me wrong. I would much rather keep on teaching foreign languages and have as little to do with politics as possible. It looks like a relatively filthy profession. However, I've seen what socialized medicine does to a society. I've seen what the welfare state does to business. I've seen what government intervention, coddling, and cronyism does to the average worker. But I have also seen that the necessary hinge upon which change rests is a lucid argument based on reason.
Arguments have power, the power to explain reality to the confused. If one's stance is muddled and uncertain, a clear argument will expose all of that stance's inadequacies. I believe that freedom is the superior argument to all forms of collectivism. I believe that objectivism is a superior philosophy to all other philosophies. I believe when placed in sharp and unapologetic juxtaposition that objectivism and freedom win out every time. So, as one objectivist who is unapologetic for his philosophy and who is unforgiving of the theists and socialists who are clamoring for the sacrifice of humanity to their God/Society of death, I vow that I will work to the best of my ability to reform our government and culture. I don't know how much I will be able to do. But I will volunteer to help the libertarian, objectivist, and libertarian republican movements. I will do what I can to raise the profile of these ideas in the academic sphere. I will do what I can to raise awareness of Ayn Rand, Ron Paul, the Austrian School and anyone (truly) allied with them. If needs be, and if possible, I will even run for what offices I can.
I don't know how much I will be able to accomplish. But I will try. I urge any of you who feels similar to do the same. Not to sacrifice your life for a cause, but to do what you can with the freedom and ability you have. Don't let them disarm you with their apparent numbers. Don't let them humiliate you with their insults and slurs. We the objectivists, We the constitutionalists, We the defenders of individual liberty, We are correct. Do not let them intimidate you. We are following the true and right and noble course. The democrats, the liberal republicans, the collectivists of all stripes are following a path that will require a strictly regimented order to realize. As terrifying as that will be, the chaos which will follow, once that colossus of government collapses under its own weight, that will be even more terrifying.
We have the chance to avert this end. We have the chance to right the path of the nation, to restore it to the city on the hill, to restore it to the emblem of freedom, free will, and self-determination which it once was. All it takes is for all of us to act, to organize, to speak, to assemble, to educate, to argue. If we all make a nuisance of ourselves, in every forum, on every networking site, on every message board, newsgroup, editorial page and blog we come across, if we make such a racket that they can't ignore us any longer, then I promise you, the gears will turn and things will change for the better.
Right now, bad ideas are winning because not enough good people are acting on good ideas. But put the best arguments against the weak collectivist ones, and the collectivist ones will fail. Hone your skills. And then use them.
Best premises and Best of luck,
American Anti-theist
Arguments have power, the power to explain reality to the confused. If one's stance is muddled and uncertain, a clear argument will expose all of that stance's inadequacies. I believe that freedom is the superior argument to all forms of collectivism. I believe that objectivism is a superior philosophy to all other philosophies. I believe when placed in sharp and unapologetic juxtaposition that objectivism and freedom win out every time. So, as one objectivist who is unapologetic for his philosophy and who is unforgiving of the theists and socialists who are clamoring for the sacrifice of humanity to their God/Society of death, I vow that I will work to the best of my ability to reform our government and culture. I don't know how much I will be able to do. But I will volunteer to help the libertarian, objectivist, and libertarian republican movements. I will do what I can to raise the profile of these ideas in the academic sphere. I will do what I can to raise awareness of Ayn Rand, Ron Paul, the Austrian School and anyone (truly) allied with them. If needs be, and if possible, I will even run for what offices I can.
I don't know how much I will be able to accomplish. But I will try. I urge any of you who feels similar to do the same. Not to sacrifice your life for a cause, but to do what you can with the freedom and ability you have. Don't let them disarm you with their apparent numbers. Don't let them humiliate you with their insults and slurs. We the objectivists, We the constitutionalists, We the defenders of individual liberty, We are correct. Do not let them intimidate you. We are following the true and right and noble course. The democrats, the liberal republicans, the collectivists of all stripes are following a path that will require a strictly regimented order to realize. As terrifying as that will be, the chaos which will follow, once that colossus of government collapses under its own weight, that will be even more terrifying.
We have the chance to avert this end. We have the chance to right the path of the nation, to restore it to the city on the hill, to restore it to the emblem of freedom, free will, and self-determination which it once was. All it takes is for all of us to act, to organize, to speak, to assemble, to educate, to argue. If we all make a nuisance of ourselves, in every forum, on every networking site, on every message board, newsgroup, editorial page and blog we come across, if we make such a racket that they can't ignore us any longer, then I promise you, the gears will turn and things will change for the better.
Right now, bad ideas are winning because not enough good people are acting on good ideas. But put the best arguments against the weak collectivist ones, and the collectivist ones will fail. Hone your skills. And then use them.
Best premises and Best of luck,
American Anti-theist
Friday, June 19, 2009
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
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
Saturday, May 23, 2009
An Interesting Debate
I don't have much to say this time. But I have been involved in some interesting debates lately. So, I thought I'd post links to them so you can check them out if you're interested.
Cheers.
http://www.mndaily.com/2009/05/05/rand%E2%80%99s-atlas-myth-america
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2009/05/15/a-conservative-tears-apart-ayn-rand-and-atlas-shrugged.html
(Please understand that I am not sanctioning the work of these journalists. The reason I'm linking there is because the resulting discussions make for a good read.)
Cheers.
http://www.mndaily.com/2009/05/05/rand%E2%80%99s-atlas-myth-america
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2009/05/15/a-conservative-tears-apart-ayn-rand-and-atlas-shrugged.html
(Please understand that I am not sanctioning the work of these journalists. The reason I'm linking there is because the resulting discussions make for a good read.)
Monday, May 4, 2009
A Proposal for a Rational Code of Morality
I was just sorting through some old papers and ran across this thought experiment I wrote up almost 10 years ago. At the time I didn't understand objectivism anywhere near as I do now and was still rather tolerant of religious beliefs. At the same time, I was already very libertarian in my political beliefs. I'm posting this, not because I see it as the final word on morality or anything. On the contrary, I'm sure there are more than enough flaws...especially in my all too brief assessment of epistemology. However, I think it still raises some interesting points, and a novel way of thinking about moral decisions. Anyways, if you're interested, you can check it out here:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddt4f3w9_4hmscz7hk
As always, please let me know what you think of it. Good or bad. And then we can discuss it.
Best premises,
American Anti-theist
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddt4f3w9_4hmscz7hk
As always, please let me know what you think of it. Good or bad. And then we can discuss it.
Best premises,
American Anti-theist
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Error, Evasion, and Deceit
I've been reading through Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (IOE) and in the interest of trying to work through some of the ideas in there, I've decided to put my thoughts into writing on this blog. Let me just say that this is not definitive Objectivist orthodoxy. This is just me working through some of the ideas presented by Objectivism. I welcome criticism from anyone, Objectivist or not, who may think there is an error in this reasoning. However, so that we don't get bogged down too much in re-explaining definitions and so that we're not arguing about misinterpretations, I would like to ask anyone who would like to contest the points I'm making to have at least read the book first. Then, we'll know where we stand and can move on with discussion from there.
In IOE Ayn Rand presents the basics of her epistemology, or how we know that we know things and what it is we know. Rand says that consciousness starts at the perceptual level. Initially, we are born with sensory apparatus that just wheels blindly sending a stream of undifferentiated information into our brains. That is, of course, within the parameters set by our biological hardware. Sensations are instantaneous responses to external stimuli but have relatively little longevity. It isn't until we have acquired enough exposure to a certain sensation that it becomes integrated into a percept. For example, we may be exposed to a whole variety of things but we are unable to focus on any one quality or any one object until a percept has been formed. Then we can be said to perceive something. This is where consciousness begins--where we begin to integrate our multitudinous simultaneous sensations into perceivable somethings, differentiations in the chaos. It is only later, after we have developed the capacity to conceptualize and abstract, that we can analyze our perceptions and reduce them to their component sensations.
Similarly, after we acquire a sufficient level of perceptions we can integrate them into concepts, integrate concepts into abstractions and integrate abstractions into higher-level abstractions. I don't intend to go into the whole process here in detail, I just mention this as a starting point for the discussion. Basically what this model of knowledge says is that anything we know is ultimately founded on concrete existents in an objective reality. Even our highest level abstractions, to be valid, must be based on a chain of conceptualization that is ultimately reducible to the concretes from which it has been derived. This of course holds true for inductive as well as deductive reasoning. If there is a break in the conceptual chain, then the following concepts and abstractions and any actions based on them must be in error. A break in the conceptual chain must essentially be a contradiction, some point at which the linking ideas are not truly linkable, where definitions have been mismatched, where reality and proposition do not coincide.
Consciousness is simply a fact. That there is something that is thinking is implied by the act of thought. As such, the concept of self is implicit in consciousness. Our concept of consciousness is the integration of numerous perceived mental actions, or "actions of consciousness". An action of consciousness consists of the concepts under consideration and the conclusion drawn in regards to those concepts. Our internal, or introspective knowledge is based on the integration of our first level extrospective, or external, concepts (not unlike prototypical lexis) and awareness of the difference between consciousness and tangible existence. That is to say, it is the integration between our conceptualization of objects and our evaluation of them. The combination of our prototypical conceptualizations and our first concepts of values form the base of our introspective knowledge.
So, for either objective or conceptual existents, the same rules apply. Higher abstractions must be connected in a chain of conceptualization down to the first root concepts that are perceivable in reality. Breaks in the chain must invariably be contradictions, links which represent the combination of two ideas which cannot possibly both be true at the same time. As such, morality is ultimately reducible to concrete existents, or more properly, it is derivable from them. For a more thorough derivation of such, I would recommend Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness in which she details the Objectivist ethics. However, the main gist is this: Every is implies an ought. Every fact of existence indicates some choice that humans must make in order to either enhance their survival or undermine it. Everything moral is ultimately reducible to life and death, because without life, moral judgments have no meaning. The ultimate basis of morality is an individual life. There is no such thing as a mass life, or social entity. These concepts are merely approximate aggregations of the cumulative effect of millions of individual decisions. They represent a sociological calculus of abstracting mass trends, but have no relevance to a moral argument. The moral argument must always start from the concrete and move towards abstraction, not the other way around. SOCIETY is a rather vague concept, what is denoted by it varies depending on what you're trying to prove. A "society" goes on, it changes, but the notion of life or death doesn't have much relevance to it. However, life and death are of paramount importance to it's constituent members. Any social system which ignores the life and death ramifications of it's moral prescriptions is bound to succeed only through misery, privation, and bloodshed visited on the individuals which constitute it.
Now, things like morality, justice, virtue, etc. are complex concepts understood only through a long chain of conceptualization and abstraction. At any point in the process, there is the potential for something to go wrong. I can see only three potential ways in which someone may integrate a contradiction into their conceptual system leading them to sanction or participate actively in evil: error, evasion, and deceit.
ERROR is simply when someone has made an honest mistake. Understanding the minutiae of these conceptual chains requires a painstaking combination of introspection, validation, verification, argumentation, etc. This is primarily what professional philosophers should be doing--walking along the chains of our abstraction and verifying their veracity. Now when a mistake is encountered, an honest person would try to fix this mistake.
A mind cannot hold two opposing propositions to be true at the same time, provided that the mind recognizes the opposition. So, how can the mind not recognize the opposition?
One possibility is that the opposition stems from a place deep in the conceptual chain and having been subsumed and automated are not consciously apparent as being in conflict: ERROR. The solution for ERROR would seem to be to examine the conceptual chain until the contradiction is revealed, resolve the conflict and then reconstruct the conceptual chain in accordance with the corrected premises. Correcting these errors would seem to be the proper mandate of psychology. Preventing these errors would seem to be the proper mandate of education.
The next two possibilities, EVASION and DECEIT are difficult to distinguish from each other, but are distinguishable by a very subtle difference. Whereas ERROR can be distinguished by the situation where a person has simply just not thought of something in a certain way, or has not sufficiently examined their ideas, evasion and deceit both imply an avoidance of recognizing error. However, determining what is evasion and what is deceit is ultimately a very subtle difficulty.
If a contradiction is ignored by one's mind, how is this accomplished? The mind cannot consciously hold a contradiction as true. So the only alternative is not to consciously hold it. This is what Ayn Rand calls the "blank-out". In other words, a "blank-out" is the avoidance and/or repression of a point of conflict between one's premises. To willfully ignore a contradiction is a form of deceit. So for evasion, as such, to be distinguishable from deceit, then evasion must be an automated process, where the person is no longer aware of the fact that they are evading. Their psyche has been programmed, so to speak, to actively evade the contradiction--to avoid focusing on the point of conflict at all costs. It actively works to keep them unaware of the fact. I think it is safe to say that evil men don't think of themselves as evil. They think they are doing the right thing. They think they are misunderstood. But the truth is that they are active participants in their own failure to realize the contradictions which lead to their evil.
Now, I reject unilaterally the idea of things like memes, which would imply that ideas just happen to infect our consciousness and spread like a virus. No, once one has reached an age where one's conceptual apparatus is fully matured, we concsciously process what we choose to believe and integrate into our lives, and reject that which we don't. The only time when a belief, a contradiction could be integrated without being subject to our conscious filtering is if that idea is integrated before that conceptual apparatus is fully formed. In short, if, when a person is still vulnerable and formative, a person's mind is conditioned to ignore contradictions, then they will develop the ability to evade points where contradictions are in conflict. This conditioning can come from either inside or outside, I think. From outside, it would be realized by what I call cognitive abuse.
Cognitive abuse would be the systematic disorientation of concepts in young people before they have achieved the ability to integrate and revise their own conceptual system. In effect, it would be a systematic training in a conceptual model of the universe which embraces contradiction and does not support the growth of coherent chains of logical correspondence. I happen to think that an awareness of cognitive abuse and its ramifications would inspire drastic reforms in modern educational methodology.
The internal source would be an active choice made to actively maintain opposites in pursuit of a hypothetically and arbitrarily ascertained "greater value". A commitment to religion, altruism, collectivism, nationalism, etc. are all predicated on the existence of a "greater good" and that this overrides any considerations of individual perspective or welfare. The conditioned or conscious adoption of this principle would have the effect of programming one's mind to reject objections in favor of this over-riding principle. In short, believing in a greater good, overrides ones ability to be aware of their own evasions, it shorts out one's decision routines.
But, a conscious decision to override one's mind and to actively embrace contradictions effectively entails responsibility. An adult with a fully-formed conceptual apparatus who decides to evade contradictions in their mental processes, is effectively consciously choosing falsehood over truth, good over evil. An active choice to avoid contradictions in one's thought processes is a conscious deception, a conscious evil. This would place voluntary evasion in the category of DECEIT. The distinction being that one is aware on some level of the fact that they are lying, even to themselves, that they are aware of the contradiction but have made a choice not to acknowledge it. Involuntary evasion, or EVASION proper, is the result of cognitive abuse where a person has been conditioned in their pre-cognitive stages of development to undermine their own cognitive operations, to turn their conceptual system against itself by means of an implicit decision rule smuggled into their social orientation as they grow into adults. Evasion is only possible to children who have been systematically indoctrinated to evade through cognitive abuse. Deceit is an active choice to evade, or an active conscious choice to pretend there is no contradiction in spite of the knowledge that there is.
The distinction is subtle, but important. Someone who is guilty of involuntary evasion can be viewed as being afflicted with a psychological disorder. Someone who is guilty of deceit is guilty of a intentional moral transgression.
Error is discoverable. If two people disagree, they present their opposing arguments, working back through the chain of their reasoning until they arrive at an error. If both people are honestly seeking the truth then the resolution of this error should mandate that one or both of the parties must change their standpoint when all contradictions have been resolved.
Evasion is discoverable. Since the evader can not allow themselves to be aware of their own evasion, they cannot monitor themselves to keep from exposing it. Therefore, they will straight-forwardly state what they believe. Their errors will then be apparent. It may be possible to force a catharsis by bringing the object of evasion into concrete terms and forcing a resolution, but it is more likely than not that the subject would just blank-out/repress the potential cathartic influence/demonstration. It would also not be surprising if persistent exposure to the conflict point would elicit rage and or violence. The underlying principle is that to be successful at evasion, the evader cannot bring the conflicting points into their mind simultaneously, otherwise they would have to acknowledge the impossibility of their stance, if only in the confines of their own mind. From that point on, they would either have to realign their stance to resolve the contradiction, or actively choose to pretend that they never realized the impossibility of their view, leading them into deceit.
Deceit is trickier. I'm not really sure how to determine the difference in symptoms between deceit and either evasion or error. Once again, they will act as though there is a contradiction in their conceptual systems, by advocating conflicting propositions. Even upon having that contradiction brought into focus, they may refuse to acknowledge it, thus emulating evasion. The place where they can be caught out is if they were to actually acknowledge the contradiction and continue to advocate it anyway. This is clearly deceitful and a sure sign of intellectual malignance. But I also think this is rare. A liar will generally try to slip away from the responsibility of their lie, by covering it as error or evasion. The question of how to determine intentional deceit is still one with which I have some trouble. But I think it can be dealt with in the same manner as either of the other two.
I think the method for overcoming error, evasion, and deceit is fairly similar. Present your views in as concise, rational, and clear a manner as possible. Ask opponents to do the same with their views. If they don't even attempt to describe their reasoning, if they flee from the issue, or just resort to bullying or taunting strategies, then it will be clear to anyone else involved that they have the lesser justification for their views. In this way, it can serve to educate others in the logical wormholes which can suck people in if they're not careful. Educational reform in general, with an emphasis on developing critical thinking skills, of refining young people's "art of non-contradictory identification", and helping to foster the development of fully integrated epistemology are also long-term approaches to correcting or preventing cognitive error.
Evasion can only be treated by exstensive therapy and then probably only when someone is aware that there is something wrong with themselves and they want to change it. Of course the depth and severity of the breach would warrant a proportionately greater necessity for counseling. The form of such counseling should be targeted so as to help a patient to uncover the break-downs in their conceptual system which are causing disturbances. More scientifically defining cognitive abuse, defining it's systems, causes, and of course scientifically validating whether or not there is in fact such a thing possible are tasks for cognitive scientists as the field matures. Once a more concrete model has been developed, methods for treatment and prevention can be better ascertained.
As far as I know, the line between evasion and deceit can only be made as a personal judgmnet call based on a long span of interactions, or a healthy volume of evidence. Consciously maintaining any lie takes a certain amount of conscious effort. Eventually, deception makes itself known. All it takes is for someone to let down their guard and admit it. But until that happens, if it happens, may be a very long time. As such, those who we suspect of evasion/deceit should be dealt with cautiously until we're in a better position to judge their motivations. If they cannot be helped or dissuaded, then the only civilized response is that they should be ignored as much as possible. In any event, whether it be error, evasion, or deceit, those who for whatever reason are supportive of evil should not be sanctioned. Their activities should not be supported except where they don't create a conflict with one's own values. If possible one should try to help them, to explain to them the root of their error, if they are so amenable. If not, then one can only walk away. At least that's the best I've been able to come up with.
There are not very many Objectivists that I know personally, but from what I've seen on the web and read of the Objectivist canon, this seems to be the best way of dealing with problems between people in today's society that I can come up with. I'd be very interested in what others may have to say about this. So please feel free to comment on this posting as you like.
Similarly, after we acquire a sufficient level of perceptions we can integrate them into concepts, integrate concepts into abstractions and integrate abstractions into higher-level abstractions. I don't intend to go into the whole process here in detail, I just mention this as a starting point for the discussion. Basically what this model of knowledge says is that anything we know is ultimately founded on concrete existents in an objective reality. Even our highest level abstractions, to be valid, must be based on a chain of conceptualization that is ultimately reducible to the concretes from which it has been derived. This of course holds true for inductive as well as deductive reasoning. If there is a break in the conceptual chain, then the following concepts and abstractions and any actions based on them must be in error. A break in the conceptual chain must essentially be a contradiction, some point at which the linking ideas are not truly linkable, where definitions have been mismatched, where reality and proposition do not coincide.
Consciousness is simply a fact. That there is something that is thinking is implied by the act of thought. As such, the concept of self is implicit in consciousness. Our concept of consciousness is the integration of numerous perceived mental actions, or "actions of consciousness". An action of consciousness consists of the concepts under consideration and the conclusion drawn in regards to those concepts. Our internal, or introspective knowledge is based on the integration of our first level extrospective, or external, concepts (not unlike prototypical lexis) and awareness of the difference between consciousness and tangible existence. That is to say, it is the integration between our conceptualization of objects and our evaluation of them. The combination of our prototypical conceptualizations and our first concepts of values form the base of our introspective knowledge.
So, for either objective or conceptual existents, the same rules apply. Higher abstractions must be connected in a chain of conceptualization down to the first root concepts that are perceivable in reality. Breaks in the chain must invariably be contradictions, links which represent the combination of two ideas which cannot possibly both be true at the same time. As such, morality is ultimately reducible to concrete existents, or more properly, it is derivable from them. For a more thorough derivation of such, I would recommend Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness in which she details the Objectivist ethics. However, the main gist is this: Every is implies an ought. Every fact of existence indicates some choice that humans must make in order to either enhance their survival or undermine it. Everything moral is ultimately reducible to life and death, because without life, moral judgments have no meaning. The ultimate basis of morality is an individual life. There is no such thing as a mass life, or social entity. These concepts are merely approximate aggregations of the cumulative effect of millions of individual decisions. They represent a sociological calculus of abstracting mass trends, but have no relevance to a moral argument. The moral argument must always start from the concrete and move towards abstraction, not the other way around. SOCIETY is a rather vague concept, what is denoted by it varies depending on what you're trying to prove. A "society" goes on, it changes, but the notion of life or death doesn't have much relevance to it. However, life and death are of paramount importance to it's constituent members. Any social system which ignores the life and death ramifications of it's moral prescriptions is bound to succeed only through misery, privation, and bloodshed visited on the individuals which constitute it.
Now, things like morality, justice, virtue, etc. are complex concepts understood only through a long chain of conceptualization and abstraction. At any point in the process, there is the potential for something to go wrong. I can see only three potential ways in which someone may integrate a contradiction into their conceptual system leading them to sanction or participate actively in evil: error, evasion, and deceit.
ERROR is simply when someone has made an honest mistake. Understanding the minutiae of these conceptual chains requires a painstaking combination of introspection, validation, verification, argumentation, etc. This is primarily what professional philosophers should be doing--walking along the chains of our abstraction and verifying their veracity. Now when a mistake is encountered, an honest person would try to fix this mistake.
A mind cannot hold two opposing propositions to be true at the same time, provided that the mind recognizes the opposition. So, how can the mind not recognize the opposition?
One possibility is that the opposition stems from a place deep in the conceptual chain and having been subsumed and automated are not consciously apparent as being in conflict: ERROR. The solution for ERROR would seem to be to examine the conceptual chain until the contradiction is revealed, resolve the conflict and then reconstruct the conceptual chain in accordance with the corrected premises. Correcting these errors would seem to be the proper mandate of psychology. Preventing these errors would seem to be the proper mandate of education.
The next two possibilities, EVASION and DECEIT are difficult to distinguish from each other, but are distinguishable by a very subtle difference. Whereas ERROR can be distinguished by the situation where a person has simply just not thought of something in a certain way, or has not sufficiently examined their ideas, evasion and deceit both imply an avoidance of recognizing error. However, determining what is evasion and what is deceit is ultimately a very subtle difficulty.
If a contradiction is ignored by one's mind, how is this accomplished? The mind cannot consciously hold a contradiction as true. So the only alternative is not to consciously hold it. This is what Ayn Rand calls the "blank-out". In other words, a "blank-out" is the avoidance and/or repression of a point of conflict between one's premises. To willfully ignore a contradiction is a form of deceit. So for evasion, as such, to be distinguishable from deceit, then evasion must be an automated process, where the person is no longer aware of the fact that they are evading. Their psyche has been programmed, so to speak, to actively evade the contradiction--to avoid focusing on the point of conflict at all costs. It actively works to keep them unaware of the fact. I think it is safe to say that evil men don't think of themselves as evil. They think they are doing the right thing. They think they are misunderstood. But the truth is that they are active participants in their own failure to realize the contradictions which lead to their evil.
Now, I reject unilaterally the idea of things like memes, which would imply that ideas just happen to infect our consciousness and spread like a virus. No, once one has reached an age where one's conceptual apparatus is fully matured, we concsciously process what we choose to believe and integrate into our lives, and reject that which we don't. The only time when a belief, a contradiction could be integrated without being subject to our conscious filtering is if that idea is integrated before that conceptual apparatus is fully formed. In short, if, when a person is still vulnerable and formative, a person's mind is conditioned to ignore contradictions, then they will develop the ability to evade points where contradictions are in conflict. This conditioning can come from either inside or outside, I think. From outside, it would be realized by what I call cognitive abuse.
Cognitive abuse would be the systematic disorientation of concepts in young people before they have achieved the ability to integrate and revise their own conceptual system. In effect, it would be a systematic training in a conceptual model of the universe which embraces contradiction and does not support the growth of coherent chains of logical correspondence. I happen to think that an awareness of cognitive abuse and its ramifications would inspire drastic reforms in modern educational methodology.
The internal source would be an active choice made to actively maintain opposites in pursuit of a hypothetically and arbitrarily ascertained "greater value". A commitment to religion, altruism, collectivism, nationalism, etc. are all predicated on the existence of a "greater good" and that this overrides any considerations of individual perspective or welfare. The conditioned or conscious adoption of this principle would have the effect of programming one's mind to reject objections in favor of this over-riding principle. In short, believing in a greater good, overrides ones ability to be aware of their own evasions, it shorts out one's decision routines.
But, a conscious decision to override one's mind and to actively embrace contradictions effectively entails responsibility. An adult with a fully-formed conceptual apparatus who decides to evade contradictions in their mental processes, is effectively consciously choosing falsehood over truth, good over evil. An active choice to avoid contradictions in one's thought processes is a conscious deception, a conscious evil. This would place voluntary evasion in the category of DECEIT. The distinction being that one is aware on some level of the fact that they are lying, even to themselves, that they are aware of the contradiction but have made a choice not to acknowledge it. Involuntary evasion, or EVASION proper, is the result of cognitive abuse where a person has been conditioned in their pre-cognitive stages of development to undermine their own cognitive operations, to turn their conceptual system against itself by means of an implicit decision rule smuggled into their social orientation as they grow into adults. Evasion is only possible to children who have been systematically indoctrinated to evade through cognitive abuse. Deceit is an active choice to evade, or an active conscious choice to pretend there is no contradiction in spite of the knowledge that there is.
The distinction is subtle, but important. Someone who is guilty of involuntary evasion can be viewed as being afflicted with a psychological disorder. Someone who is guilty of deceit is guilty of a intentional moral transgression.
Error is discoverable. If two people disagree, they present their opposing arguments, working back through the chain of their reasoning until they arrive at an error. If both people are honestly seeking the truth then the resolution of this error should mandate that one or both of the parties must change their standpoint when all contradictions have been resolved.
Evasion is discoverable. Since the evader can not allow themselves to be aware of their own evasion, they cannot monitor themselves to keep from exposing it. Therefore, they will straight-forwardly state what they believe. Their errors will then be apparent. It may be possible to force a catharsis by bringing the object of evasion into concrete terms and forcing a resolution, but it is more likely than not that the subject would just blank-out/repress the potential cathartic influence/demonstration. It would also not be surprising if persistent exposure to the conflict point would elicit rage and or violence. The underlying principle is that to be successful at evasion, the evader cannot bring the conflicting points into their mind simultaneously, otherwise they would have to acknowledge the impossibility of their stance, if only in the confines of their own mind. From that point on, they would either have to realign their stance to resolve the contradiction, or actively choose to pretend that they never realized the impossibility of their view, leading them into deceit.
Deceit is trickier. I'm not really sure how to determine the difference in symptoms between deceit and either evasion or error. Once again, they will act as though there is a contradiction in their conceptual systems, by advocating conflicting propositions. Even upon having that contradiction brought into focus, they may refuse to acknowledge it, thus emulating evasion. The place where they can be caught out is if they were to actually acknowledge the contradiction and continue to advocate it anyway. This is clearly deceitful and a sure sign of intellectual malignance. But I also think this is rare. A liar will generally try to slip away from the responsibility of their lie, by covering it as error or evasion. The question of how to determine intentional deceit is still one with which I have some trouble. But I think it can be dealt with in the same manner as either of the other two.
I think the method for overcoming error, evasion, and deceit is fairly similar. Present your views in as concise, rational, and clear a manner as possible. Ask opponents to do the same with their views. If they don't even attempt to describe their reasoning, if they flee from the issue, or just resort to bullying or taunting strategies, then it will be clear to anyone else involved that they have the lesser justification for their views. In this way, it can serve to educate others in the logical wormholes which can suck people in if they're not careful. Educational reform in general, with an emphasis on developing critical thinking skills, of refining young people's "art of non-contradictory identification", and helping to foster the development of fully integrated epistemology are also long-term approaches to correcting or preventing cognitive error.
Evasion can only be treated by exstensive therapy and then probably only when someone is aware that there is something wrong with themselves and they want to change it. Of course the depth and severity of the breach would warrant a proportionately greater necessity for counseling. The form of such counseling should be targeted so as to help a patient to uncover the break-downs in their conceptual system which are causing disturbances. More scientifically defining cognitive abuse, defining it's systems, causes, and of course scientifically validating whether or not there is in fact such a thing possible are tasks for cognitive scientists as the field matures. Once a more concrete model has been developed, methods for treatment and prevention can be better ascertained.
As far as I know, the line between evasion and deceit can only be made as a personal judgmnet call based on a long span of interactions, or a healthy volume of evidence. Consciously maintaining any lie takes a certain amount of conscious effort. Eventually, deception makes itself known. All it takes is for someone to let down their guard and admit it. But until that happens, if it happens, may be a very long time. As such, those who we suspect of evasion/deceit should be dealt with cautiously until we're in a better position to judge their motivations. If they cannot be helped or dissuaded, then the only civilized response is that they should be ignored as much as possible. In any event, whether it be error, evasion, or deceit, those who for whatever reason are supportive of evil should not be sanctioned. Their activities should not be supported except where they don't create a conflict with one's own values. If possible one should try to help them, to explain to them the root of their error, if they are so amenable. If not, then one can only walk away. At least that's the best I've been able to come up with.
There are not very many Objectivists that I know personally, but from what I've seen on the web and read of the Objectivist canon, this seems to be the best way of dealing with problems between people in today's society that I can come up with. I'd be very interested in what others may have to say about this. So please feel free to comment on this posting as you like.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Dr. Anne Wortham: Black Victimhood vs. Black Individual Responsibility
Well, with Obama sworn in and gearing up to charge headlong into a socialist rampage that will flush the remaining fractured remnants of our economy down the toilet, it seems that the issue of the day still seems to be race. I've recently been getting some negative feedback for supporting Anne Wortham a while back in this post here.
Anyways, it inspired me to look up more of her work, and as since the video I originally linked to was removed, I was really glad to find this article posted on the internet. It says much better than I ever could exactly what is wrong with the culture of victimization that has infected what the civil rights movement has unfortunately become.
It can be read at this link here: http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/polin/polin092.pdf
Also, if you're interested, here is a very well written op-ed she wrote about Lord Obama:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/wortham1.html
Best premises,
American Antitheist
Anyways, it inspired me to look up more of her work, and as since the video I originally linked to was removed, I was really glad to find this article posted on the internet. It says much better than I ever could exactly what is wrong with the culture of victimization that has infected what the civil rights movement has unfortunately become.
It can be read at this link here: http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/polin/polin092.pdf
Also, if you're interested, here is a very well written op-ed she wrote about Lord Obama:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/wortham1.html
Best premises,
American Antitheist
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The Curse of the Merry Men
This is an interesting take on the story of Robin Hood written by an associate of mine, I hope you find it as entertaining as I did:
This is why Ragnar describes Hood as a “double-parasite”. This is why Ragnar is Hood’s opposite. Ragnar defends justice where Hood destroys it. Ragnar defends human rights and the freedom of all human beings to choose their own path and reap the full consequences of their choices. Hood abrogates them all in the pursuit of his own ends. Hood is the embodiment of the collectivist ideal. Ragnar embodies the ideals of laissez-faire capitalism. Ragnar defends a moral code founded on the twin principles of “life and production.” Robin Hood represents cannibalism for cannibalism’s sake. The unstated price of joining Robin’s ‘band of merry men’ is a taste for human flesh. This is why the two characters stand in conflict. This is the true significance of Ragnar’s declaration that Robin Hood is the one man he must destroy.
The government has just issued Directive 10-289, a mandate to nationalize all business and establish “stability” by freezing the economy. No wages shall change. No one may leave their jobs nor find a new one. No competition is to be allowed whatsoever. All prices, all terms of employment, all terms of sale are to be set and administered by a centralized government. In the aftermath of this directive, Hank Rearden, one of the last great industrialists, teeters on the brink of total despair as he struggles to comprehend the ramifications of what this will mean for his life and his dreams. At this moment, Ragnar Danneskjold, a renegade and pirate, presents himself to Rearden with an offering of hope and a glimpse of the world that could still be. He reveals to Rearden his true aim in pursuing the life of a pirate. That aim is to destroy a man and wipe every last vestige of his memory from the minds of the human race. That man is none other than Robin Hood.
This pivotal scene from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (Part II Chapter VII) does not draw its significance from the action, but from Ragnar’s portrayal of Robin Hood and his reasons for fighting the very idea of the mythical bandit. To fully understand the significance of this we must first address this question: Who is Robin Hood? Ragnar describes him as the “foulest of creatures, the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich, whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal.” The actual historical origins of the Robin Hood mythos are vague at best, but Ragnar makes clear that he is not fighting a historical character, he is fighting the moral principles that the legend of Robin Hood has come to represent.
Traditionally, Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor. Variations on the tale abound. Some state that he is dispossessed royalty fighting to regain what has been pillaged wrongly by the ruling regime. In this sense, the character is reminiscent of what Ragnar Danneskjold represents in Atlas Shrugged. Ragnar states explicitly that he avoids confrontations with representatives of the legitimate functions of government. He does not attack military or policing vessels. He only attacks those ships which carry resources that have been appropriated from their owners without their consent and in spite of their protest. He then takes those resources and holds them in reserve, waiting for their rightful owners to come and claim them. The rightful owners are those who created the resource, who either made a natural resource able to be utilized, or who created that which had formerly not existed. The rights to the distribution of those ideas and the benefits of that distribution belong exclusively to the creators of those values.
Oil belongs to those who make it possible to be drilled, those who do the drilling, and who process it and make it ready to be used to meet the demands of their customers. Each in turn works according to the terms they set amongst themselves in order to exchange productive work for their own survival and the resources necessary to develop their own dreams and ambitions. But if that oil is seized by some group of people without the consent of the producers, then that group is morally indefensible regardless of their social position. Justice is only served by returning the merchandise to its rightful owners. This is Ragnar’s function. He is an agent of justice reclaiming stolen merchandise. He even makes the concession that Robin Hood may be interpreted in this way “It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed…”However, as he continues, he qualifies this by emphasizing, “that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived.”
Despite potentially nobler interpretations of Robin Hood, the popular and by far most influential interpretation of the myth is simply that Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor. What gives the character moral status is that his crimes are mitigated by his charity. A robber who steals simply for himself would have been dull and commonplace in an era when highwaymen abounded. What gave the story its uniqueness and longevity was the idea that this character was somehow doing evil for good and the moral complexity that this signified. The heart of this paradox is the assumption that Robin Hood was doing good by distributing wealth to those who lacked it. In common portrayals of the story it is usually sufficient only to portray his victims as rich to establish Hood as the hero. Further explanations of the circumstances of the victim’s wealth are rarely given, if at all. The core idea is simply that it is justifiable to take from those who have and give to those who do not, simply because of the need of the latter and for no other reason. This is the moral imperative of altruism. It is this idea which Ragnar hopes to destroy.
Ragnar stands opposed to the idea that rights are defined by a person’s needs. Those who adopt the altruist ethic make a claim that the more productive and the more successful a person is, the more they deserve to be sacrificed to the needs of others. They claim that the good of an action is determined by how much the benefactor lacked the benefit. Means and ends become inconsequential. Cause and effect become inconsequential. The only things that matter are who benefits and how much they need. The altruist feeds off of the need of the poor and disadvantaged. He uses them as a justification for imposing his needs on the rich, whose resources he covets. His need is justified altruistically because he lays no claim for his own use; he covets those resources for the good of others. According to this reasoning, any crime is justifiable if it is done in the service of others. Even murder is justifiable as long as it can be justified by placating some group’s need—the greater the need, the greater the moral status of the crime; the more helpless the benefactor, the more noble the deed. Morality becomes defined by a calculus of human suffering and nobility restricted to those who sacrifice that they most value to the desires of whoever may demand it.
Perhaps the most insidious aspect of this ethic is that the poor are condemned to suffer forever. They are guaranteed immunity from Robin Hood only as long as there is not anyone with more need than they. Only the neediest, the least able to provide for themselves—only these people are immune. Everyone else must wait for the time when they are chosen as the sacrificial victim to placate the need of the lowest common denominator. Everyone else must wait under the knife. The only way out is to compete for the bottom slot, to make a business out of begging for help and pleading one’s need to the arbitrary jury of those around you. The altruist ethic condemns the poor to maintain their poverty lest they be sacrificed for succeeding too much at the practice of survival. It forces them to compete for death.
This is why Ragnar describes Hood as a “double-parasite”. This is why Ragnar is Hood’s opposite. Ragnar defends justice where Hood destroys it. Ragnar defends human rights and the freedom of all human beings to choose their own path and reap the full consequences of their choices. Hood abrogates them all in the pursuit of his own ends. Hood is the embodiment of the collectivist ideal. Ragnar embodies the ideals of laissez-faire capitalism. Ragnar defends a moral code founded on the twin principles of “life and production.” Robin Hood represents cannibalism for cannibalism’s sake. The unstated price of joining Robin’s ‘band of merry men’ is a taste for human flesh. This is why the two characters stand in conflict. This is the true significance of Ragnar’s declaration that Robin Hood is the one man he must destroy.
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