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 politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
John Allison - A Living Example of the Objectivist Ethics
I saw this video lecture today and I was captivated. Allison perfectly synthesizes the Objectivist ethics into a practical, matter-of-fact, and easy to understand presentation. I highly recommend this, especially if you're a new-comer to Ayn Rand's work and are having difficulties understanding what she's really all about. But I also think it would be refreshing for veterans in the philosophy as well. As always, why not check it out and decide for yourself?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twolXLHBmgQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twolXLHBmgQ
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.]
Friday, February 26, 2010
Ayn Rand Smears Still Popular with the Left
It would seem that the left still enjoys painting Rand and Objectivists as giggling baby-eaters. A recent spate of disinformation pieces have been circling the internet here and here. The basic gist is that they drop context on some lines taken out of Ayn Rand's personal journals in which she comments on the William Hickman kidnapping murder of a young girl in the 1920s. It's funny too, because they're really just plagiarizing the same drivel that was passed about a few years ago with an 2005 article here. The response should be the same as the response it got then...click the big red x in the upper right of the window. A brief discussion on the Objectivism Online Forum should help clarify how the argument is specious. I've included a link to that discussion here.
I quote the very eloquent summation of one poster, Dismuke:
"To summarize - that article drops several bits of very important context.
1. The fact that the journal entries were PRIVATE, not intended for publication and, therefore, the contents were not written for the purpose of being objective to any audience other than Ayn Rand's own eyes.
2. The entirety of Ayn Rand's explicit philosophy which was consistent across volumes of works written over the span of many decades - including her philosophy's contempt for those who initiate force.
3. The fact that Ayn Rand herself dismissed it all as probable "idealizing."
4. The fact that, Ayn Rand, unlike the author of the article, did not equate self-interest with "walking across corpses" and, therefore, did not regard an out-of-context admiration for certain attributes of a brutal murderer's statements and demeanor as having possible negative implications for a morality of self-interest worthy of giving serious consideration to in the mental exercise the journal entry documents.
Now, if someone who was very familiar with the William Hickman case but had never heard of Ayn Rand before somehow stumbled across that particular journal entry, I can fully understand why he might properly conclude that Ayn Rand must have been some sort of strange, sociopathic kook not worthy of looking into further. But the author of that article very clearly IS familiar with the larger context of Ayn Rand's work and her personal history - so my conclusion is the article is nothing more than a cheap and sleazy "hit piece" designed to smear Objectivism. Don't be too surprised if it is embraced by the likes of David Kelley and Barbara Branden as more "proof" that Ayn Rand was indeed nothing more than a malevolent neurotic kook who somehow, nevertheless, managed to make a few good philosophical points here and there."
I can't think of anything more to add to this, except to express my sincere hope that trash like this will stop popping up in the news results for Rand on the right side of this blog. It is increasingly clear that the Left has no rational refutation of Rand's philosophy and can only resort to character assassination and ad hominem flubbery. Context is everything. ANY quote taken out of context can be read to mean anything you want it to. That is why the process of contextualization is so important in all written forms of exposition and especially literary, scientific, and philosophical exposition. Ayn Rand's journals were none of these, simply personal notes and notations meant to guide her own thought process.
If a man were to find admirable qualities in Obama, it would not make him instantly an Obama acolyte. If a man were to find admirable qualities in Reagan, it would not make him instantly a Reaganite. One can admire certain qualities of a person without admiring their motivations or actions, hence the restriction to certain qualities. Some people admire Rommel, despite the fact that he was a Nazi. They can admire his intelligence and skill without admiring his political ideology. Some people admire Clinton despite his philandering. It doesn't mean they admire the whole person, just some things that he did or said. The only way to be certain of why, in what way, and under what conditions that admiration existed, is to have a properly contextualized account of that admiration. The reasons, the exceptions, the moderations...these elements are essential to understanding the meaning of any given utterance in the English language. Without this account, irresponsible accusations slapped onto decontextualized cherry-picked quotes say no more about the character of a person than graffiti on the wall of a bathroom stall--the very place where such "journalism" belongs...in the toilet.
I quote the very eloquent summation of one poster, Dismuke:
"To summarize - that article drops several bits of very important context.
1. The fact that the journal entries were PRIVATE, not intended for publication and, therefore, the contents were not written for the purpose of being objective to any audience other than Ayn Rand's own eyes.
2. The entirety of Ayn Rand's explicit philosophy which was consistent across volumes of works written over the span of many decades - including her philosophy's contempt for those who initiate force.
3. The fact that Ayn Rand herself dismissed it all as probable "idealizing."
4. The fact that, Ayn Rand, unlike the author of the article, did not equate self-interest with "walking across corpses" and, therefore, did not regard an out-of-context admiration for certain attributes of a brutal murderer's statements and demeanor as having possible negative implications for a morality of self-interest worthy of giving serious consideration to in the mental exercise the journal entry documents.
Now, if someone who was very familiar with the William Hickman case but had never heard of Ayn Rand before somehow stumbled across that particular journal entry, I can fully understand why he might properly conclude that Ayn Rand must have been some sort of strange, sociopathic kook not worthy of looking into further. But the author of that article very clearly IS familiar with the larger context of Ayn Rand's work and her personal history - so my conclusion is the article is nothing more than a cheap and sleazy "hit piece" designed to smear Objectivism. Don't be too surprised if it is embraced by the likes of David Kelley and Barbara Branden as more "proof" that Ayn Rand was indeed nothing more than a malevolent neurotic kook who somehow, nevertheless, managed to make a few good philosophical points here and there."
I can't think of anything more to add to this, except to express my sincere hope that trash like this will stop popping up in the news results for Rand on the right side of this blog. It is increasingly clear that the Left has no rational refutation of Rand's philosophy and can only resort to character assassination and ad hominem flubbery. Context is everything. ANY quote taken out of context can be read to mean anything you want it to. That is why the process of contextualization is so important in all written forms of exposition and especially literary, scientific, and philosophical exposition. Ayn Rand's journals were none of these, simply personal notes and notations meant to guide her own thought process.
If a man were to find admirable qualities in Obama, it would not make him instantly an Obama acolyte. If a man were to find admirable qualities in Reagan, it would not make him instantly a Reaganite. One can admire certain qualities of a person without admiring their motivations or actions, hence the restriction to certain qualities. Some people admire Rommel, despite the fact that he was a Nazi. They can admire his intelligence and skill without admiring his political ideology. Some people admire Clinton despite his philandering. It doesn't mean they admire the whole person, just some things that he did or said. The only way to be certain of why, in what way, and under what conditions that admiration existed, is to have a properly contextualized account of that admiration. The reasons, the exceptions, the moderations...these elements are essential to understanding the meaning of any given utterance in the English language. Without this account, irresponsible accusations slapped onto decontextualized cherry-picked quotes say no more about the character of a person than graffiti on the wall of a bathroom stall--the very place where such "journalism" belongs...in the toilet.
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
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Happy Birthday, Ayn....
I just wanted to say happy birthday to Ayn Rand. She was born on February 2, 1905. She's dead now, so my wishing her happy birthday has nothing to do with her personally. She'll never hear my wishes now. No, it has more to do with my hope for a future modeled on her sense of virtue, her sense of life. We are still so very far from that world. There are still so many sleeping their indolent dreams of empire while the gates are molding on their hinges. America is dying. It is our ignorance which is the poison in its veins. While the politicians wax pompous and self-important, our country is falling apart. Oh, yeah, you won't feel it for a while. America really was that powerful. It really was that great. There's still a lot of energy to bleed off. But as long as we stick our heads in the sand, let ourselves bleed out in denial of our wounds, America doesn't have much of a future ahead of it. I hope that my children, when I have them, may still be able to have enough opportunity to become educated and have access to a Montessori school so that their minds can evolve unmolested by those who would imprint their egos on the helpless minds of children...and would imprint them with only obedience. If America collapses completely into either the darkness of fascism or the darkness of communism, then a great light will have gone out of the world. And who can say when next it will be born anew? So Happy Birthday, Ayn. Atlas is shrugging and the socialists are choking on the ideal world of their own making. Maybe the rest of them will listen enough to what you had to say to learn something yet.
Cheers,
American Antitheist
Cheers,
American Antitheist
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
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Health Care...or Smoke and Mirrors in the Halls of Congress...
I haven't had a lot of time to write or even think about social issues much in recent weeks, so I apologize for the lengthy hiatus. New country, new job, new home, new car...lots of things needed sorting out. Someone brought to my attention their concerns over the current health care debate and I thought I would add my two cents.
It may sound wonderful to imagine a world where everyone has cheap affordable healthcare, but what does that mean, who pays for it, and can such a concept as insurance ever be universal? I think the left and the right both grossly oversimplify all the issues involved and selectively fail to see the viewpoint of one side or the other. It is not a question of class struggle. It is not a question of haves versus have-nots. To adopt such a delineation is to instantly put the debate in a socialist camp from the get-go. The question is, as always, individual liberty. Do you have a right to order a doctor around? Do you have the medical knowledge necessary to second-guess their decisions? Do you have the financial knowledge necessary to adjust a fiduciary table of risk and returns? If you do not, then you cannot be expected to be able to select a representative who could responsibly make such decisions either. And if they cannot make such decisions, then should anyone have the right to supersede the conscience of educated and trained professionals at the point of a gun?
When it comes to government involvement in anything, it must always come down to the governments entitlement to use force to enforce law. By expanding legislation, we expand the government's charter to use force against us. Unless there is a damn good reason for that, I will be opposed to any enlargement of federal authority. We have to assume that our professionals will be professional. If they misrepresent their services, lie, make false promotions, etc. they are already violating the law and no further legislation is necessary. New legislation is necessary to define the terms of homesteading new frontiers of human knowledge and territory and the disputes that inevitably come from them. It is not to regulate and direct our lives. I am 100% inflexible on this concept: Individual human rights are absolute and inviolate. But people do not have the right to someone else's labor, their effort, or their livelihood (even and especially including doctors, bankers, and teachers). If Obama truly wished to make healthcare affordable, then he should consider unwinding the Gordian knot that our government has steadily added to practically everything over the last hundred some odd years, rather then instigating irrational waves of panic to help slide through unwarranted and unnecessary controls on free movement and action (e.g. Pig Flu pandemic scare).
Altruism is what is killing us. I believe this now more than ever. If you could but accept that as a possibility, I think you would be amazed at how much of the human narrative comes into a clear and understandable focus. Also how much easier it is to make moral judgments, when those morals are derived from clearly defined concepts which are derived from perceptions and are adjudicated by the facts of human existence and not on arbitrary exhortations of "humanity" as a concept undefined. I listen to Obama speak and I realize that he classifies businessmen as outside the scope of "we" when he refers to "us" as Americans and "them" as the bankers on wall street. But does he accept responsibility for the fact that business could not collude with government if government was not involved in business? Just as government cannot collude with religion, when religion is properly and strictly separated from government. Just as the end to religious war was precipitated by the separation of church and state, so will the class wars be ended by the separation of government and economics. Politics, is the province of reaching a consensus on how to deal with the classical crimes, the classical criminals, to defending the rights of its citizens from enemies foreign and domestic, and for determining the terms by which new properties, both intellectual and real, will be negotiated between vying parties. Nothing else requires an official mandate. The rest, as they say, is up to us, to the professionals, the educated men and women who decide where to invest their resources. The risk is also ours. As is the responsibility. These are absolutes, unchanging through time. No civilized society can be sustained without them. As much as we may want somebody, anybody to promise us sweet things and remove the burden of that responsibility, all attempts to do so throughout history have ended in disaster. If it will, is no longer a question. The question is, if we will let it happen again.
That is a choice we all must make, but rest assured I hold no illusions about my ability to sway you to my way of thinking. I see things in black and white, because that is how clearly the consequences of a course of actions springs to mind. It is an issue of life and death. I have seen what happens to medicine in highly regulated countries. There are horror stories that you could not conceive of happening here. (Such as women dying in childbirth because the ambulance had to keep driving in circles for hours because no hospital could accept them. Why? Because the mish-mash of regulation on obstetrics had so strangled the industry that most doctor's felt it was safer to go into other specializations and the country found itself with a shortage of nursery units. Funny, huh? That's Japan, where they're supposedly worried about a decreasing population). But there is always a first time for everything I guess. Seen the waiting lines in Canada? THAT's where we'll be going and in short order.
I apologize in advance if I haven't dealt properly with all the possible arguments. But fundamentally, my problem is at the root of the assumption--i.e. that government should have anything to do with the choice in this matter. Thereafter is merely quibbling over details of implementation.
It may sound wonderful to imagine a world where everyone has cheap affordable healthcare, but what does that mean, who pays for it, and can such a concept as insurance ever be universal? I think the left and the right both grossly oversimplify all the issues involved and selectively fail to see the viewpoint of one side or the other. It is not a question of class struggle. It is not a question of haves versus have-nots. To adopt such a delineation is to instantly put the debate in a socialist camp from the get-go. The question is, as always, individual liberty. Do you have a right to order a doctor around? Do you have the medical knowledge necessary to second-guess their decisions? Do you have the financial knowledge necessary to adjust a fiduciary table of risk and returns? If you do not, then you cannot be expected to be able to select a representative who could responsibly make such decisions either. And if they cannot make such decisions, then should anyone have the right to supersede the conscience of educated and trained professionals at the point of a gun?
When it comes to government involvement in anything, it must always come down to the governments entitlement to use force to enforce law. By expanding legislation, we expand the government's charter to use force against us. Unless there is a damn good reason for that, I will be opposed to any enlargement of federal authority. We have to assume that our professionals will be professional. If they misrepresent their services, lie, make false promotions, etc. they are already violating the law and no further legislation is necessary. New legislation is necessary to define the terms of homesteading new frontiers of human knowledge and territory and the disputes that inevitably come from them. It is not to regulate and direct our lives. I am 100% inflexible on this concept: Individual human rights are absolute and inviolate. But people do not have the right to someone else's labor, their effort, or their livelihood (even and especially including doctors, bankers, and teachers). If Obama truly wished to make healthcare affordable, then he should consider unwinding the Gordian knot that our government has steadily added to practically everything over the last hundred some odd years, rather then instigating irrational waves of panic to help slide through unwarranted and unnecessary controls on free movement and action (e.g. Pig Flu pandemic scare).
Altruism is what is killing us. I believe this now more than ever. If you could but accept that as a possibility, I think you would be amazed at how much of the human narrative comes into a clear and understandable focus. Also how much easier it is to make moral judgments, when those morals are derived from clearly defined concepts which are derived from perceptions and are adjudicated by the facts of human existence and not on arbitrary exhortations of "humanity" as a concept undefined. I listen to Obama speak and I realize that he classifies businessmen as outside the scope of "we" when he refers to "us" as Americans and "them" as the bankers on wall street. But does he accept responsibility for the fact that business could not collude with government if government was not involved in business? Just as government cannot collude with religion, when religion is properly and strictly separated from government. Just as the end to religious war was precipitated by the separation of church and state, so will the class wars be ended by the separation of government and economics. Politics, is the province of reaching a consensus on how to deal with the classical crimes, the classical criminals, to defending the rights of its citizens from enemies foreign and domestic, and for determining the terms by which new properties, both intellectual and real, will be negotiated between vying parties. Nothing else requires an official mandate. The rest, as they say, is up to us, to the professionals, the educated men and women who decide where to invest their resources. The risk is also ours. As is the responsibility. These are absolutes, unchanging through time. No civilized society can be sustained without them. As much as we may want somebody, anybody to promise us sweet things and remove the burden of that responsibility, all attempts to do so throughout history have ended in disaster. If it will, is no longer a question. The question is, if we will let it happen again.
That is a choice we all must make, but rest assured I hold no illusions about my ability to sway you to my way of thinking. I see things in black and white, because that is how clearly the consequences of a course of actions springs to mind. It is an issue of life and death. I have seen what happens to medicine in highly regulated countries. There are horror stories that you could not conceive of happening here. (Such as women dying in childbirth because the ambulance had to keep driving in circles for hours because no hospital could accept them. Why? Because the mish-mash of regulation on obstetrics had so strangled the industry that most doctor's felt it was safer to go into other specializations and the country found itself with a shortage of nursery units. Funny, huh? That's Japan, where they're supposedly worried about a decreasing population). But there is always a first time for everything I guess. Seen the waiting lines in Canada? THAT's where we'll be going and in short order.
I apologize in advance if I haven't dealt properly with all the possible arguments. But fundamentally, my problem is at the root of the assumption--i.e. that government should have anything to do with the choice in this matter. Thereafter is merely quibbling over details of implementation.
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
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Why Open Borders are the American Way
Now first I want to define what I mean by "Open" borders. I don't think that everyone should just be able to stream into the country unscreened. That would be disastrous. No, I think what should be meant by open borders is that the government screens for criminals, spies, terrorists, and diseases. If someone checks out okay, then they should be allowed in.
Now, there are several arguments I am aware of which people use to attack this position. First I would like to dismiss concerns about shifts in primary language or ethnic demographics as purely racist. Over time, populations naturally shift their genetic and linguistic composition. Opposition to immigration on purely linguistic or demographic grounds is therefore unwarranted and clearly motivated by a philosophical perspective which discriminates between human beings on non-essential characteristics. These arguments are not even worthy of attention and so this is all I will say of them.
The other two primary arguments against open borders, as I have already defined them, concern either the economic or the environmental impact of population increase. First I would like to address the environmental argument. Then I will address the economic one.
Environmentalists proclaim that we all have an environmental "footprint" and that expansion in population is destructive of the environment. Well, first of all, every single activity that human beings pursue is bound to have some effect on our environment--especially since the only way that human beings can survive is to alter their environment. Environmentalists also conveniently ignore the reality of the scientific advancements that have enabled us to double our population in the last 100 years while the forest population has remained relatively stable.
No, I think that the argument from environmental impact is largely geared at a hatred for humanity, for the desire to eliminate humanity from the face of the earth and leave a pristine, consciousless jungle in our wake. The "irreversible" disaster scenarios promulgated by activists are yet to be substantially verified by science. And even were they to be substantiated, handicapping our ability to deal with them (i.e. restricting the capital development of the sciences to refine our manufacturing technology) is not the road to finding viable solutions. But that's neither here nor there.
Ultimately, the rebuttal to the environmental argument is that they claim that living people are the problem and offer no solution except to hobble our ability to cope with environmental problems by limiting economic growth and in some cases even suggesting such fascist manuevers as forced birth control of the populace. Wouldn't that be pretty? In short, the fear of the environmental impact of population explosion due to immigration is a non-starter by scientific standards. And by economic standards it has even less weight as I will explain next.
(For a more in depth discussion of the environmental argument please see this blog entry by Curtis Edward Clark here: http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2009/01/environmental-footprints-and-starving.html)
(And I also recommend reading this op-ed by physics Ph.D. Keith Lockitch which explains the moral implications of environmentalism here: http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=22271&news_iv_ctrl=1021)
So, we are left with asking what would be the economic impact of massive immigration or population growth? Under our current system...disaster. But the reason for that disaster is the presence of entitlement programs, safety nets, public education, welfare, unemployment, minimum wages, medicare, public health insurance, food stamps, etc. In a laissez-faire capitalist system, there would be no need to screen immigrants for their economic sustainability. If they couldn't sustain themselves in America, then their options would be to go home or die. Not by violence, but from starvation. That's what happens when a population exceeds its resources.
But long before that would happen one of two things would happen.
1. The economy would adjust to accomodate the larger work force, resulting in more jobs, higher productivity, and lower prices.
2. Or, the economy would not be able to accomodate these workers, salaries would drop to unacceptable levels, and we would see reverse migration.
Although I think this second is extremely unlikely. The main reason is that in a free market, prices (especially wages for labor) are determined by supply and demand. A high demand for work may drive down wages, but it also drives down costs and thus prices for product, which effectively compensates for the numerically lower wage.
Another misconception is the idea of a limited amount of jobs or a set load which the economy can support. These concepts only enter into the picture once the economy is constrained by government coercion. If the marketplace is free to allow people and goods to flow without the threat of physical violence (government or individual), then people without jobs could start their own business with little resistance. With the increase in population would also come increased opportunities, an increased customer base with specific needs. In short, the increase in population would increase the economic potential of the nation, not diminish it. With the increase in economic activity would come more jobs, more money, lower prices, and a higher standard of living for all.
A side benefit would be, as Yaron Brook points out in the video below, that if we allow everyone except spies, criminals, terrorists, and the diseased into the country freely, then that means we only have to patrol the border for spies, criminals, terrorists, and the diseased. And as he aptly points out, those are people who we could shoot with moral impunity if they were discovered sneaking in, because those would be the ONLY kind of people sneaking in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib3nVuw2RQU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF92vXogERE
As it is, the influx of immigration, both legal and illegal, is motivated by the comparative poverty of other nations around the world. These people want to come to have a better life. Their motivations are largely noble. The only thing which gives us cause to fear them, are the very social institutions which we have put in place to steal from some, to secure the unearned for others, WITHIN the country. If we are aware of the unsustainability of those programs and the social cost of such, then we should be directing our energies at undoing those programs and not in further punishing people for exercising their American rights to decide their own terms of employment. The government has no right to dictate to any person who they should be able to hire. Period. And if it weren't for the minimum wage, which makes it impossible for agricultural concerns to hire citizens for the wages that the market demands for their products, they wouldn't have to face the choice of hiring illiegals or going out of business.
Ultimately, the immigration issue is yet another social ill which has been created by our government's intervention in people's lives. This and so many others will not disappear until the government is properly constrained into it's appropriate social role, the preservation of the individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.
Everything else, as they say, is up to you. You should have the freedom to decide who you want to hire. You should have the freedom to decide how much you want to pay them. People seeking employment should have the freedom to decide who they want to work for. People seeking employment should have the freedom to decide how much they are willing to work for. The government has no place in manipulating the job market or restraining economic growth. Economic growth is simply a function of all the activities that people pursue to live their lives and make those lives better. The more the merrier. The larger the economy, the more profit to be made by all.
But we are not free, and so we have these "conundrums". We must focus our energy on being free, on reclaiming our freedom. Being sidetracked with tertiary issues only divides us and makes it easier to continue the systematic unraveling of the American ideal.
Now, there are several arguments I am aware of which people use to attack this position. First I would like to dismiss concerns about shifts in primary language or ethnic demographics as purely racist. Over time, populations naturally shift their genetic and linguistic composition. Opposition to immigration on purely linguistic or demographic grounds is therefore unwarranted and clearly motivated by a philosophical perspective which discriminates between human beings on non-essential characteristics. These arguments are not even worthy of attention and so this is all I will say of them.
The other two primary arguments against open borders, as I have already defined them, concern either the economic or the environmental impact of population increase. First I would like to address the environmental argument. Then I will address the economic one.
Environmentalists proclaim that we all have an environmental "footprint" and that expansion in population is destructive of the environment. Well, first of all, every single activity that human beings pursue is bound to have some effect on our environment--especially since the only way that human beings can survive is to alter their environment. Environmentalists also conveniently ignore the reality of the scientific advancements that have enabled us to double our population in the last 100 years while the forest population has remained relatively stable.
No, I think that the argument from environmental impact is largely geared at a hatred for humanity, for the desire to eliminate humanity from the face of the earth and leave a pristine, consciousless jungle in our wake. The "irreversible" disaster scenarios promulgated by activists are yet to be substantially verified by science. And even were they to be substantiated, handicapping our ability to deal with them (i.e. restricting the capital development of the sciences to refine our manufacturing technology) is not the road to finding viable solutions. But that's neither here nor there.
Ultimately, the rebuttal to the environmental argument is that they claim that living people are the problem and offer no solution except to hobble our ability to cope with environmental problems by limiting economic growth and in some cases even suggesting such fascist manuevers as forced birth control of the populace. Wouldn't that be pretty? In short, the fear of the environmental impact of population explosion due to immigration is a non-starter by scientific standards. And by economic standards it has even less weight as I will explain next.
(For a more in depth discussion of the environmental argument please see this blog entry by Curtis Edward Clark here: http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2009/01/environmental-footprints-and-starving.html)
(And I also recommend reading this op-ed by physics Ph.D. Keith Lockitch which explains the moral implications of environmentalism here: http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=22271&news_iv_ctrl=1021)
So, we are left with asking what would be the economic impact of massive immigration or population growth? Under our current system...disaster. But the reason for that disaster is the presence of entitlement programs, safety nets, public education, welfare, unemployment, minimum wages, medicare, public health insurance, food stamps, etc. In a laissez-faire capitalist system, there would be no need to screen immigrants for their economic sustainability. If they couldn't sustain themselves in America, then their options would be to go home or die. Not by violence, but from starvation. That's what happens when a population exceeds its resources.
But long before that would happen one of two things would happen.
1. The economy would adjust to accomodate the larger work force, resulting in more jobs, higher productivity, and lower prices.
2. Or, the economy would not be able to accomodate these workers, salaries would drop to unacceptable levels, and we would see reverse migration.
Although I think this second is extremely unlikely. The main reason is that in a free market, prices (especially wages for labor) are determined by supply and demand. A high demand for work may drive down wages, but it also drives down costs and thus prices for product, which effectively compensates for the numerically lower wage.
Another misconception is the idea of a limited amount of jobs or a set load which the economy can support. These concepts only enter into the picture once the economy is constrained by government coercion. If the marketplace is free to allow people and goods to flow without the threat of physical violence (government or individual), then people without jobs could start their own business with little resistance. With the increase in population would also come increased opportunities, an increased customer base with specific needs. In short, the increase in population would increase the economic potential of the nation, not diminish it. With the increase in economic activity would come more jobs, more money, lower prices, and a higher standard of living for all.
A side benefit would be, as Yaron Brook points out in the video below, that if we allow everyone except spies, criminals, terrorists, and the diseased into the country freely, then that means we only have to patrol the border for spies, criminals, terrorists, and the diseased. And as he aptly points out, those are people who we could shoot with moral impunity if they were discovered sneaking in, because those would be the ONLY kind of people sneaking in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib3nVuw2RQU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF92vXogERE
As it is, the influx of immigration, both legal and illegal, is motivated by the comparative poverty of other nations around the world. These people want to come to have a better life. Their motivations are largely noble. The only thing which gives us cause to fear them, are the very social institutions which we have put in place to steal from some, to secure the unearned for others, WITHIN the country. If we are aware of the unsustainability of those programs and the social cost of such, then we should be directing our energies at undoing those programs and not in further punishing people for exercising their American rights to decide their own terms of employment. The government has no right to dictate to any person who they should be able to hire. Period. And if it weren't for the minimum wage, which makes it impossible for agricultural concerns to hire citizens for the wages that the market demands for their products, they wouldn't have to face the choice of hiring illiegals or going out of business.
Ultimately, the immigration issue is yet another social ill which has been created by our government's intervention in people's lives. This and so many others will not disappear until the government is properly constrained into it's appropriate social role, the preservation of the individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.
Everything else, as they say, is up to you. You should have the freedom to decide who you want to hire. You should have the freedom to decide how much you want to pay them. People seeking employment should have the freedom to decide who they want to work for. People seeking employment should have the freedom to decide how much they are willing to work for. The government has no place in manipulating the job market or restraining economic growth. Economic growth is simply a function of all the activities that people pursue to live their lives and make those lives better. The more the merrier. The larger the economy, the more profit to be made by all.
But we are not free, and so we have these "conundrums". We must focus our energy on being free, on reclaiming our freedom. Being sidetracked with tertiary issues only divides us and makes it easier to continue the systematic unraveling of the American ideal.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Get the Word Out
Obama's socialist policies will result in increased taxes, inflation, the devaluation of the dollar, and the consequent losses of individual liberty that increased government intervention in the economy will inevitably bring. Vote Libertarian or for Libertarian Republicans like Ron Paul in the next election. We need to reject the morality of social cannibalism that the Democrats and like-minded Republicans represent. We need defenders of liberty in public offices at all levels of the government. So vote, even if it's a small election. Vote for Liberty before it's too late and we see the close of the American dream behind bars of our own forging.
Please mirror this video as much as possible. Let's get the word out for Liberty!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQTp3kPnho
Please mirror this video as much as possible. Let's get the word out for Liberty!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQTp3kPnho
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Bioshock: The Hype
OK. Well, quite a few people in the gaming community will have heard of the game Bioshock, a first-person shooter which touts itself as a philosophical simulation engine. Actually the philosophical element seems to be little more than a smear job of objectivism. With the advent of a sequel to the game and a possible movie, I thought it would be fair to point out that Bioshock does not have anything to do with objectivism in practice. If the objectivist government of Rapture had done their jobs, by protecting people's rights, punishing robbers and murderers, and yes by stopping the fraudulent sale of poison as medicine, then the catastrophe most likely would never have happened. However, the creators fail to understand (as do many) the difference between anarchy and capitalism. Anyway, XOmniverse did a nice piece explaining exactly why the "argument from Armageddon" isn't a decent argument to address any social theory. Bioshock is just a smear job. It's amazing that people are interested enough in objectivism to make the smear job into a movie, but Atlas Shrugged keeps getting put off. Anyway, here's the vid. Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=k2kw51Q1kr8&gl=US
http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=k2kw51Q1kr8&gl=US
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.)
Saturday, May 16, 2009
100th Post at An American Anti-theist Abroad!!
Woohoo!! OK, so I'm feeling a little self-congratulatory. This makes the 100th post on this blog. Just to sum up. Since I started this blog in April 2008, I've had some more active periods than others. (1 post was actually salvaged from an older blog that I never really took anywhere.) But since I started putting this together, I've been able to write about a lot of different subjects of importance not only to me, but also to a number of people around the world. How big a number I'm not quite sure, but given the recent popularity of Ayn Rand and Ron Paul, it seems like the winds may be changing. So, we all have to do our bit to fan the fires.
Anyways, just to give a status report on how I've been doing, here are some statistics.
Since this blog started officially in April 2008 it has received 5,825 visits from 68 countries.
THE TOP THREE VIEWING COUNTRIES ARE:
1. USA @ 4948 views
2. Japan @ 529 views
3. UK @ 65 views
THE TOP THREE VIEWING STATES (USA) ARE:
1. California @ 717 views
2. Texas @ 485 views
3. New York @ 395 views
THE TOP THREE VIEWED BLOG POSTS (aside from the main page which registered 1196 views) ARE:
1. Dr. Anne Wortham: Objectivism and the Black Community @ 5010 views
2. Dr. Anne Wortham: Black Victimhood vs. Black Individual Responsibility @ 307 views
3. Happy Science: Religious Cults in Supposedly Atheist Japan @ 142 views
Anyways, I just want to thank all the people who have taken the time to read what I've been posting. Also, more importantly, I want to thank all the people who've taken the time to sincerely think about what I've been talking about here. I'm sure that we can all make a difference. I'm still small fry here, but if I can reach even one person and convince them to look at the world even slightly differently, then I've gotten as much reward as I can reasonably expect. Changing the world is really for all of us. We have to change our morality, the standards of our belief and judgment. The alternative is to horrible to imagine. That's why we have to act. The native state of all systems is entropy. It is only through concerted and consistent human action that we can keep things from sliding into decay, whether that decay is cultural, moral, economic, political, scientific, cognitive, or spiritual.
Finally, I'd like to close with a video from Ron Paul. He's the only prominent figure in politics today who unabashedly supports a rationally integrated world view and truly advocates liberty and justice. Here he is talking about the torture debacle. Republicans and Democrats are both guilty as sin in leading us into such debauchery. For my prior articles on the issue please see these earlier posts:
Sam Harris and the Fallacies of Torture
And this is what happens when thugs get moral license...
Torture: The Madness that Wouldn't Die
Supreme Court Puts Foot Down on Abrogation of Due Process
Not Everything that Parades as a Democracy IS a Democracy
Ashcroft-Torture Bad Call But No Biggie
Enjoy the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skeom9K8fww
Anyways, just to give a status report on how I've been doing, here are some statistics.
Since this blog started officially in April 2008 it has received 5,825 visits from 68 countries.
THE TOP THREE VIEWING COUNTRIES ARE:
1. USA @ 4948 views
2. Japan @ 529 views
3. UK @ 65 views
THE TOP THREE VIEWING STATES (USA) ARE:
1. California @ 717 views
2. Texas @ 485 views
3. New York @ 395 views
THE TOP THREE VIEWED BLOG POSTS (aside from the main page which registered 1196 views) ARE:
1. Dr. Anne Wortham: Objectivism and the Black Community @ 5010 views
2. Dr. Anne Wortham: Black Victimhood vs. Black Individual Responsibility @ 307 views
3. Happy Science: Religious Cults in Supposedly Atheist Japan @ 142 views
Anyways, I just want to thank all the people who have taken the time to read what I've been posting. Also, more importantly, I want to thank all the people who've taken the time to sincerely think about what I've been talking about here. I'm sure that we can all make a difference. I'm still small fry here, but if I can reach even one person and convince them to look at the world even slightly differently, then I've gotten as much reward as I can reasonably expect. Changing the world is really for all of us. We have to change our morality, the standards of our belief and judgment. The alternative is to horrible to imagine. That's why we have to act. The native state of all systems is entropy. It is only through concerted and consistent human action that we can keep things from sliding into decay, whether that decay is cultural, moral, economic, political, scientific, cognitive, or spiritual.
Finally, I'd like to close with a video from Ron Paul. He's the only prominent figure in politics today who unabashedly supports a rationally integrated world view and truly advocates liberty and justice. Here he is talking about the torture debacle. Republicans and Democrats are both guilty as sin in leading us into such debauchery. For my prior articles on the issue please see these earlier posts:
Sam Harris and the Fallacies of Torture
And this is what happens when thugs get moral license...
Torture: The Madness that Wouldn't Die
Supreme Court Puts Foot Down on Abrogation of Due Process
Not Everything that Parades as a Democracy IS a Democracy
Ashcroft-Torture Bad Call But No Biggie
Enjoy the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skeom9K8fww
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The Fountainhead in a Nutshell
The last time I can remember an Ayn Rand reference on The Simpsons, Maggie was leading a communist style baby revolution ala The Great Escape. They were trying to escape the baby bottle hating harridan School marm at the Ayn Rand school for tots. So, it's a little refreshing that this time around, the Simpsons presented a more sympathetic presentation of Rand's philosophy. The clip, which for now is circulating on You Tube, has been added below. Hopefully it doesn't get removed. Anyways, it presents Maggie as a baby Howard Roark, and parallels Rand's novel The Fountainhead. It's good for an amusing bit of Rand lite and I even think it would be useful in introducing Objectivism to children. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CEX1P8MZnI
And if you're interested, here's an excerpt from the movie based on the book:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc7oZ9yWqO4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CEX1P8MZnI
And if you're interested, here's an excerpt from the movie based on the book:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc7oZ9yWqO4
Friday, May 8, 2009
Capitalism Didn't Fail...Just saying so doesn't make it true
So many leftist pundits are spouting off about the death of capitalism and how Greenspan was a libertarian so that proves that free-market policies don't work. Well, bullshit.
Greenspan was not a libertarian, he wasn't even an objectivist except perhaps in his youth when he contributed to Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and advocated a return to the gold standard. But, of course he sold those views out right quick when they threatened to dampen his career goals. No, Greenspan was a soulless mercenary, who knew enough to know what was the right thing to do, and then did the wrong thing anyway. There can be few more damning indictments of a person's moral character than to knowingly choose to do the wrong thing.
As for the so-called failure of the free market system, well our market was not free of government intervention before, so it baffles the mind to think how people can actually convince themselves that we were actually under a free market system before this whole crisis developed. Of course it didn't help that Republicans were preaching free market principles while expanding government like there was no tomorrow, but all that proves was that the majority of Republicans were and still are hypocrites. At least if they have the sense to rally behind Ron Paul this time, perhaps we may see some change for the better. But with all the new legislation that Obama and his gang are going to be able to cram through the legislature, it's a bit like closing the barn doors after the horse has already fled.
Anyway, there's a very good article by objectivist Dakin Sloss over at the Stanford Progressive. It's a very succint and easy to understand explanation of how the government was involved in the economic collapse. I highly recommend it, so please check it out:
http://progressive.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/article.php?article_id=343
Best premises,
American Anti-theist
Greenspan was not a libertarian, he wasn't even an objectivist except perhaps in his youth when he contributed to Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and advocated a return to the gold standard. But, of course he sold those views out right quick when they threatened to dampen his career goals. No, Greenspan was a soulless mercenary, who knew enough to know what was the right thing to do, and then did the wrong thing anyway. There can be few more damning indictments of a person's moral character than to knowingly choose to do the wrong thing.
As for the so-called failure of the free market system, well our market was not free of government intervention before, so it baffles the mind to think how people can actually convince themselves that we were actually under a free market system before this whole crisis developed. Of course it didn't help that Republicans were preaching free market principles while expanding government like there was no tomorrow, but all that proves was that the majority of Republicans were and still are hypocrites. At least if they have the sense to rally behind Ron Paul this time, perhaps we may see some change for the better. But with all the new legislation that Obama and his gang are going to be able to cram through the legislature, it's a bit like closing the barn doors after the horse has already fled.
Anyway, there's a very good article by objectivist Dakin Sloss over at the Stanford Progressive. It's a very succint and easy to understand explanation of how the government was involved in the economic collapse. I highly recommend it, so please check it out:
http://progressive.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/article.php?article_id=343
Best premises,
American Anti-theist
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
In Mourning for America
Do the math:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-budget7-2009may07,0,4310621.story
A 3.55 trillion dollar budget....17 billion dollars in budget cuts...a deficit of 1.2 trillion dollars...
Now, seriously....any investor....any one sitting at home doing their finances, would they seriously think that these numbers are acceptable? When you're in debt, do you spend more hoping that you'll magically bring in increased revenues somewhere down the line? Do you buy 2 new cars, a GM and a Chrysler with the hope that if you give them some money, they may give you a job, or a raise? Does it make any sense to increase debt beyond our ability to pay it back? If you're in business, do you expand your company's operations when sales are down? If you're managing a household, do you go on a luxurious vacation, when the creditors are knocking at the door?
No, of course not. Anyone who did that would be at least grossly irresponsible, and possibly insane. Does it justify it any more to demand that our children and our children's children, that generations, yes, generations of our descendants will have to pay for these excesses? Doesn't that make it all the more evil, to assign debt to those who have no say in the matter, to burden them with an obligation to feed our folly? Is it satisfying to mark our children with the mark of Obama's breed of original sin?
This madness seems to know no bounds. I do not see a bright future for America until a significant libertarian presence is felt in Congress and the White House. As such, I've darkened the background of my page to reflect the feeling that America has entered a dark age of decline. Hopefully the grassroots efforts of advocates of liberty across the nation will one-day be enough to lift this blinding curtain of self-righteousness and end the orgy of self-immolation which is the American politic.
Just think of it, and does it make any sense:
$1,200,000,000,000 deficit
- $17,000,000,000 budget cuts
=$1,183,000,000,000 remaining deficit
....Just what kind of difference is Obama making?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-budget7-2009may07,0,4310621.story
A 3.55 trillion dollar budget....17 billion dollars in budget cuts...a deficit of 1.2 trillion dollars...
Now, seriously....any investor....any one sitting at home doing their finances, would they seriously think that these numbers are acceptable? When you're in debt, do you spend more hoping that you'll magically bring in increased revenues somewhere down the line? Do you buy 2 new cars, a GM and a Chrysler with the hope that if you give them some money, they may give you a job, or a raise? Does it make any sense to increase debt beyond our ability to pay it back? If you're in business, do you expand your company's operations when sales are down? If you're managing a household, do you go on a luxurious vacation, when the creditors are knocking at the door?
No, of course not. Anyone who did that would be at least grossly irresponsible, and possibly insane. Does it justify it any more to demand that our children and our children's children, that generations, yes, generations of our descendants will have to pay for these excesses? Doesn't that make it all the more evil, to assign debt to those who have no say in the matter, to burden them with an obligation to feed our folly? Is it satisfying to mark our children with the mark of Obama's breed of original sin?
This madness seems to know no bounds. I do not see a bright future for America until a significant libertarian presence is felt in Congress and the White House. As such, I've darkened the background of my page to reflect the feeling that America has entered a dark age of decline. Hopefully the grassroots efforts of advocates of liberty across the nation will one-day be enough to lift this blinding curtain of self-righteousness and end the orgy of self-immolation which is the American politic.
Just think of it, and does it make any sense:
$1,200,000,000,000 deficit
- $17,000,000,000 budget cuts
=$1,183,000,000,000 remaining deficit
....Just what kind of difference is Obama making?
Saturday, April 11, 2009
It's Your Life
Your life is your property. It's not mine. It's not your neighbor's or your spouse's. It's not your God's, your preacher's or your governor's. It does not belong to Barack Obama any more than it belongs to Kim Jong Il. And if it doesn't belong to Obama, it surely doesn't belong to Sarkozy or Brown or Medvedev or any of the other supposed leaders of this world who keep yapping at our heels to give more and more, to sacrifice ourselves to the lowest common denominator, to abandon our independence and enslave ourselves to a self-proclaimed new world order which seeks only to compound the problems of today by magnifying them tomorrow.
The argument has always gone that we haven't done enough. What if we've already been doing too much? What if the smug certainty of our politicians is actually misplaced? After all, are they economists? Are they historians? Are they philosophers? How deeply have they thought about the current crisis? Or are they simply parroting what their economics advisors, steeped in Keynesnianism have told them? Are they simply parroting what their philosophy teachers steeped in Kant have told them? Are they simply parroting what their law professors steeped in moral relativism have told them?
The root issue, the key, the crux upon which the entire scope of the major problems in the world today hinge is one pivotal issue: Do you have the right to your own life? Ask any proponent of central banking. Ask any advocate of public education. Ask any idealogue who advocates any social program where the fundamental and underlying premise is that your life belongs not to you, but to the state and that the state has the right to your life, that they have the right to do anything they want to you as long as they have the blessed "mandate of governance". Ask these people, "Do you have the right to your own life?" Ask them. And they will evade and dodge, and badger, and become indignant. But if you can actually get them to answer that question straight out, the answer will be "No". I've seen this many times, the desperate scramble to evade answering a simple yes or no question. Also, the horror of that single-syllable answer.
Because what does it mean if you do not have the right to your own life? It means that noone does. It means that anyone can be dealt with by others in any way. It means, in effect, that there is no objective standard by which to conceive of justice. It means, in effect, that there is no objective standard by which to conceive of morality.
But there is an objective standard of morality: your own life. What makes it harder to survive as is befitting a human being--this is the evil. What makes it easier to survive as is befitting a human being--this is the good. Life and Death are the simplest moral choices at the base of one's morality. Do you want to live? Or, do you want to die? If you decided to live, then all the things which make that life worth living become values to you. Your children, your family, clean air, and water, working hard to reap the products of that work to gain food and clothes for your family, so that they can live and generate life and so on. Life is an end in itself. Happiness is the consequence of a moral life in that the moral life optimizes one's realization of life. As one philosopher put it, "Happiness is enough to make life desirable and lacking in nothing." But the same philosopher also said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."
Happiness is not achieved by range of the moment actions, based simply on the arbitrary desires of the moment. Happiness is only attainable by examining the consequences of a plan of action over the span of one's entire life. It does not mean a state of prolonged and constant euphoria. It means self-esteem, self-respect, and the contentment that comes from honest living.
But implicit in the realization of happiness is that you are free to decide how your life shall be lived. Implicit in the realization of morality is that you be free to be moral. If you are not free to decide what ideas to support, to dispose of the fruits of your labor as would best suit your personal self-interests, if, in short, you are not free to work for your own good, then you are not free. If you are not free, you cannot be happy. If you are not free, you cannot be moral or immoral. If you are not free, then you are only a slave. If you do not have a right to your own life, then you are only a slave. If nobody has a right to their own lives, then everybody is a slave to the majority opinion holder of the moment and everyone must live in fear that the next majority wave of opinion will target them as the scapegoat to be sacrificed to the mob.
The founders of the United States of America understood this interconnectedness of happiness, freedom, morality, economy, and politics. The one failing was that they compromised on the moral principles and sought to justify the American system on altruistic grounds, on the principle that the justification for such a system is the good of the many. The true justification of the American system is that it rests not on the good of the many, but on the good of the one--you and what is good for you, yourself. Human rights cannot be held by any collective, because any collective is simply a group of individual human beings. If individual human beings do not have rights, then the group also has no rights. Human rights are inalienable, they are independent of the will of the mob, or of individual power holders. Thus, in the American system, political power holders must subordinate their actions within the limits proscribed by the doctrine of human rights. Conversely, American citizens should be free to do whatever they like unless it is expressly prohibited by a doctrine of human rights.
To adhere to a doctrine of human rights is to constrain the politicians and to liberate mankind. To reverse this is to turn politicians into Gods and humanity into slaves.
Your life is your property. If there are no property rights, there is no right to life. If you surrender your right to life, it is the same as committing suicide, a long slow suicide where the killing stroke will come at an arbitrary time and an arbitrary place. If you surrender your right to life, you surrender all the values that come with it. Justice, Freedom, Security....you cannot have one without the others.
Don't surrender your right to life any longer. Demand that the government commit to a doctrine based on the rights of the individual as opposed to the right of mob rule. Instead of forming increasingly expansive world governmental organizations, demand that the governments at home recognize individual rights and act to preserve them. There is too much lip service to rights, and too much sacrifice of them on the altar of a vague and unspecified "good" which we will never see, and our children are expected to slave to pay for. Enough of the political expediency of cake today, and poverty tomorrow. Enough of the sacrifice of the generations to come for some unseen benefit today. Demand your freedom and your rights. Demand the right to hold property, to dispose of it as you will. Demand the right for you to run your own life. Demand that your life is your own and noone else's to arbitrarily dictate to. Demand your right to yourself.
And if you hold that you do not have the right to your own life....kill yourself, and get out of the way of those who want to live.
The argument has always gone that we haven't done enough. What if we've already been doing too much? What if the smug certainty of our politicians is actually misplaced? After all, are they economists? Are they historians? Are they philosophers? How deeply have they thought about the current crisis? Or are they simply parroting what their economics advisors, steeped in Keynesnianism have told them? Are they simply parroting what their philosophy teachers steeped in Kant have told them? Are they simply parroting what their law professors steeped in moral relativism have told them?
The root issue, the key, the crux upon which the entire scope of the major problems in the world today hinge is one pivotal issue: Do you have the right to your own life? Ask any proponent of central banking. Ask any advocate of public education. Ask any idealogue who advocates any social program where the fundamental and underlying premise is that your life belongs not to you, but to the state and that the state has the right to your life, that they have the right to do anything they want to you as long as they have the blessed "mandate of governance". Ask these people, "Do you have the right to your own life?" Ask them. And they will evade and dodge, and badger, and become indignant. But if you can actually get them to answer that question straight out, the answer will be "No". I've seen this many times, the desperate scramble to evade answering a simple yes or no question. Also, the horror of that single-syllable answer.
Because what does it mean if you do not have the right to your own life? It means that noone does. It means that anyone can be dealt with by others in any way. It means, in effect, that there is no objective standard by which to conceive of justice. It means, in effect, that there is no objective standard by which to conceive of morality.
But there is an objective standard of morality: your own life. What makes it harder to survive as is befitting a human being--this is the evil. What makes it easier to survive as is befitting a human being--this is the good. Life and Death are the simplest moral choices at the base of one's morality. Do you want to live? Or, do you want to die? If you decided to live, then all the things which make that life worth living become values to you. Your children, your family, clean air, and water, working hard to reap the products of that work to gain food and clothes for your family, so that they can live and generate life and so on. Life is an end in itself. Happiness is the consequence of a moral life in that the moral life optimizes one's realization of life. As one philosopher put it, "Happiness is enough to make life desirable and lacking in nothing." But the same philosopher also said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."
Happiness is not achieved by range of the moment actions, based simply on the arbitrary desires of the moment. Happiness is only attainable by examining the consequences of a plan of action over the span of one's entire life. It does not mean a state of prolonged and constant euphoria. It means self-esteem, self-respect, and the contentment that comes from honest living.
But implicit in the realization of happiness is that you are free to decide how your life shall be lived. Implicit in the realization of morality is that you be free to be moral. If you are not free to decide what ideas to support, to dispose of the fruits of your labor as would best suit your personal self-interests, if, in short, you are not free to work for your own good, then you are not free. If you are not free, you cannot be happy. If you are not free, you cannot be moral or immoral. If you are not free, then you are only a slave. If you do not have a right to your own life, then you are only a slave. If nobody has a right to their own lives, then everybody is a slave to the majority opinion holder of the moment and everyone must live in fear that the next majority wave of opinion will target them as the scapegoat to be sacrificed to the mob.
The founders of the United States of America understood this interconnectedness of happiness, freedom, morality, economy, and politics. The one failing was that they compromised on the moral principles and sought to justify the American system on altruistic grounds, on the principle that the justification for such a system is the good of the many. The true justification of the American system is that it rests not on the good of the many, but on the good of the one--you and what is good for you, yourself. Human rights cannot be held by any collective, because any collective is simply a group of individual human beings. If individual human beings do not have rights, then the group also has no rights. Human rights are inalienable, they are independent of the will of the mob, or of individual power holders. Thus, in the American system, political power holders must subordinate their actions within the limits proscribed by the doctrine of human rights. Conversely, American citizens should be free to do whatever they like unless it is expressly prohibited by a doctrine of human rights.
To adhere to a doctrine of human rights is to constrain the politicians and to liberate mankind. To reverse this is to turn politicians into Gods and humanity into slaves.
Your life is your property. If there are no property rights, there is no right to life. If you surrender your right to life, it is the same as committing suicide, a long slow suicide where the killing stroke will come at an arbitrary time and an arbitrary place. If you surrender your right to life, you surrender all the values that come with it. Justice, Freedom, Security....you cannot have one without the others.
Don't surrender your right to life any longer. Demand that the government commit to a doctrine based on the rights of the individual as opposed to the right of mob rule. Instead of forming increasingly expansive world governmental organizations, demand that the governments at home recognize individual rights and act to preserve them. There is too much lip service to rights, and too much sacrifice of them on the altar of a vague and unspecified "good" which we will never see, and our children are expected to slave to pay for. Enough of the political expediency of cake today, and poverty tomorrow. Enough of the sacrifice of the generations to come for some unseen benefit today. Demand your freedom and your rights. Demand the right to hold property, to dispose of it as you will. Demand the right for you to run your own life. Demand that your life is your own and noone else's to arbitrarily dictate to. Demand your right to yourself.
And if you hold that you do not have the right to your own life....kill yourself, and get out of the way of those who want to live.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Why I'm an Objectivist
Well, I guess that Ayn Rand's books are experiencing a surge of interest due to the economic crisis. But amidst all the pundits weighing in on one side or the other, I'd simply like to talk about why I'm an Objectivist.
A lot of people point out that Greenspan was an Objectivist (he even wrote several of the essays in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal). But the policies and decisions he pursued in his career make him anything but. How can the chief of the Fed, who sits in unilateral judgment over the arbitrary outlay of interest rates and the monetary supply, possibly be supportive of the government deregulation of the financial system? No, Greenspan isn't an Objectivist.
A lot of people get hung up on that deal with the Brandens, or with the Peikoff-Kelley split. The former is a sideshow bearing no relevance to Ayn Rand's philosophical ideas. It is akin to discrediting the Declaration of Independence because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Somebody can make mistakes in character judgment, or bad choices and still have good ideas. That's why there is a logical fallacy devoted to just such an error, ad hominem (meaning against the man). The latter focuses on a very relevant issue, the proper moral response to dissent. I'm honestly not sure which side is correct in their assessments, as I've recently stated, I'm not sure myself how to properly discern between evasion and deception and whether or not there should morally be a different response for the two, or if they deserve to be lumped together. This jury of one is still out on that subject, and until I reach a verdict, I will be hesitant to condemn either side unilaterally. After all, error is a very real occurrence. To deny the capacity for error is to assert that we are all granted a priori knowledge of the universe, an assertion closer to the philosophy of Plato than that of Rand. And I don't believe in patently accepting orthodoxy from any source if I don't fully understand the principles involved.
Some people assert that Rand has a utilitarian value, that she provides the moral justification for capitalism. Well, she does. But that isn't a reason to believe in Objectivism. The only viable reason to believe in Objectivism is this: is it true?
To ask this question of most philosophies is to encounter a Cartesian loop of circular reasoning. Most philosophies demand that you accept either a God, or social force, or some vague and inexplicable internal sense as the final arbiter of morality. Only Rand came forth to say that what is moral is based solidly in the tangible reality and tangible demands of our physical existence. The reason philosophers scoff at Objectivism is because it is fully comprehensible. The reason why it isn't taken seriously is because it does not rest on a leap of faith, a "feeling" that something is right or wrong. It rests on reason. Philosophers have spent generations arguing about whether they can know that reality exists, how they can know anything if they can't assume anything about existence, endless wormholes of uncertainty and referenceless abstractions based on clouds of air where they simply try to rationalize their own assumptions about morality by any means necessary. There is a very real reason why we tend to think of something as "deep" which is completely incomprehensible or bizarre. It is because what many of our philosophers have presented to us as deep and fundamental truths of existence have in fact been nothing more than incomprehensible or bizarre all along.
Rand was the first one in modern history to come out and say "The Emperor has no clothes...and this is why." She stated that some assumptions are necessary, that they are in fact assumed by anyone who would attempt to disprove them: Existence exists, Consciousness is conscious, A thing is itself (A is A). Her philosophical system anticipated significant developments in cognitive science (such as the embodiment of cognitive experience and the necessity for a hierarchy of concept formation for information processing) and linguistics (such as examining the concealment of agency realized by transitivity and passivization as a technique for encoding hidden ideology). Objectivism has ramifications for economics, political science, morality, law, and education. All of these fields are traditionally presented to us as decontextualized, incomprehensible forces of nature to which we must simply react, but can never hope to comprehend or to influence.
Objectivism makes explicit the underlying mechanisms of all of these processes and shows how we are the center of all of these systems, that we are not just passive receivers of some arbitrary destiny; that we have the power and indeed, the responsibility, to act upon those systems to make them better for our own sakes. And that by working to make these systems more productive objectively, that by striving to attain our own individual rational self-interest, by seeking to attain the best that life has to offer over the entire span of one's life, that the net result is an immeasurable benefit for everyone. But that the justification is not in the benefit to all but in the benefit to one's self. That we are born into this life as ourselves, that we experience only the life that we have as ourselves, and that the pursuit of happiness is not a pragmatic end, but a moral pursuit in and of itself.
Objectivism offers HAPPINESS, whereas the other varied philosophies and ideologies of our age only demand SACRIFICE. Sacrifice to what? For whose benefit? Will my children be the happier for me having sacrificed their economic well-being today? Will I truly have any greater guarantee of security by demanding that they pay for my retirement, when in fact the economic necessities of the system will mean that social security will most likely not even exist by that time? Will they be the better educated by demanding that they be constrained to the lowest common denominator of educational quality made possible by averaging the resources of the community as opposed to what I could provide for them unfettered by the economic burdens imposed by the government? No. No. No.
Opponents of Objectivism need to make an explicit stand, one that they cannot ultimately justify and thus why they always resort to ad hominem attacks or dodge the issue. Objectivism ultimately stands for the rational pursuit of your happiness over the span of your life. It holds that as a moral virtue, the highest moral goal. To say that Objectivism is evil, is to say that the pursuit of happiness is evil. To say that Objectivism is wrong, is to say that it is wrong to be happy, it is wrong to want the best for your children, it is wrong to receive greater pay for greater work, that any attempts to advance your position in life is evil and the most we can hope for in our imperfect lives is to beg for the mercy of those who hold incontrovertible power over us, whether they be thrust into that position by design or the vagaries of the political process.
I refute this view of life. I cannot accept that I was born to be the tool of others, that I was born to be used, manipulated, milked of whatever capacity I have and then to be cast aside with the fruits of my productivity to be dispensed according to the whims of a lunatic mob. I believe in the principles that America was founded upon. I believe in this nation of principles, the only nation ever founded by philosophers. What Ayn Rand represents is not a radical divergence from American values, she represents the soul of American virtue unabashedly claiming its rightful distinction as the only moral system which does not treat humanity as sacrifical animals to be slaughtered for the sake of anyone's whims, whether they be the dreams of one man, or the dreams of us all. This virtue can only be fully realized if we accept the objective basis of morality, the objective determinants of justice and just law.
And the final reason that I am an objectivist is not just because the logical arguments makes sense to me, but that I can see the principles that Objectivism makes clear in operation in every aspect of life around me. When I see the way people react to politics, or economics, or education. When I see the things that are easy to teach or are easy to learn. The more I discover about the processes of the human mind, and society. Everything that I learn from science and my experience with other human beings in society. Everything makes sense when viewed from an Objectivist perspective. Where before, there was only a chaos of competing voices all crying for power, all crying for pity, all teetering on an uncertain foundation rocking on the waves of public opinion, I have now come to see the levers which operate those systems, and to understand the motivations driving the forces in our society. When I see the accuracy with which the themes in Ayn Rand's works play out in the news around me and even in my own personal life, I cannot refute the predictive power of her model. No other philosophy I have studied has come anywhere near as close in terms of precise clarity and comprehensive explanatory power.
And that is why I am an Objectivist. If I were to find a proof, whether it be logical or practical which invalidated the propositions of Objectivism, I would surrender the title of Objectivist and set about constructing a revised philosophy incorporating that proof. But I haven't yet. Despite all the ranting on the internet. Despite all the spite and condemnations of Rand's work. Despite all the insults and some outright lies. Not a single detractor has been able to provide a significant counter-argument. So I ask openly: if you (anybody out there at all) have an objection, bring it forth. Let's talk about this here and now. If you can show me the error of my ways, then do so. But I only ask one thing in return. That if your arguments prove to be the weaker, will you be as willing to change your views? If you are, then you're probably closer to being an Objectivist than you may think.
A lot of people point out that Greenspan was an Objectivist (he even wrote several of the essays in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal). But the policies and decisions he pursued in his career make him anything but. How can the chief of the Fed, who sits in unilateral judgment over the arbitrary outlay of interest rates and the monetary supply, possibly be supportive of the government deregulation of the financial system? No, Greenspan isn't an Objectivist.
A lot of people get hung up on that deal with the Brandens, or with the Peikoff-Kelley split. The former is a sideshow bearing no relevance to Ayn Rand's philosophical ideas. It is akin to discrediting the Declaration of Independence because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Somebody can make mistakes in character judgment, or bad choices and still have good ideas. That's why there is a logical fallacy devoted to just such an error, ad hominem (meaning against the man). The latter focuses on a very relevant issue, the proper moral response to dissent. I'm honestly not sure which side is correct in their assessments, as I've recently stated, I'm not sure myself how to properly discern between evasion and deception and whether or not there should morally be a different response for the two, or if they deserve to be lumped together. This jury of one is still out on that subject, and until I reach a verdict, I will be hesitant to condemn either side unilaterally. After all, error is a very real occurrence. To deny the capacity for error is to assert that we are all granted a priori knowledge of the universe, an assertion closer to the philosophy of Plato than that of Rand. And I don't believe in patently accepting orthodoxy from any source if I don't fully understand the principles involved.
Some people assert that Rand has a utilitarian value, that she provides the moral justification for capitalism. Well, she does. But that isn't a reason to believe in Objectivism. The only viable reason to believe in Objectivism is this: is it true?
To ask this question of most philosophies is to encounter a Cartesian loop of circular reasoning. Most philosophies demand that you accept either a God, or social force, or some vague and inexplicable internal sense as the final arbiter of morality. Only Rand came forth to say that what is moral is based solidly in the tangible reality and tangible demands of our physical existence. The reason philosophers scoff at Objectivism is because it is fully comprehensible. The reason why it isn't taken seriously is because it does not rest on a leap of faith, a "feeling" that something is right or wrong. It rests on reason. Philosophers have spent generations arguing about whether they can know that reality exists, how they can know anything if they can't assume anything about existence, endless wormholes of uncertainty and referenceless abstractions based on clouds of air where they simply try to rationalize their own assumptions about morality by any means necessary. There is a very real reason why we tend to think of something as "deep" which is completely incomprehensible or bizarre. It is because what many of our philosophers have presented to us as deep and fundamental truths of existence have in fact been nothing more than incomprehensible or bizarre all along.
Rand was the first one in modern history to come out and say "The Emperor has no clothes...and this is why." She stated that some assumptions are necessary, that they are in fact assumed by anyone who would attempt to disprove them: Existence exists, Consciousness is conscious, A thing is itself (A is A). Her philosophical system anticipated significant developments in cognitive science (such as the embodiment of cognitive experience and the necessity for a hierarchy of concept formation for information processing) and linguistics (such as examining the concealment of agency realized by transitivity and passivization as a technique for encoding hidden ideology). Objectivism has ramifications for economics, political science, morality, law, and education. All of these fields are traditionally presented to us as decontextualized, incomprehensible forces of nature to which we must simply react, but can never hope to comprehend or to influence.
Objectivism makes explicit the underlying mechanisms of all of these processes and shows how we are the center of all of these systems, that we are not just passive receivers of some arbitrary destiny; that we have the power and indeed, the responsibility, to act upon those systems to make them better for our own sakes. And that by working to make these systems more productive objectively, that by striving to attain our own individual rational self-interest, by seeking to attain the best that life has to offer over the entire span of one's life, that the net result is an immeasurable benefit for everyone. But that the justification is not in the benefit to all but in the benefit to one's self. That we are born into this life as ourselves, that we experience only the life that we have as ourselves, and that the pursuit of happiness is not a pragmatic end, but a moral pursuit in and of itself.
Objectivism offers HAPPINESS, whereas the other varied philosophies and ideologies of our age only demand SACRIFICE. Sacrifice to what? For whose benefit? Will my children be the happier for me having sacrificed their economic well-being today? Will I truly have any greater guarantee of security by demanding that they pay for my retirement, when in fact the economic necessities of the system will mean that social security will most likely not even exist by that time? Will they be the better educated by demanding that they be constrained to the lowest common denominator of educational quality made possible by averaging the resources of the community as opposed to what I could provide for them unfettered by the economic burdens imposed by the government? No. No. No.
Opponents of Objectivism need to make an explicit stand, one that they cannot ultimately justify and thus why they always resort to ad hominem attacks or dodge the issue. Objectivism ultimately stands for the rational pursuit of your happiness over the span of your life. It holds that as a moral virtue, the highest moral goal. To say that Objectivism is evil, is to say that the pursuit of happiness is evil. To say that Objectivism is wrong, is to say that it is wrong to be happy, it is wrong to want the best for your children, it is wrong to receive greater pay for greater work, that any attempts to advance your position in life is evil and the most we can hope for in our imperfect lives is to beg for the mercy of those who hold incontrovertible power over us, whether they be thrust into that position by design or the vagaries of the political process.
I refute this view of life. I cannot accept that I was born to be the tool of others, that I was born to be used, manipulated, milked of whatever capacity I have and then to be cast aside with the fruits of my productivity to be dispensed according to the whims of a lunatic mob. I believe in the principles that America was founded upon. I believe in this nation of principles, the only nation ever founded by philosophers. What Ayn Rand represents is not a radical divergence from American values, she represents the soul of American virtue unabashedly claiming its rightful distinction as the only moral system which does not treat humanity as sacrifical animals to be slaughtered for the sake of anyone's whims, whether they be the dreams of one man, or the dreams of us all. This virtue can only be fully realized if we accept the objective basis of morality, the objective determinants of justice and just law.
And the final reason that I am an objectivist is not just because the logical arguments makes sense to me, but that I can see the principles that Objectivism makes clear in operation in every aspect of life around me. When I see the way people react to politics, or economics, or education. When I see the things that are easy to teach or are easy to learn. The more I discover about the processes of the human mind, and society. Everything that I learn from science and my experience with other human beings in society. Everything makes sense when viewed from an Objectivist perspective. Where before, there was only a chaos of competing voices all crying for power, all crying for pity, all teetering on an uncertain foundation rocking on the waves of public opinion, I have now come to see the levers which operate those systems, and to understand the motivations driving the forces in our society. When I see the accuracy with which the themes in Ayn Rand's works play out in the news around me and even in my own personal life, I cannot refute the predictive power of her model. No other philosophy I have studied has come anywhere near as close in terms of precise clarity and comprehensive explanatory power.
And that is why I am an Objectivist. If I were to find a proof, whether it be logical or practical which invalidated the propositions of Objectivism, I would surrender the title of Objectivist and set about constructing a revised philosophy incorporating that proof. But I haven't yet. Despite all the ranting on the internet. Despite all the spite and condemnations of Rand's work. Despite all the insults and some outright lies. Not a single detractor has been able to provide a significant counter-argument. So I ask openly: if you (anybody out there at all) have an objection, bring it forth. Let's talk about this here and now. If you can show me the error of my ways, then do so. But I only ask one thing in return. That if your arguments prove to be the weaker, will you be as willing to change your views? If you are, then you're probably closer to being an Objectivist than you may think.
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