PannicAtack - How does it make you feel to know that Atticus Finch is a more relevant moral hero than John Galt?
He is not by any means. The only reason people even still care about him is because Gregory Peck gave a notable performance in the film version. Even with that boost he is still not that influential, and that is because the character of John Galt is fundamentally deeper and far more philosophically profound. Do a google search of "Atticus Finch" (with quotations) and you will only get about 790,000 results. Do a search of "John Galt" (again, with quotations) and you will get about 1,400,000 results. People are talking about John Galt almost twice as much, so to say that Atticus Finch is more relevant is just ignorant. John Galt is the figurehead of an entire philosophy. In 1991 the Library of Congress took a survey with Atlas Shrugged being found to be the 2nd most influential book on people's lives. Modern Library held a poll to see which novels readers considered to be the best. Here are the top 5 results.
1. Atlas Shrugged
2. The Fountainhead
3. Battlefield Earth
4. The Lord of the Rings
5. To Kill a Mockingbird
John Galt and the philosophy he represents clearly has more influence than Atticus Finch does, or else To Kill a Mockingbird would not be ranked below Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Also Ayn Rand's Anthem and We the Living came in 7th and 8th place respectively on that same list.
source
Also, in the list of non-fiction books considered to be best by the readers, Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness came first, and Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand came third (L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health came second).
ad1x2 - Going by one of your previous threads, you indicated that Ron Paul is a person you admire. With that how do you think he would feel about that statement considering that he served in the Air Force as a flight surgeon from 1963 to 1968? The Air Force didn't use the draft during the Vietnam War and he had joined under his own free will. Even if he didn't join of his own free will being born in 1935 would have most likely made him too old to be drafted after he completed med school.
Ron Paul did not join the Air Force to die. He joined it to save lives. I cannot say why he was interested in saving lives, but he certainly was not trying to do Washington policians any favours at his own expense.
frannkzappa -Â
Question to lai from a hardcore technocratic authoritarian.
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How can an individual have "rights"?"
"Rights" as a concept have no practical existence unless they can be acted upon and enforced.
What is to stop a group of individuals aka a government from denying the "rights" of the individual and thus making them void?
Only a government can have rights. And they can have these rights only because they have a chance of protecting and enforcing them.
In everycase and on every matter the group can trump the individual. The individual is useless unless viewed in the context of a "government" (organized body). Without a strong centralized government what good will "free will" do. Unless you work within the context of a group all your actions are meaningless as they will not be able to affect the world (in relation to man) only your immediate surroundings. At best an individual can have privileges bestowed from a higher artificial power never "rights".
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How can you defend a concept ("rights") which has neither corporeal relavance nor practical existence, for the individual at least?
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sorry this is so rushed, i'm at work. If you respond i can talk in more detail and with better syntax.
A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a mans freedom of action in a social context. The concept of rights is an inherent necessity to social interaction between individuals (and the matter of defining which rights are proper for an individual to have is a separate issue). The individual is the only unit that can have rights. A collective cannot have rights, because a collective is an abstraction that only exists in theory. A collective is a group of individuals interacting within established rules of conduct. These rules function as "rights" (though they may not function very well if the system of "rights" are irrational and/or contradictory) and they are applied on an individual basis by necessity.
You are confusing rights with power, and also rights with privileges. It is possible (and easy) for a situation to arise where a government has the only realistic claim to power over a given area. The given area is undoubtedly under the government's authority, but that does not mean that the government is within its rights to have that authority. Generally when a government has authority, it is due to the violation of the rights of an individual who is not a privileged member of that government. Of course a government will always define the law (the legal rights) in such a way so that all legal documents will confirm that the government is within its rights to do whatever it is doing. However when a government creates new laws and uses its monopoly on violence to enforce those laws then it is generally because those laws are in contradiction with an objectively rational morality. It is because those laws are being used to help a certain group of people at the expense of others. They are oppressive and violent laws and therefore they are, objectively, not conducive to life of and interaction between individuals. They are harmful to both the individual and to society, because society is constituted of individuals.
worlock77 -
The hypocrisy, Lai, comes from the fact that you excuse your use of public services while calling everyone else who uses those services "moochers".
And, once again, learn what the f*ck Ad hominem means. You have never used this term properly.
I call the poor moochers because they are. It is a fact that the poor receive more from government services than they pay into them. Under the current tax system the more you utilize tax-funded services the less taxes you pay, and the less you utilize tax-funded services the more taxes you pay. It is absurd, and it is theft. It is a system designed for moochers. Also I know what ad hominem means, and you are demonstrating that you do not.
ALovelyHorse - Lai will you ever re-register at TDH?
Everyone there is philosophically backwards and it needs your shining beacons of beastiality advocacy and braindead political allegories to show these lost sheep their way.
I probably will eventually. I can tell that you are being sarcastic, but you are actually proving why it is in the best interest of TDH for me to return. Of course it would not be for the sake of TDH that I would return, but my own. I consider my greatest and most dangerous enemies to be Sun Tzu and D&nny. Sun Tzu is of course more immediately dangerous since D&nny is banned from here and because Sun Tzu seems to be actively trying to become a moderator here again. D&nny is still a threat in the long-term, and that is made clear by the goons he sends out to antagonize me both here and more recently on the "Afterschool Fun Time" forum. If I am ever to put him on the defensive then I will have to take the fight back to his turf.
ayaqoob1 - You were all right with the Europeans stealing the land of the Natives because they could make better use of it. Native Americans were also individuals who had the right to own property yet you were fine with the Europeans taking their property because as you said, there's no such think as communal property. Corporations are individuals who got together to own property,same with Native Americans, why the double standard?
Corporations are not communal property. Corporations are collections of individuals with explicitly defined ownership of explicitly defined things. It is not one thing shared by many, but one collection made up of individually owned parts. That is fundamentally different from the concept of sharing one item among a community, and rejecting the individual from owning such an item for himself.
worlock77 - Laihendi, I asked a question early in this thread that you never addressed, so I'll restate it. You've stated that copyright laws are immoral. So since they're immoral it would be ok for me to copy your book and sell it as my own right?
Copyright laws as they have been practiced are immoral. They exist to restrict the exchange of ideas and establish intellectual monopolies over them. They exist so that a victim is forced to buy his mind by paying to use an idea. You do not have a right to force someone to buy his mind, but you also do not have a right to steal a man's mind from himself. You do not have a right to take credit for another man's intellectual creation, such as a book. You do not have a right to take credit for my book, but you do have a right to read it once I have publically released it.
MakeMeaSammitch -Â
Lai were you diagnosed with autism?
I'm not asking if it exists, I'm just asking did a doctor say this.
No. People have tried to make me go through the official process of being diagnosed but I refuse to consent because that is absurd.
RushKing - Work is a mockery of freedom/individual autonomy. Only an authoritarian collectivist would care about an individuals contribution to society. There is no objective way to measure productivity. Despotist organizations are collectivist.
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Why should an individual be forced at gunpoint to sacrifice their liberty because of the assertion of something as subjective as property? Possession is objective, property isn't. Property requires coercion. Possession doesn't.
If work is a mockery of freedom and autonomy, then how you do expect to exist without the benefit of your own productive labour? The only alternative is the benefit of someone else's. We live in a material world, and our lives depend on material demands that must be satisfied. For you to complain about that is synonymous to complaining about about reality being real. You are contradicting yourself to say that freedom is living by someone else's labour. That is not freedom, but slavery. His slavery for your luxury.
Please tell me how possession of property is possible without ownership of property. You are just contradicting yourself and what you are saying is entirely nonsensical. You are saying an individual is coerced into sacrificing what he does not own. That is nonsensical. If he does not own something then it is not his to sacrifice. If he has no claim to something, then he has no reason to object to someone else claiming it. Also, the dollar is the objective way to measure productivety (or would be if we did not use fiat money). I recommend reading Francisco d'Anconia's "Money Speech" from Atlas Shrugged. You can easily find it online for free.
Opi0us -Â
I read this whole thing and still have so many questions! I'm going to ask two if I may.
1. In Objectivism are men and women considered to be equal?
2. What would the Objectivism utopian paradise be? As in if everything was destroyed and you were put in charge what would the structure of a new Objectivist society be?
Men and women are separate but equal. They are different types of creatures. The essence of masculinity is heroism, whereas the essence of femininity is hero-worship. Men and women should interact with mutual respect for each other's right to live, which they both possess, but the role each plays in their social interactions is naturally different (though compatible).Â
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