CAN AYN RAND SAVE US?

[Brant Gaede]

Brant: Objective moral values come from knowledge of the human animal and human being.

Yes. But not just knowledge, for every adult knows right from wrong. It's loving what's right enough to act upon it... which is acting contrary to the human animal.

What the good people do is seize the government and force the bad people not to be bad people making them--the goodies--in league with the devil which they then must wrestle with their right (left?) hand while the left (right?) hand does good. The anarchists stand outside looking in animadverting upon it all.

The government is only what people have created in their own image... and opportunistically treats each individual according to the moral values by which they live.

Your statement about right and wrong strikes me as too general to be right as stated. There have to be many rights and wrongs not immediately experienced as such or--you have an obligation to explicate more on this "every adult knows" subject. Everyone and every issue? For instance, sometimes bad feels good. Is "good" also "right"? Note you are suggesting morality as automatically experienced without thought, knowledge as a hard-wired given.

--Brant

[moralist]

Brant: Objective moral values come from knowledge of the human animal and human being.

Yes. But not just knowledge, for every adult knows right from wrong. It's loving what's right enough to act upon it... which is acting contrary to the human animal.

What the good people do is seize the government and force the bad people not to be bad people making them--the goodies--in league with the devil which they then must wrestle with their right (left?) hand while the left (right?) hand does good. The anarchists stand outside looking in animadverting upon it all.

The government is only what people have created in their own image... and opportunistically treats each individual according to the moral values by which they live.

Your statement about right and wrong strikes me as too general to be right as stated.There have to be many rights and wrongs not immediately experienced as such or--you have an obligation to explicate more on this "every adult knows" subject. Everyone and every issue? For instance, sometimes bad feels good. Is "good" also "right"? Note you are suggesting morality as automatically experienced without thought, knowledge as a hard-wired given.

--Brant

The fact that there are always exceptions to a generality does not invalidate it. For example: Every adult knows it's good and right to uphold the trust of decent people because they, by their own direct personal experience, would not want others to betray their trust.

Now whether people love what's right enough to actually do what's right is another story entirely.

Morality is the ability to act contrary to feelings when it is right to do so.

[Darrell Hougen]

Unless all these divisions act together, I don’t think America can any more be saved. I am working on the way they can join hands (while preserving their differences) and take America back to the days of Founding Fathers, but with new knowledge acquired after 1776. In the coming days I shall present my writing on these forums for peoples’ evaluation – let’s see if it can achieve the task.

Temporarily I am starting a new OP as above, but will complete it asap. Do members have opinion on it?

Back in The Days of the Founding Fathers over half the American economy depended on the labor of whip driven slaves. Is that what you really want?

Ba'al Chatzaf

I think you better check your figures. In 1790, just a few years after the revolution, blacks made up only 19% of the population, so I doubt that they accounted for more than half the the economic output of the U.S. or the colonies before then. http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/slavery-0

Also, you might want to read this article, by Michael Medved which I quote in part:

4. IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES. Pennsylvania passed an emancipation law in 1780; Connecticut and Rhode Island followed four years later (all before the Constitution). New York approved emancipation in 1799. These states (with dynamic banking centers in Philadelphia and Manhattan) quickly emerged as robust centers of commerce and manufacturing, greatly enriching themselves while the slave-based economies in the South languished by comparison. At the time of the Constitution, Virginia constituted the most populous and wealthiest state in the Union, but by the time of the War Between the States the Old Dominion had fallen far behind a half-dozen northern states that had outlawed slavery two generations earlier. All analyses of Northern victory in the great sectional struggle highlights the vast advantages in terms of wealth and productivity in New England, the Mid-Atlantic States and the Midwest, compared to the relatively backward and impoverished states of the Confederacy. While a few elite families in the Old South undoubtedly based their formidable fortunes on the labor of slaves, the prevailing reality of the planter class involved chronic indebtedness and shaky finances long before the ultimate collapse of the evil system of bondage. The notion that America based its wealth and development on slave labor hardly comports with the obvious reality that for two hundred years since the founding of the Republic, by far the poorest and least developed section of the nation was precisely that region where slavery once prevailed.

Darrell

[BaalChatzaf]

Unless all these divisions act together, I don’t think America can any more be saved. I am working on the way they can join hands (while preserving their differences) and take America back to the days of Founding Fathers, but with new knowledge acquired after 1776. In the coming days I shall present my writing on these forums for peoples’ evaluation – let’s see if it can achieve the task.

Temporarily I am starting a new OP as above, but will complete it asap. Do members have opinion on it?

Back in The Days of the Founding Fathers over half the American economy depended on the labor of whip driven slaves. Is that what you really want?

Ba'al Chatzaf

I think you better check your figures. In 1790, just a few years after the revolution, blacks made up only 19% of the population, so I doubt that they accounted for more than half the the economic output of the U.S. or the colonies before then. http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/slavery-0

Also, you might want to read this article, by Michael Medved which I quote in part:

4. IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES. Pennsylvania passed an emancipation law in 1780; Connecticut and Rhode Island followed four years later (all before the Constitution). New York approved emancipation in 1799. These states (with dynamic banking centers in Philadelphia and Manhattan) quickly emerged as robust centers of commerce and manufacturing, greatly enriching themselves while the slave-based economies in the South languished by comparison. At the time of the Constitution, Virginia constituted the most populous and wealthiest state in the Union, but by the time of the War Between the States the Old Dominion had fallen far behind a half-dozen northern states that had outlawed slavery two generations earlier. All analyses of Northern victory in the great sectional struggle highlights the vast advantages in terms of wealth and productivity in New England, the Mid-Atlantic States and the Midwest, compared to the relatively backward and impoverished states of the Confederacy. While a few elite families in the Old South undoubtedly based their formidable fortunes on the labor of slaves, the prevailing reality of the planter class involved chronic indebtedness and shaky finances long before the ultimate collapse of the evil system of bondage. The notion that America based its wealth and development on slave labor hardly comports with the obvious reality that for two hundred years since the founding of the Republic, by far the poorest and least developed section of the nation was precisely that region where slavery once prevailed.

Darrell

In New England the textile industry boomed and people mad fortunes in Lowell and Lawrence Massachusetts. You know what there basic manufacturing material was? Cotton picked by those whip driven slaves. Slavery made a lot of people both North and South very rich.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Darrell Hougen]

Unless all these divisions act together, I don’t think America can any more be saved. I am working on the way they can join hands (while preserving their differences) and take America back to the days of Founding Fathers, but with new knowledge acquired after 1776. In the coming days I shall present my writing on these forums for peoples’ evaluation – let’s see if it can achieve the task.

Temporarily I am starting a new OP as above, but will complete it asap. Do members have opinion on it?

Back in The Days of the Founding Fathers over half the American economy depended on the labor of whip driven slaves. Is that what you really want?

Ba'al Chatzaf

I think you better check your figures. In 1790, just a few years after the revolution, blacks made up only 19% of the population, so I doubt that they accounted for more than half the the economic output of the U.S. or the colonies before then. http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/slavery-0

Also, you might want to read this article, by Michael Medved which I quote in part:

4. IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES. Pennsylvania passed an emancipation law in 1780; Connecticut and Rhode Island followed four years later (all before the Constitution). New York approved emancipation in 1799. These states (with dynamic banking centers in Philadelphia and Manhattan) quickly emerged as robust centers of commerce and manufacturing, greatly enriching themselves while the slave-based economies in the South languished by comparison. At the time of the Constitution, Virginia constituted the most populous and wealthiest state in the Union, but by the time of the War Between the States the Old Dominion had fallen far behind a half-dozen northern states that had outlawed slavery two generations earlier. All analyses of Northern victory in the great sectional struggle highlights the vast advantages in terms of wealth and productivity in New England, the Mid-Atlantic States and the Midwest, compared to the relatively backward and impoverished states of the Confederacy. While a few elite families in the Old South undoubtedly based their formidable fortunes on the labor of slaves, the prevailing reality of the planter class involved chronic indebtedness and shaky finances long before the ultimate collapse of the evil system of bondage. The notion that America based its wealth and development on slave labor hardly comports with the obvious reality that for two hundred years since the founding of the Republic, by far the poorest and least developed section of the nation was precisely that region where slavery once prevailed.

Darrell

In New England the textile industry boomed and people mad fortunes in Lowell and Lawrence Massachusetts. You know what there basic manufacturing material was? Cotton picked by those whip driven slaves. Slavery made a lot of people both North and South very rich.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I don't doubt that it made some people rich, but that isn't what you said. You said that slavery accounted for more than half of the American economy. There is a huge difference.

Darrell

[moralist]

You said that slavery accounted for more than half of the American economy.

That actually holds true today... for the slavery of debt accounts for well over half of the American economy.

[Brant Gaede]

You said that slavery accounted for more than half of the American economy.

That actually holds true today... for the slavery of debt accounts for well over half of the American economy.

It's much, much worse than that, even, for most of the American economy is completely bogus thanks to deficit spending, the Federal Reserve, regulations, debt obligations, exaggerated military spending, etc. Because of artificially depressed interest rates you cannot calculate the value of the money used in long term investments so a lot of businesses are started with cheap money that wouldn't otherwise exist.

--Brant

heading for McDonald's for a one dollar burger

[moralist]

You said that slavery accounted for more than half of the American economy.

That actually holds true today... for the slavery of debt accounts for well over half of the American economy.

It's much, much worse than that, even, for most of the American economy is completely bogus thanks to deficit spending, the Federal Reserve, regulations, debt obligations, exaggerated military spending, etc. Because of artificially depressed interest rates you cannot calculate the value of the money used in long term investments so a lot of businesses are started with cheap money that wouldn't otherwise exist.

--Brant

heading for McDonald's for a one dollar burger

I agree with your assessment... but macro economic events do not uniformly affect every individual in exactly the same way. There are always alternatives, and I found that my own is simply to choose not to participate in the debt system by operating solely from the position of 100% solvency. Any American Capitalist who operates a business by this principle will always be immune from becoming infected by the plague of credit collapse.