JEWS AND YOU AND JEWS

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen,

[...] since you are a Joo, [...].

Not insofar as I'm aware. My husband's ancestry is Jewish.

Ellen

[caroljane]

And when Dagny didn't need Eddie anymore, she abandoned him. Nice one, Dags. Loyalty is a one-way street.in fictional Randland, leading to a dead end.

In effect she also abandoned Rearden, leaving him to fly around Colorado for a month looking for her while she was on a sabbatical. In respect to your example, not mine, I think Rand wanted to make a more general point about the indefiniteness of the future.

--Brant

!! "a general point about the indefiniteness of the future!" In a book which predicts a future based on false moral choices, which can only be saved by self-made souls who direct their own futures by the purity of their moral choices!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ellen,

[...] since you are a Joo, [...].

Not insofar as I'm aware. My husband's ancestry is Jewish.

Ellen

Ellen,

Oops.

Due apologies. Boy did I screw up.

I could transfer my statements to your hubbie and act haughty to save face, but I stepped in it too deep.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

Michael,

No problem.

And, sure, you could shift the comments to my husband, or even apply them by extension to me, considering how many Jewish people I've been around over the course of 45 years, my husband being both of Jewish descent and a physics professor (lots of Jews in academe, and probably an even higher proportion in physics).

Ellen

[caroljane]

And when Dagny didn't need Eddie anymore, she abandoned him. Nice one, Dags. Loyalty is a one-way street.in fictional Randland, leading to a dead end.

In effect she also abandoned Rearden, leaving him to fly around Colorado for a month looking for her while she was on a sabbatical. In respect to your example, not mine, I think Rand wanted to make a more general point about the indefiniteness of the future. It's true she was purblind about a lot of normal human being things, but you need more than that to burn a productive genius at the stake of righteousness. Go get Henry Ford or Charles Lindbergh if that is your wont.

--Brant

Indeed they both built their own stakes, showing a bigoted ugliness that was at least equal to their productive genius.

|N

Bigoted?

Er, yes. Ford was a violent anti-Semite and Lindbergh was Nazism's #1 American fan and booster.

Oh, I thought you meant Dagny and Rearden.

Well now that you mention it, |I cannot recall any Jewish presence in any of the novels, for Dagny etal to be bigoted about. Everyone in Rand's scifictional America is Waspy with the international element being proud Nordic or Spanish aristocratic types. It was a

novelistic Gentleman's Agreement of the 50sand earlier, \I think, that if you were not writing specifically about Jewish characters

just to pretend that everybody is a gentile.

[BaalChatzaf]

Well now that you mention it, |I cannot recall any Jewish presence in any of the novels, for Dagny etal to be bigoted about. Everyone in Rand's scifictional America is Waspy with the international element being proud Nordic or Spanish aristocratic types. It was a

novelistic Gentleman's Agreement of the 50sand earlier, \I think, that if you were not writing specifically about Jewish characters

just to pretend that everybody is a gentile.

Franscisco mentioned that he came to New York to get a meal at some Deli. It had a distinctly Jewish name.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[caroljane]

Well now that you mention it, |I cannot recall any Jewish presence in any of the novels, for Dagny etal to be bigoted about. Everyone in Rand's scifictional America is Waspy with the international element being proud Nordic or Spanish aristocratic types. It was a

novelistic Gentleman's Agreement of the 50sand earlier, \I think, that if you were not writing specifically about Jewish characters

just to pretend that everybody is a gentile.

Franscisco mentioned that he came to New York to get a meal at some Deli. It had a distinctly Jewish name.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Oh, that Frisco! What a cosmopolitan, He sure knew how to walk on the wild side. I bet he hit the Cotton Club in his salad days too.

[moralist]

You're right.

I have absolutely no sympathy for people who gave the government their sanction to become its victims. They stick their head in the noose and then whine about rope burns. So many people have literally pissed away their freedom in their need for the government to make someone else pay their bills. The government is only what people have demanded it to be. And each individual's own personal experience of getting the government they deserve is the direct consequence of how they are living their life.

So if you feel that you are not getting the government you deserve, change how you are living, and you will.

I now know what bothers me about your philosophy - thank you for bringing it into focus with these latest comments. It's black-and-white absolutism married to a dogmatic faith in just deserts. In your simplistic worldview, everything happens for a reason directly tied to a person's own faults or virtues: if someone is successful, it's because they're a good, smart, proactive person and deserve the good fortune; if unsuccessful, it's because they're a bad, dumb, reactive person and got what was coming. There's no allowance for natural variation in outcomes, no acceptance that, in the real world, bad things can happen to good people or the opposite. It's moral utopianism adopted for your own emotional and intellectual convenience. Hey, you've done alright, so it's obviously because of your overwhelming virtues and cleverness. Others struggle, but they have only themselves to blame for it, so pay them little heed. It's self-indulgent theistic hogwash based on a willful ignorance of the inherent arbitrariness of life.

The nature and tenor of your response defines another difference between us. Other people's philosophies don't bother me, because that's their own free choice. They made their choice just as I did. And they're the ones who get the consequences they deserve by their own free choice just as I do. I'm not exempt from the moral law of gravity. No one is. The playing field is perfectly level.

Everything that happens does serve a reason and a purpose, and that reason and purpose is to teach us how to become better people. And just as you are free to deny the causality of the consequences of your own actions, I'm just as free to affirm it. So we each already have our personal choice and everything that unfolds from it already within our own lives. It's not so much what happens to us, but what we do about it that makes all the difference. For the consequences of our choices today determine the basis from what we will chose tomorrow.

(edited to expand on a few ideas).

A mouse in a maze may exult in its choices but that's ignorance. I have a more expansive view of human being and activity, moral suasion and gravitas than you seem to. I don't object to your general approach--for you--just don't find it very interesting, but it takes all kinds and many kinds are still possible even in the United States of Obama. Ayn Rand may have made a mistake if she conflated individualism with a theorectical person's lack of need for other people. We are all social animals, but the amount and type of need for that is all over the human interactive map. I remember once hiking in the Grand Canyon coming on an old mining camp's remnants. That people had been there decades before digging mine shafts was much more interesting to me than the canyon itself. I love old railroad beds and no longer used rr tracks. Such things are a handshake with the human productive past and represent social gratification of one of many types to me. I once stopped at a rr crossing in New Mexico. I got out and sat on the hood of my car and waved at the train engineer who waved back as the diesel locomotive and a long train of boxcars went slowly past. Freedom destroys the exoskeleton of slavery and would be enslavers enabling human expansiveness and benevolence even for those who don't appreciate it, but freedom has to be fought for, protected and won by someone/somebodies somehow or the maze simply gets smaller and smaller thanks to indifferent and bad people.

--Brant

That's interesting, Brant. I don't see Ayn Rand as implying not needing people, just not needing government. Even the iconic highly idealized individualistic characters in AS relied heavily on the honesty, loyalty, and trustworthiness of others who shared their moral values... like Dagny relied on Eddie.

The only way I know to preserve the rights I inherited from those who came before me is to honor them by living a life deserving of those rights. Ayn Rand's openly expressed love of American Capitalism inspired me to become one.

And I share your love of the wistful beauty of abandoned rail right of ways... enough to scale model one on in my yard.

Greg

I know you have a train for those tracks because the top of them is shiny.

--Brant

did it break down and you didn't know how to get it going again?--did a wagon train come down your street which you refused to join?

My train is human powered...

[moralist]

You don't, apparently.

No, I don't.

[Ellen Stuttle]

You don't, apparently.

No, I don't.

Repeating (I think this post was overlooked, since it appeared just a couple minutes before one of Carol's):

And when Dagny didn't need Eddie anymore, she abandoned him. Nice one, Dags. Loyalty is a one-way street.in fictional Randland, leading to a dead end.

Eddie told Dagny to leave without him and that he didn't want to go.

Ellen

[moralist]

You don't, apparently.

No, I don't.

Repeating (I think this post was overlooked, since it appeared just a couple minutes before one of Carol's):

And when Dagny didn't need Eddie anymore, she abandoned him. Nice one, Dags. Loyalty is a one-way street.in fictional Randland, leading to a dead end.

Eddie told Dagny to leave without him and that he didn't want to go.

Ellen

Thanks for the reminder, Ellen.

While I didn't remember the content of the exchange between Dagny and Eddie, I would have remembered if she had betrayed him because it would have seemed to be out of character.

Greg

[moralist]

...and on the topic of Jews. You just have to see this movie, "The Infidel". It's a good natured comedy about a Muslim who discovers he was born Jewish and adopted by Muslims, so he prevails on his neighbor to teach him how to be Jewish. You will laugh out loud at this one.

Here's the trailer...

[9thdoctor]

Franscisco mentioned that he came to New York to get a meal at some Deli. It had a distinctly Jewish name.

"She reached for the paper and opened it.

The story said that Senor Francisco d'Anconia had granted an interview to the press in his suite at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel. He said that he had come to New York for two important reasons: a hat-check girl at the Cub Club, and the liverwurst at Moe's Delicatessen on Third Avenue."

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Part 1, Chapter 4

You really shouldn't believe anything the papers write about Frisco. Liverwurst? Feh!

[Brant Gaede]

Some people have made career choices that help make the world safe for people like Greg. If there were no such as he we'd all be Spartans fighting the Persians. When I get off work, I be like Greg. When I be at work, I be like Robert.

--Brant

"Bang, Bang! I shot him down! Bang, Bang!"

[moralist]

Some people have made career choices that help make the world safe for people like Greg.

I know... I'm one of them.

I'm a VFW.

Greg

[Robert Baratheon]

I know... I'm one of them.

I'm a VFW.

Greg

If wars made nations safer, Somalia must be the safest place on Earth at the moment. I believe his Spartans comment was a metaphor for the political activity you consider beneath you.

[moralist]

I know... I'm one of them.

I'm a VFW.

Greg

If wars made nations safer, Somalia must be the safest place on Earth at the moment. I believe his Spartans comment was a metaphor for the political activity you consider beneath you.

I'm actually quite politically active, and am the President of our local Tea Party Patriots. But that is not for me, it's for the sake of others. I just understand that I'm the only one who is personally responsible for my own freedom by living a life deserving of it.

Greg

[Robert Baratheon]

I'm actually quite politically active, and am the President of our local Tea Party Patriots. But that is not for me, it's for the sake of others. I just understand that I'm the only one who is personally responsible for my own freedom by living a life deserving of it.

Greg

Well kudos for taking that responsibility. I'm not sure how you reconcile that political activity with your assertions alongside President Obama that, basically, the government is us and we have nothing to fear from it. Why fight for reform if everyone is simply getting their just deserts under the current system? But regardless, I am glad you are doing so, and I find that to be a much more coherent morality than the agorist withdrawal you were preaching here earlier.

[BaalChatzaf]

I'm actually quite politically active, and am the President of our local Tea Party Patriots. But that is not for me, it's for the sake of others. I just understand that I'm the only one who is personally responsible for my own freedom by living a life deserving of it.

Greg

Well kudos for taking that responsibility. I'm not sure how you reconcile that political activity with your assertions alongside President Obama that, basically, the government is us and we have nothing to fear from it. Why fight for reform if everyone is simply getting their just deserts under the current system? But regardless, I am glad you are doing so, and I find that to be a much more coherent morality than the agorist withdrawal you were preaching here earlier.

The Government is NOT us. That is what They want you to think..... The Government is Them, and we hates them, preciousssss.......

Ba'al Chatzaf

[moralist]

I'm actually quite politically active, and am the President of our local Tea Party Patriots. But that is not for me, it's for the sake of others. I just understand that I'm the only one who is personally responsible for my own freedom by living a life deserving of it.

Greg

Well kudos for taking that responsibility. I'm not sure how you reconcile that political activity with your assertions alongside President Obama that, basically, the government is us and we have nothing to fear from it. Why fight for reform if everyone is simply getting their just deserts under the current system? But regardless, I am glad you are doing so, and I find that to be a much more coherent morality than the agorist withdrawal you were preaching here earlier.

Rather than being withdrawn like you are assuming, I'm just not emotionally upset because I realize that how I live is what determines my own personal experience of getting the government I deserve. What others choose to do is up to them.This is why I'm not afraid of government, because government answers to the same moral law that I do.

Why fight for reform if everyone is getting what they deserve under the present system?

Because everyone has to go through that process in order to realize that only they have the power to change the government they deserve by first reforming their own lives. Personally, I have no problem with my own direct personal experience of getting the government I deserve, even under the present system. because the government answers to the moral values by which I live. So as long as I'm not corrupted by the system, the government has no other choice than to do right by me.

See? I'm the one with the real power... not the government. The government's only power is opportunism, and cannot oppress me without me first granting it my sanction to become a victim of its oppression. How each of us lives is what either grants or withholds our sanction to become victims of government oppression.

The only reason the government is the way it is, is because not enough people are living right. When enough people are, the government will graciously acquiesce to the overwhelming strength of their morality.

There will be an opportunity to describe exactly how people have become slaves of the government they deserve... but that's for some other thread.

Take an extreme example of two people each with two completely different experiences of the same government. A mass murderer experiences a government that tracks him down to kill him for his evil acts... while a law abiding person is free to go wherever he wants without seeing any government.

I'm involved politically to do my part to help others understand their own personal responsibility. It is impossible to help others to free themselves if you have not first freed yourself.

Take the example of John Galt.

He freed himself first.

Then he was able to help others free themselves.

This is how it is with everyone.

[BaalChatzaf]

Rather than being withdrawn like you are assuming, I'm just not emotionally upset because I realize that how I live is what determines my own personal experience of getting the government I deserve. What others choose to do is up to them.This is why I'm not afraid of government, because government answers to the same moral law that I do.

But the Government has more guns and ammunition than you do.

Ba'a; Chatzaf

[moralist]

Rather than being withdrawn like you are assuming, I'm just not emotionally upset because I realize that how I live is what determines my own personal experience of getting the government I deserve. What others choose to do is up to them.This is why I'm not afraid of government, because government answers to the same moral law that I do.

But the Government has more guns and ammunition than you do.

Ba'a; Chatzaf

They're supposed to have more... and I'm ok with that, because the government is no more above the law than I am.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

Rather than being withdrawn like you are assuming, I'm just not emotionally upset because I realize that how I live is what determines my own personal experience of getting the government I deserve. What others choose to do is up to them.This is why I'm not afraid of government, because government answers to the same moral law that I do.

But the Government has more guns and ammunition than you do.

Ba'a; Chatzaf

They're supposed to have more... and I'm ok with that, because the government is no more above the law than I am.

Greg

A completely naive statement.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Brant,

Not totally naive so long as checks and balances operates relatively well.

The moment that goes down the crapper, then that imbalance of guns will be a real problem for society. That is if people want freedom.

Until then, the system of checks and balances isn't perfect, but it does give folks eventual redress against abuses, or at least a decent shot at it.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

Not totally naive so long as checks and balances operates relatively well.

The moment that goes down the crapper, then that imbalance of guns will be a real problem for society. That is if people want freedom.

Until then, the system of checks and balances isn't perfect, but it does give folks eventual redress against abuses, or at least a decent shot at it.

Michael

Ah, a somewhat naive statement?

--Brant