Rand's Kind of Censorship!

[Brant Gaede]

Ouch. You certainly know how to hurt a guy.

Esthetics are on the next train.

--Brant

put another nickel in for your next question

[KorbenDallas]

I can do better than a nickel...  here's a quarter

 

[Brant Gaede]

13 hours ago, KorbenDallas said:

I can do better than a nickel...  here's a quarter

And where's the question?

Or, maybe you want to be "Big"?

Relax, I don't do that.

--Brant

[anthony]

19 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

This is not a teach Objectivism place except maybe ad hoc this or ad hoc that. I do see the philosophy as a train, a locomotive with four cars. The locomotive is people and the first car is metaphysics, the second epistemology, the third ethics and the fourth politics. To understand this one walks back and forth one car to the next noting how one leads logically to the next and why. To use the philosophy one puts the locomotive in motion and down you go on the self-laying tracks of your life.

--Brant

no car left behind

True of course and a fair analogy. But it's the reasoning behind such a "train", from metaphysics onwards, which I think is critical. (That reasoning to me would be your locomotive, btw, the driving force).

It's good and right that luminaries of the past (Locke, the Founding Fathers, etc. -- Rand) laid out a correct political system. However, short of a reasoned full justification of "why" it should be correct and of value and why anyone should be convinced by him/her, it might not rate much higher than one more intellectual's 'theory'. In order for the system to take hold and survive, every person (or most people) has to know with certainty that the system is proper to reality, based on the nature of man, autonomous, of free will and cognition, and that his happiness is his own totally, to pursue by his rationality and purpose unimpeded by anyone and any institution.

It is individual certainty, "conviction" and commitment which is required to hold to and live by the undeniable rightness of this political system (individual rights and laissez-faire), and importantly, a rational conviction for us to pass on to the next generations. Otherwise it can fall away eventually, as some half-forgotten historical figure's "theoretical laws", remembered only by future intellectuals.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, anthony said:

True of course and a fair analogy. But it's the reasoning behind such a "train", from metaphysics onwards, which I think is critical. (That reasoning to me would be your locomotive, btw, the driving force).

It's good and right that luminaries of the past (Locke, the Founding Fathers, etc. -- Rand) laid out a correct political system. However, short of a reasoned full justification of "why" it should be correct and of value and why anyone should be convinced by him/her, it might not rate much higher than one more intellectual's 'theory'. In order for the system to take hold and survive, every person (or most people) has to know with certainty that the system is proper to reality, based on the nature of man, autonomous, of free will and cognition, and that his happiness is his own totally, to pursue by his rationality and purpose unimpeded by anyone and any institution.

It is individual certainty, "conviction" and commitment which is required to hold to and live by the undeniable rightness of this political system (individual rights and laissez-faire), and importantly, a rational conviction for us to pass on to the next generations. Otherwise it can fall away eventually, as some half-forgotten historical figure's "theoretical laws", remembered only by future intellectuals.

 

The Founders left chattel slavery in place. It took a war with 2 million casualties  (625,000 dead, the rest grievously wounded)  to settle the matter.  The Founders did NOT lay out a correct political system.  Slavery  like a serpent lay coiled under the table  during the Constitutional convention of 1787

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

The Founders left chattel slavery in place. It took a war with 2 million casualties  (625,000 dead, the rest grievously wounded)  to settle the matter.  The Founders did NOT lay out a correct political system.  Slavery  like a serpent lay coiled under the table  during the Constitutional convention of 1787

The North didn't have to go to war to preserve the Union. The South could have been let go. What you have is State hubris--then and now. That was also apparent during the Constitutional Convention.

--Brant

send the fools to war--they'll think they're fighting for their country

[Peter]

Roark stands before a jury of his peers. He is ready to provide a defense for himself. Rand writes:

He stood by the steps of the witness stand. The audience looked at him. They felt he had no chance. They could drop the nameless resentment, the sense of insecurity which he aroused in most people. And so, for the first time, they could see him as he was: a man totally innocent of fear. The fear of which they thought was not the normal kind, not a response to a tangible danger, but the chronic, unconfessed fear in which they all lived. They remembered the misery of the moments when, in loneliness, a man thinks of the bright words he could have said, but had not found, and hates those who robbed him of his courage. The misery of knowing how strong and able one is in one's own mind, the radiant picture never to be made real. Dreams? Self-delusion? Or a murdered reality, unborn, killed by that corroding emotion without name - fear - need - dependence - hatred? Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own mind. But Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd - and they knew suddenly that no hatred was possible to him. For the flash of an instant, they grasped the manner of his consciousness. Each asked himself: do I need anyone's approval? - does it matter? - am I tied? And for that instant, each man was free - free enough to feel benevolence for every other man in the room. end quote

 

I hope I have not quoted this recently, but I am sure a lot of critics would have liked Roark's terroristic bombing to be censored. I have debated with myself whether Roark was *right* to do what he did.

Peter