Nice NBranden Quote


Christopher

Recommended Posts

"Philosophical principles are no substitute for thinking, yet many Objectivists act as if they were."

Just seems relevant right now to post this :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chris:

Excellent first half of a quote.

Do you think this intellectual disability is mystically limited to Objectivists?

Reminds me of the Zero Mostell line from The Producers when he is trying to convince Kenneth Mars to go and kill the actors like Dick Shawn who plays Hitler.

Gene Wilder goes, "Kill the actors!" You can't do that ...actors are people too!"

And Mostell whirls on him and says, "Yeah, have you ever eaten with them?"

So, have you eaten with any leftists lately?

Adam

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chris:

Excellent first half of a quote.

Do you think this intellectual disability is mystically limited to Objectivists?

Reminds me of the Zero Mostell line from The Producers when he is trying to convince Kenneth Mars to go and kill the actors like Dick Shawn who plays Hitler.

Gene Wilder goes, "Kill the actors!" You can't do that ...actors are people too!"

And Mostell whirls on him and says, "Yeah, have you ever eaten with them?"

So, have you eaten with any leftists lately?

Adam

Ugghh.... Adam, I agree with you about Leftists, but I think it goes without saying. I like this quote because it calls for self-attention to people conforming to Objectivist values.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chris:

Excellent first half of a quote.

Do you think this intellectual disability is mystically limited to Objectivists?

Reminds me of the Zero Mostell line from The Producers when he is trying to convince Kenneth Mars to go and kill the actors like Dick Shawn who plays Hitler.

Gene Wilder goes, "Kill the actors!" You can't do that ...actors are people too!"

And Mostell whirls on him and says, "Yeah, have you ever eaten with them?"

So, have you eaten with any leftists lately?

Adam

Ugghh.... Adam, I agree with you about Leftists, but I think it goes without saying. I like this quote because it calls for self-attention to people conforming to Objectivist values.

OK, Chris - fair enough just wanted to make sure..

Adam

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Adam, I have to ammend my statement. It also goes without saying regarding "rightists." I hold leftists and rightists to the same standards. My experience has shown me that affiliation to any party alone is wholly insufficient for judgment. I thought of a great quote over last weekend , and lo! here we are in the quotation section:

Anybody who does not affiliate to at least two political parties is wrong. :huh:

A lot of political parties are placed on dichotomous scales that create artificial conflicts. Therefore, anyone who cannot embrace aspects of both sides of a political scale artificially restrict their ability to maintain a consistent, non-conflictual value system imo. And of course, anyone who adheres to a single political platform very strongly tends to emphasize (in my experience) more of a group-affiliative mindset than an individual mindset. Here's a funny observation which I am putting up because of the conservative slant on this forum:

I have found that normal people who are Republicans act like Republicans.

I have found that Objectivists who are Republicans act like Republicans.

I have found that Objectivists claim to act more knowledgeably than normal people. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Adam, I have to ammend my statement. It also goes without saying regarding "rightists." I hold leftists and rightists to the same standards. My experience has shown me that affiliation to any party alone is wholly insufficient for judgment. I thought of a great quote over last weekend , and lo! here we are in the quotation section:

Anybody who does not affiliate to at least two political parties is wrong. :huh:

A lot of political parties are placed on dichotomous scales that create artificial conflicts. Therefore, anyone who cannot embrace aspects of both sides of a political scale artificially restrict their ability to maintain a consistent, non-conflictual value system imo. And of course, anyone who adheres to a single political platform very strongly tends to emphasize (in my experience) more of a group-affiliative mindset than an individual mindset. Here's a funny observation which I am putting up because of the conservative slant on this forum:

I have found that normal people who are Republicans act like Republicans.

I have found that Objectivists who are Republicans act like Republicans.

I have found that Objectivists claim to act more knowledgeably than normal people. :)

Chris:

How does a Republican act?

Adam

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chris:

How does a Republican act?

Adam

Adam, that is a good question. Take a look at them on the street, watch what their politicians do.

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chris:

Do they wear elephant costume hats? Or do they have scarlet red "R's" branded on their foreheads?

How do you recognize them?

Adam

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chris:

Do they wear elephant costume hats? Or do they have scarlet red "R's" branded on their foreheads?

How do you recognize them?

Adam

I look for the unwillingness to listen, the frothing at the mouth about the economy, and the character-judgment attacks... but hey, this goes for both parties, and that's precisely my point.

Don't you find it weird that sometimes you post an interesting idea, make one semi-relevant (if that) example, then find your ideas are glossed over and the amusing example becomes the focus? :mellow:

oh geez... I just have to add... I know a lot of Republicans personally (family and friends) who are either retired teachers or government employees. They say the budget needs to be cut, but when you suggest cutting retirement benefits (quite the luxury relative to private-corporation employees).. wow! no way!

Edited by Christopher
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chris:

Do they wear elephant costume hats? Or do they have scarlet red "R's" branded on their foreheads?

How do you recognize them?

Adam

I look for the unwillingness to listen, the frothing at the mouth about the economy, and the character-judgment attacks... but hey, this goes for both parties, and that's precisely my point.

Don't you find it weird that sometimes you post an interesting idea, make one semi-relevant (if that) example, then find your ideas are glossed over and the amusing example becomes the focus? :mellow:

oh geez... I just have to add... I know a lot of Republicans personally (family and friends) who are either retired teachers or government employees. They say the budget needs to be cut, but when you suggest cutting retirement benefits (quite the luxury relative to private-corporation employees).. wow! no way!

See, I know Republicans who are radical libertarians, not the current abortion parading as a political party, anarcho-capitalists and a whole host of weird and kinky folks, but I guess you surround yourself with alleged "teachers" in public education or folks surviving on the public teat at your own risk.

Adam

Edited by Selene
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The fact of the matter is that political parties are truly defined by their social status and social agendas. We could take a more post-modernistic approach and say that the definition of a social party is the sum of all the perspectives that its members bring to that party. However, in either case, affiliation to that social party is affiliation to any number of externally-defined, often contradictory, perspectives.

You might have your own definition of the left or the right, but when you affiliate to the concrete group on either side, you are affiliating not to your definition but to that of the group's. Therefore, to claim an affiliation to either group while concurrently claiming an Objective view of the world is to be necessarily in conflict, to be a product of the group at the expense of the self.

Hence, anyone who claims to be of affiliated to a single political party tends to act indistinctly from other members of that party (with a few exceptions). This is so blaringly obvious to me Adam that I can't believe you aren't agreeing on the basic principle of the thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The essential aphorism that birds of a feather flock together?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would say that the contemporary GOP is simply an organization which wants to keep the levers of power (and with it, money) in its hands by whatever means it can, and for whom real conservatives are generally simply useful idiots, who are expected to docilely send in contributions and cast votes as long as the party apparatus maintains the appearance of being loyal to conservative principles. Rather like the wife who keeps forgiving a chronicly adulterous husband.

I can't help feeling that the current GOP opposition to Obamacare is not based on principled belief about what is best for this country--this is the party apparatus which after all put Medicare Part D into place, among other things--but on the desire to oppose and hopefully defeat Obama whenever they can.

One indication: the man who Charlie Crist named to fill out Mel Martinez's term in the Senate was a few years ago the GOP chief in my own county, and for a time Crist's chief of staff. He also graduated from my own university (Emory), eleven years after I did. Despite this double dose of six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-ness, I didn't recognize his name at all. I probably saw him quoted in the local news, and filed it away as the remarks of the GOP's hired hack. Now his function is to keep the Senate seat warm for Crist (at least, that is what Crist hopes--a legislator who is more of a real conservative is running against him in the GOP primary). He's pretty much a knock off of Crist, which means he might vote for Obamacare and a few other things. Crist, remember, was the only (or almost the only) GOP governor who endorsed Obama's stimulus package (because it meant more money for Florida's government--he was at least honest about his motivation). Between his rounds of service to Crist, he's a partner at a law firm which has an important place in the state government/lobbyist loop.

One can only hope that one day the wife will finally realize there is no hope and kick the husband out of the house, or move out herself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Philosophical principles are no substitute for thinking, yet many Objectivists act as if they were."

Just seems relevant right now to post this :P

Starting this thread is a passive aggressive attack on posters whom Christopher sees as attacking him from the right. That they are doing this from partisanship is projection:

FEELING VICTIMIZED - The p/a man protests that others unfairly accuse him rather than owning up to his own misdeeds. To remain above reporach, he sets himself up as the apparently hapless, innocent victim of your excessive demands and tirades.

Note the insult to unnamed parties, with a smiley face:

AMBIGUITY - He is master of mixed messages and sitting on fences. When he tells you something, you may still walk away wondering if he actually said yes or no.

The nonsense about how one should identify with two parties:

My experience has shown me that affiliation to any party alone is wholly insufficient for judgment. I thought of a great quote over last weekend , and lo! here we are in the quotation section:"Anybody who does not affiliate to at least two political parties is wrong."

is exactly that, nonsense. One's adherence is to reality, reason, self-interest and freedom. There might be one party, many or none that stands for freedom. But a party is not even a constitutionally recognized institution. It's merely a faction conspiring to achieve control of elective office, primarily the legislature. Our country could do entirely without parties. Party affiliation should be removed from the ballot. (It serves only to benefit parties - voters should be voting for candidates, not factions.) Since parties are just conglomerations of people who pledge to support each other they have no essential ideology other than us versus them. Given this, how is adherence to two conspiratorial factions somehow better than adherence to one, or none, or all?

Once again we have rationalism run amok. We have an essentially emotional goal: "I am being attacked; I think the people attacking me seem to affiliate with one party; I can't openly affiliate with the other party; how can I prove my superiority? I adhere to both sides! Adhering to two parties must be a principle!"

Of course this divorces one from both principle - adhering not to party, but to reality, reason, self-interest and freedom - and divorces one from recognition of the merits of particular candidates and policies regardless of party platform or affiliation.

The solution? Worry about ideas. Not who holds them. Take criticism as an attack on flaws, not as a wish for personal destruction. Put forth one's own ideas as correct, not as better than Rand's or anyone else's. Focus on reality, not hurt emotion, not the opinions of others. Stand alone. Be a man.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now