Glenn Beck in D.C.

[kiaer.ts]

A woman in her inaction to abort a fetus before it reaches quickening (about 100 days after her missed period) has by default brought upon herself the obligation not to murder the now sentient child in her womb.

Actions have consequences.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dennis,

I wish you had been around to tell Rand to dispense with the name-calling and that we are all grown-up, etc. Those are her words.

I have gone over all this before. See this post (it has some of the Rand quotes).

But I will repeat one. Do you think the following is nonsense? It is from the The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. IV, No. 2 November-December 1975, "A Last Survey--Part I, and she claims that disagreement with her is nonsense:

Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a "right to life." A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term.

This is what Rand asserts. Those are her words.

I want to interject an aside here so we are talking about the same thing. When I say a Christian is trying to be rational, I am not including the part about believing in God. I am talking about maintaining logical consistency from a premise. Just because a person uses faith for believing in God, that does not mean he is a blithering idiot incapable of saying 2 + 2 = 4, nor that he uses faith to arrive at that conclusion. There are two meanings of "rational" here, yours, which means rational all the way down to the metaphysics, and mine which means using a process of logical reasoning. Both are right because a word can have more than one meaning, but I was not using the meaning you were using.

As to your post, let's see if we can agree on terminology. Is it fair to say your position is that a fetus is an individual human life, but because it is biologically dependent on the mother for feeding and shelter, it should not have legal protection for any right to life?

If so, I believe this is a position that is easier to defend than Rand's, where she said that the fetus has "no life in the human sense of the term."

As to ignoring your arguments, I did not ignore them. Once I stated that I disagreed with the premise on which they are predicated, there is no way to discuss them without going over and over and over the same premise as the reason why. Also, I have heard them a bazillion times and rebutted them, always going back to disagreeing with the premise.

Here's an example. You said you did not understand the relevance of what I include in human nature, then did the same thing I said people always do with my argument, talked about slavery and me wanting to enslave everybody. I have heard this particular argument so often, with the refusal or inability to look at what I am talking about, that I actually will ignore it this time around. Same old same old. I am trying to resolve a logical problem, the collision of two rights based on current definitions and trying to arrive at more precise definitions, not advocating slavery of "the rest of the human race."

I have a question. You stated:

In Objectivism, volition is the hierarchical philosophical antecedent to the concept of rights.

I wish Rand had been as clear as you on this point, but she is only so by implication, i.e., ethics are based on conceptual volition (using survival as ultimate standard) and rights are based on ethics.

In her essay, "Man's Rights," she does not even use the word "volition." She does say, though (and this is an exact quote): "the source of rights is man's nature." I think the first quote shows that she does not consider a fetus to bear "man's nature."

But on to my question. Do you believe a newborn infant has volition? If so, how do you know? From what acts does he demonstrate it?

If not, what is the "antecedent to the concept of rights" for the newborn's right to life, or does it not yet have any rights in your conception?

Michael

[Philip Coates]

> First of all, let’s dispense with the “evil and vicious” nonsense. We are intelligent people trying to resolve a dilemma. [Dennis]

> I wish you had been around to tell Rand to dispense with the name-calling and that we are all grown-up, etc. [MSK]

Michael, I guess you must have missed the fact that you can't defend something just because Rand did it.

That she often used ad hominems and name calling herself and so you can't just defend doing it for that reason.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

> First of all, let's dispense with the "evil and vicious" nonsense. We are intelligent people trying to resolve a dilemma. [Dennis]

> I wish you had been around to tell Rand to dispense with the name-calling and that we are all grown-up, etc. [MSK]

Michael, I guess you must have missed the fact that you can't defend something just because Rand did it.

That she often used ad hominems and name calling herself and so you can't just defend doing it for that reason.

Phil,

(sigh)

Please take your foot out of your mouth and read MY post before you criticize it. Here are my own words Dennis was referring to:

And even if it were not a flawed premise, the traditional Objectivist argument has basically boiled down to "You are wrong and I am right," then there are comments about enslaving the mother. Rand even throws in that anyone who dares to entertain disagreeing with her on this is evil and vicious.

Dennis's comment was that we can dispense Rand's excesses from our own discussion since we are intelligent people trying work through an idea.

Dayaamm!

Talk about normative before cognitive! I honestly think you just had a Pavlovian reaction.

Diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!!!

Bitchin' time!

Michael

[mfgreaves]

GW Said:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

For now, I strongly believe that the correct thing is to recognize the past as it happened, not as some historians (starting with Woodrow Wilson) tried to make it. If that means accepting the fact that the Founding Fathers (with a few exceptions) were Christians, if their own words prove that, then that is what we have to accept. Facts are facts and by all means, let us look at the Founding Fathers' own words, not some interpretation by an historian.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Michael you said that: "if their own words prove that, then that is what we have to accept."

They were politicians, right? Their lips were moving, right? What conclusions can we draw?

Only that that is what they said; not that that is what they believed.

Washington obviously believed that religion could be usefully leveraged to promote public order. That is the only thing that we can be sure of; not his religious beliefs.

Mike

[mfgreaves]

Next you will be claiming that God created the fossils of the dinosaurs in order to fool the godless scientists, and that patriarchal dead white men invented the Roman empire in order to keep the LGBTQ community down.

Ted,

I've probably had too much wine, but what is it that you're referring to with the 2nd part of that sentence (the LGBTQ bit)?

Thanks very much.

Mike

[kiaer.ts]

Next you will be claiming that God created the fossils of the dinosaurs in order to fool the godless scientists, and that patriarchal dead white men invented the Roman empire in order to keep the LGBTQ community down.

Ted,

I've probably had too much wine, but what is it that you're referring to with the 2nd part of that sentence (the LGBTQ bit)?

Thanks very much.

Mike

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Mike,

The only thing I am sure of is that there are a bunch of historians yelling at each other--and they have managed to get people who would prefer the Founding Fathers to be this or that to yell right along with them.

The ONLY way I know of to get any kind of correct conclusion whatsoever is to refer to original documents and to use the biographer's standard of accepting first-hand accounts by least two people who did not know each other as likely.

As far as historians are concerned, now my starting point, credibility-wise, is to take them in the same manner I take a Hollywood movie.

When I saw a Glenn Beck show where he said that they eliminated Daniel Boone (who was not a founding father, but he definitely has a place in American history) from public education, I commented about this to Tina, Kat's daughter, who is now in college. (I lived in Brazil for 32 years, so I missed a lot of stuff that went on here and I have only been with Kat for about 4 years.)

Our conversation went something like this:

ME: I start getting enthusiastic about Glenn Beck, then he says something so far out, it's hard to take him seriously. I just saw him say that they didn't teach your generation about Daniel Boon in high school. How ridiculous is that?

(chuckling in disbelief)

TINA: Who?

ME: Daniel Boone!

TINA: Never heard of him.

I looked at her in stupefaction. I thought: How dare they? Those sons of bitches really have been altering school history books! They're teaching the kids wrong on purpose as indoctrination!

Since then, I have been taking a hard look at history. I tend to accept Beck's views at first, but in an "agree but verify" frame of mind, and with an understanding that he will have a religious bias. So far, I have not seen him distort history, but there is a butt-load of reading I have to do (and so little time to do it).

He constantly tells people to do that, too. He says don't take his word for anything, but do your own research. Whether you agree with a man like that or not, you have to respect his position. He's not out to lie to you.

One thing I will not do anymore is accept stock opinions about our Founding Fathers. The whole field of history has lost credibility with me.

Were they Christians? I think that is very likely given the fact that the majority of the USA was back then. But I will read and come to my own independent conclusions.

As far as George Washington is concerned, I think it is more likely he was Christian than not. I have read that he was Anglican. He had to make a bunch of denominations that did not like each other find common ground, so keeping his own views broad enough to do that was a wise course. Here is a book Beck has put on the Amazon best-seller list. The Real George Washington (American Classic Series) by Jay Parry and Andrew Allison. I haven't read this yet, but the Amazon description says, "... rather than focus on the interpretations of historians, much of his exciting story is told in his own words."

I haven't read that yet, but that looks like a good start. I did read a bio of Washington right before I came to the USA (about 2004): Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner. I don't recall where this fell on the Founding Father religion controversy, but then again I was not looking for anything like that back then. It wasn't important and I was reading this for pleasure.

I wish I could go back to that innocent mindset because I remember really enjoying that bio, but I have read too much yelling about the religion thing to take simple trusting pleasure in Founding Father bios anymore. Now I'm damaged goods. I realize that everyone has an agenda--and that conveying the truth is not their agenda. Call it coming of age or something...

Michael

[kiaer.ts]

I haven't read that yet, but that looks like a good start. I did read a bio of Washington right before I came to the USA (about 2004): Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner. I don't recall where this fell on the Founding Father religion controversy, but then again I was not looking for anything like that back then. It wasn't important and I was reading this for pleasure.

I recall watching a show around 2004 about Washington's education and that he owned a book on stoic philosophy and was highly influenced by it. This book rings a bell, but the word stoic doesn't appear in the index.

[Dennis Hardin]

Dennis:

Is your position then, that fetal rights are dependent upon viability?

Adam

Adam,

Yes, absolutely. The mother can no longer claim the right to end a life that is not dependent on her biologically.

So does that make me the devil? I've been called worse.

In fact, I've been called worse today.

Dennis:

Lol.

Not my style. The problem that will arise, is that as technology advances, the issue of viability of the "fetus" or "x-entity" that is in the womb moves closer and closer to the actual impregnation.

Therefore, you will be on that slippery slope of defending a position that will be sliding out from under you as technology becomes more proficient at sustaining premature "x-entity" survival.

Adam

Adam,

I’ve heard Peikoff argue for using the severed umbilical cord as the beginning point for rights for precisely that reason: that technology will eventually enable medical science to make any embryo at any stage viable.

But there’s another factor involved, and that’s cost: the technology for keeping a premature baby alive can amount to several hundred thousand dollars, and of course the survival rate may still be pretty small. The average person is simply not able to afford that kind of expense. So requiring that a woman pay for this technology does just as much damage to a woman’s life as carrying an unwanted fetus to term.

So the criterion of viability would have to be something equivalent to the cost of normal delivery. Otherwise we are imposing an unconscionable financial obligation on the mother that would constitute such an overwhelming burden as to be a violation of her right to her own life and future.

So does this amount to placing a dollar value on nascent human life? You could argue that position plausibly, but I think that’s a superficial analysis. The bottom line is that her freedom is taken away through no choice of her own, by a human life that cannot exist independently. This is the same sort of dependency relationship which applies to orphan children and the debilitated. This is not true with normal term delivery or its premature equivalent, because parental obligations are clearly incurred at that stage.

[Dennis Hardin]

Dennis,

Do you think the following is nonsense? It is from the The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. IV, No. 2 November-December 1975, "A Last Survey--Part I, and she claims that disagreement with her is nonsense:

Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a "right to life." A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term.

This is what Rand asserts. Those are her words.

I think this is fairly typical Randian hyperbole. I remember hearing her tell TV talk show host Les Crane that she would never refer to important ethical questions as “nonsense.” She violated her own rule here. On the other hand, she was talking about the earliest stages of embryonic development, prior to any semblance of a brain or nervous system, so I agree with her conclusion. By the way, I'm sure you are aware that, in the sentence which follows that quote, she clearly stated that these issues take on a whole different character in the latter stages of pregnancy.

As to your post, let's see if we can agree on terminology. Is it fair to say your position is that a fetus is an individual human life, but because it is biologically dependent on the mother for feeding and shelter, it should not have legal protection for any right to life?

If so, I believe this is a position that is easier to defend than Rand's, where she said that the fetus has "no life in the human sense of the term."

Yes, that’s my position.

I have a question. You stated:

In Objectivism, volition is the hierarchical philosophical antecedent to the concept of rights.

I wish Rand had been as clear as you on this point, but she is only so by implication, i.e., ethics are based on conceptual volition (using survival as ultimate standard) and rights are based on ethics.

In her essay, "Man's Rights," she does not even use the word "volition." She does say, though (and this is an exact quote): "the source of rights is man's nature." I think the first quote shows that she does not consider a fetus to bear "man's nature."

Although she does not use the word volition, Rand does state in “Man’s Rights” that rights are derived from the actions required by the nature of a rational being—and no doubt you are aware that she views rationality and thought as volitional. She also specifically refers to “voluntary, uncoerced choice.” See the excerpt below. Volition, of course, means the ability to make one’s own choices.

A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)

The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.

Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.

Ayn Rand, “Man’s Rights”

But on to my question. Do you believe a newborn infant has volition? If so, how do you know? From what acts does he demonstrate it?

If not, what is the "antecedent to the concept of rights" for the newborn's right to life, or does it not yet have any rights in your conception?

Yes, absolutely, a newborn infant has volition because it has a human brain and therefore the capacity for reason. The exercise of reason requires volitional effort. The newborn is unlikely to be engaging in extensive inductive or syllogistic analysis, of course, but the capacity for reasoning—and volition—is still there, and the infant does have rights because of this.

[mfgreaves]

Next you will be claiming that God created the fossils of the dinosaurs in order to fool the godless scientists, and that patriarchal dead white men invented the Roman empire in order to keep the LGBTQ community down.

Ted,

I've probably had too much wine, but what is it that you're referring to with the 2nd part of that sentence (the LGBTQ bit)?

Thanks very much.

Mike

No, I didn't need a RuPaul video as an LGBTQ illustration.

I was wondering about the "invention of the Roman empire" keeping RuPaul down, if you will.

(I got the "God created the fossils" conspiracy, just not the 2nd conspiracy.)

Thanks very much.

Mike

[mfgreaves]

I just saw him say that they didn't teach your generation about Daniel Boone in high school. How ridiculous is that? (chuckling in disbelief)

TINA: Who?

ME: Daniel Boone!

TINA: Never heard of him.

...but there is a butt-load of reading I have to do (and so little time to do it).

The story of our lives! Books jump on my reading list faster than I now retire them...

Daniel Boone was my very favorite hero, when I was 7. And I'm not even an American!

Thanks for your thoughts, Michael.

Mike

[kiaer.ts]

Next you will be claiming that God created the fossils of the dinosaurs in order to fool the godless scientists, and that patriarchal dead white men invented the Roman empire in order to keep the LGBTQ community down.

Ted,

I've probably had too much wine, but what is it that you're referring to with the 2nd part of that sentence (the LGBTQ bit)?

Thanks very much.

Mike

No, I didn't need a RuPaul video as an LGBTQ illustration.

I was wondering about the "invention of the Roman empire" keeping RuPaul down, if you will.

(I got the "God created the fossils" conspiracy, just not the 2nd conspiracy.)

Thanks very much.

Mike

Well, you've got to love RuPaul, so any excuse to post Supermodel.

I was being hyperbolic, referring to the anti-dead white men, "down with the patriarchy" tribe. You are aware that there is a movement, for example, to stop teaching US History prior to 1877? http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/02/03/north-carolina-schools-cut-chunk-history-lessons/

[mfgreaves]

Well, you've got to love RuPaul, so any excuse to post Supermodel.

I was being hyperbolic, referring to the anti-dead white men, "down with the patriarchy" tribe. You are aware that there is a movement, for example, to stop teaching US History prior to 1877? http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/02/03/north-carolina-schools-cut-chunk-history-lessons/

Ahh. Now I get the drift.

Thanks.

Mike

[kiaer.ts]

Robert Tracinski on the impact of Ayn Rand at the 9/12 Tea Party rally:

TIA Daily • September 13, 2010

COMMENTARY

"Remember in November"

On Sunday, I went to the 9/12 Tea Party march on Washington. The turnout was much smaller than last year—my somewhat unscientific estimate is 100,000 people, and I would certainly guess it was no more than 20% of last year's turnout. So does that mean that the Tea Party movement is running out of momentum? Not at all, because the political context and purpose of this year's rally was very different.

But first I want to note that the big political motive for holding these rallies is different from my own personal motive for going to them.

The only proper way for an Objectivist to experience one of the big Tea Party rallies is to carry a big sign with some kind of reference to Ayn Rand or Atlas Shrugged, which guarantees that you will be continually stopped by people wanting to take photos of your sign and giving you a thumbs-up, that you will make contact with other Objectivists in the crowd, and that total strangers will come up to you and gush about what a great book Atlas is. There were the four people wearing matching "Who Is John Galt?" T-shirts, the gaggle of students from a college Objectivist club, the lady with a "Shrug, Atlas, Shrug" banner who came running over to give me a hug, the grandmother who declared she was on page 800 and loved the novel, and on and on. Which is to say that it was a little taste of what life ought to be like every day.

That kind of experience is an end in itself. I couldn't stop smiling.

It will also disarm you of any fundamental skepticism you might have about the Tea Parties by giving you an idea of just how thoroughly the movement is honeycombed with Objectivist sympathizers.

That brings me to a comment from a reader who expressed concern about the number of references to God and religion in the speeches at the event. These were not constant or dominant by any means—the wasn't the Glenn Beck rally by any means—but they were uniformly sprinkled through the event. Yet my experience with the big Tea Party rallies is that the speeches are only part of the event. When I ask fellow Tea Partiers what they like best, they usually talk about the experience of meeting other people and seeing everyone's signs.

The mostly homemade, frequently very creative signs are distinctive to the movement (that, and theGadsden Flag). They are a mark of the individualistic way in which the Tea Party movement is organized: everyone has their own message to bring to the event. I recommend picking up a copy ofDon't Tread on Us, a book that consists entirely of photos of signs from Tea Party rallies across the country. (Mine from a year ago shows up about three quarters of the way through.) This Sunday, there were not as many really good signs, simply due to the lower turnout, but I wanted to mention one that I hadn't seen before and really liked: "Give Me Capitalism or Give Me Death." Did you ever think you would see that on a poster?

But back to the speakers. Yes, there were frequent references to God—combined with even more constant references to liberty, the American Dream, individual rights, and yes, occasionally Ayn Rand. On this issue, what stands out in my mind was one speaker (I didn't catch his name) who made a reference to "freedom for religion, not freedom from religion," which made me grimace—but who then turned around and offered a very prominent recommendation of Atlas Shrugged. So there you have the intellectual mixture of the Tea Party movement. They stand for God and Ayn Rand. Yes, that's a contradiction, because Ayn Rand's philosophy is atheistic. But Ayn Rand is the newelement in the combination—and definitely the more powerful element, over the long run.

I am becoming convinced that this will be one of the long-term consequences of the Tea Party movement: that it will help make room for a more secular wing and more secular influence—particularly an Objectivist influence—within the right.

One more note on the speakers. I didn't catch all of the speeches; we tended to get caught up in conversations with other Tea Partiers, or with people asking to have their photographs taken with the "Atlas Will Shrug" sign. But by far the best speech I heard was from Ken Cuccinelli, our very own attorney general down here in Virginia, who talked about his lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare and the "individual mandate" that forces individuals to buy health insurance. Cuccinelli gave a terrific historical example of how, in the period leading up to the Revolutionary War, the American colonists announced a boycott of British goods. Parliament considered legislation forcing us to buy those goods, but they dropped it when parliamentary lawyers advised them that they could not force anyone to buy a specific product. Cuccinelli then concluded that the British Parliament under King George III showed more respect for Americans' rights than the current president and Congress.

Someone at the event asked me who I would like to see running on the Republican ticket for president in 2012. I have decided that Cucinelli is on my short list. Barring that, I hope he will run for Jim Webb's Senate seat.

Now back to the attendance figures for Sunday's rally. Ordinarily, the real practical purpose of these events is to be a head count. The idea is to impress our representatives in Congress with our enormous numbers, sending the message that they better vote the way we want or they won't be re-elected. That was definitely the purpose of last year's rally: to block the health care bill by showing that a million people will rally against it in Washington, representing millions more voters back home.

But last year, we showed our numbers and our representatives ignored us, so we all concluded that the only way to keep them from destroying our freedom is to remove them from office. We're no longer trying to influence them; we're simply resolved to vote them out. We don't need to show our numbers at a rally; we need to show them at the voting booths.

That was the biggest recurring theme in the day's speeches and signs, expressed as "Remember in November," "November Is Coming," or even "I Can See November from My House." (The reference is to the Saturday Night Live parody of Sarah Palin, and it shows the peculiar magic of the Palin phenomenon. Even her missteps are used to stoke support among her fans, as evidenced by the two Palin supporters I saw with T-shirts showing the Obama campaign logo stamped with the word "refudiate"—the world's most famous Twitter typo.)

Not everyone is waiting until November, mind you, and it looks like there may be yet another shakeup in Tuesday's primaries, with a Tea Party radical about to knock out the pro-cap-and-trade establishment Republican in Delaware. (More on that soon.) But everyone in the Tea Party movement is focused with grim determination on November 2.

So the real purpose of the rally over the weekend was for us to enjoy the pageantry and carnival atmosphere, the sense of being with a large group of people who share our belief in the irreplaceable value of liberty. And the purpose was to keep up our spirits and our momentum in preparation for the election, because the slogan is right: what matters is that we Remember in November and wipe out the Democrats for showing such unprecedented contempt for the governed.—RWT