DavidMcK

With reference to the 'Conan' link: It is interesting that the screen writer for 'Conan the Barbarian' was the movie director Oliver Stone...renowned for his conspiracy theory movie JFK and his anti-capitalist movies 'Wall Street' (with a sequel in the making I believe) as well as his strange 'Born Killers' which seems to celebrate spree killers. You can see his philosophy in that excerpt.

What he was defending is the idea that the American military is here for self-defense....of Americans and the North American continent. As someone else said on a different but related matter if the Objectivist Zionists want to fight for Israel in a free laissez faire non-interventionist capitalist political system no one will stop you.

By stylized I believe she meant something like 'almost mathematical'; note her description of Dominique's face in TF, with the rectangular eyes and how often people are described as having angular planes, etc. You could give countless examples and the one that comes to mind is in We The Living someone exclaims about a nature scene that it is almost artificial. It was connected to her epistemology also..the stick figure idea.

If I remember my college course in Art History correctly, the Greek statues were painted over after they were finished so the exquisite textures weren't in evidence.

Your preaching to a choir member; I've been singing the non-interventionist song since the first Gulf War when I was made sick by all of Bush's talk about a kinder gentler America before he goes in and kills 200 K people.

I decided to do a bit of further research on this and found this link: http://blog.ajmartinez.com/2010/04/05/wikileaks-collateral-murder/ The blogger points out that the screen that the soldiers had to look at was much smaller than what we see, and even though we can clearly see the two children sitting in the front seat of the van, the soldiers might not have been able to see or in the heat of the moment didn't realize what they were seeing. The cameras seem crystal clear on the wikileak video, but is it as obvious to the pilot and other soldiers? Perhaps not, and from the sound they certainly sound like they thought they were weapons. I'm not excusing all the laughing and congratulatory comments.

Watching this scares me and makes me sick to my stomach. I wonder how many 'normal' people just can't wait to kill somebody.

You sure that is Krygyzstan and not the Democrats trying to push a new health care plan?

I have to second (or third or fourth) my appreciation of this thread. I find the comparisons tedious also so I just skip to the bottom line usually, but there is much material in here that is new. I find it disturbing that the hardliners ignore so much in Rand that is suggestive of a non-interventionist foreign policy as well as her utter contempt of conservatives. Somehow Objectivism has resolved into an almost Christian Conservative movement and there was much in here that attacks that point of view from the grave. This has been a most interesting thread and many thanks.

There is also one other possibility: Convergent evolution. It is quite common for two people operating independently to come to common or similar conclusions since we all live in one frame of reference (the universe) e.g. Darwin and Wallace; Leibniz and Newton (calculus) and on and on. Goethe and Rand might fall into this category respecting art.

Welcome Bruce. Hmmm maybe I'm preparing for a career as an official greeter at WalMart in my old age.

Actually, the stimulus-response model is under question for animals too. N.B. referenced a work by a biologist...sorry I can't recall his name or the reference and my copy of 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem' isn't here in NY; but I actually spent the time to look up and read the biologists account and found it interesting and worth reading. Sorry to have such an inconclusive post but almost all my books are elsewhere.

I also saw on the local NY news the other night a proposal to ban fast food restaurants in low income areas...those poor people don't know what is good for themselves.

N. Branden endorses the concept of perceptual abstraction from a book 'The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes' Mortimer Adler...that was a long time ago and I don't know if contemporary psychologists and philosophers have pursued it. The stimulus response model has been severely criticized beyond repaid by n.b. among others.

This quotation is attributed to Maréchal Villars (1653-1734) when taking leave of King Louis XIV: "Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies" This quote is from a yahoo-answers person who found it in Bartlett's Quotations.

David, That's understandable and I agree with. I personally think everyone should learn how to survive on their own (at least as much as one reasonably can). For me it's a matter of peace of mind and not feeling as if I rely solely on the skills of others - especially when I'm more than capable of taking the time to learn for myself. It's also my general attitude: there's no reason I can't learn to sweat a pipe or wire an outlet if I have the time and desire to do so, so why not do it? I also don't like to rely on other people for my happiness or well being - so I eat well and exercise and find things to do that make me happy. I don't think I'm wrong to say that many Americans share a similar mindset - albeit it probably not to the exact same level that I happen to take things (some do more and some do less). That's why I feel that we're resilient enough to take on big problems, like this could potentially be, and come out of it okay. I love your attitude of self-reliance and I agree that people should do all the things you talk about. I was trying to get a bead on the 'middle of the road' attitude that I blame on the current situation. To get Republicans to defend to the death a huge budget is easy: just ask for 2x as much, go to the 'middle' then the next year ask for 2x, repeat and before long the middle of the roaders are defending to the death a budget, program, deficit or whatever that a few years earlier they were saying is too extreme. Watch the Republicans with health care, in 5 years they will be resisting any change to the program, and even thinking of ways to increase it. My example for this is the current U.S. budget deficit, Social Security...you name it. The middle keeps changing just as fast as the extremes...it doesn't hold.

Most of us here aren't survivalists who think that whatever happens if we physically survive we will be sanguine about the rest of the world. We care. We want the world to discover how to be happy. We want it for ourselves and others. We abhor the use of force and want to explain to others what happens when force is the tool to produce agreement rather than reason.

I agree whole-heartedly, and Roark and Galt never even seemed like real people to me (maybe Roark just barely..like an accountant or something). The word that sums up all the characteristics you describe is 'self-esteem' Francisco is an authentically self-esteeming person as are Dagny and Henry Rearden. Atlas is to some extent an exploration of the different ways, forms and shapes of self-esteem...in a woman it is different (but equal) to a man, in a more stoic character and in a lighter happier character. In a way it is about the psychology of self-esteem. Good post!

If it isn't Roark to Galt I don't know who else.

Great idea...I bet you're a Robert Heinlein fan.

I wonder if it would be legal and practical to create a kind of medical insurance Co-op. I couldn't do it because my workplace provides my medical insurance and if I opted out I wouldn't get a pay raise or anything, but other people without insurance may be able to pool their resources and insure themselves to escape the fines and stay out of this system. Sound like a lot of work to organize.

Do you think that when the House dems started chanting "Yes we can! Yes we can!" that this could be interpreted as a chant to reality...their reply in effect to anyone who says that you can't consume more than you produce?

I watched the house speeches before the vote, and every Republican said the same thing...that we needed to reform the health care system. No one said that the programs we already have are the problem. If you concede the main point what does it matter if you draw the line halfway between where the other side wants to be...they just keep asking for more and more till they get what they want. Give up on the Republicans: they will never never fight against government..they are a big part of the problem and not the solution.

I don't think multiplying entities without regard to necessity implies the primacy of consciousness. If you say that there is something that exists but you can't say in what form, or how it exists that the only thing you know is that it exists and isn't matter or energy you only have to ask how you know it exists. And I think Brant's comment is very good: "Isn't it better stated that time and space necessarily involve existence--i.e., existents? After all, they themselves are not existents."

It is important not to despair more than you have to. Remember that other people have had to fight through worse for their freedom, Valley Forge comes to mind immediately. Also remember that it has to get worse before people are motivated to make things better. The motto of the Ludwig von Mises institute comes from Virgil (I'll use the English rather than Latin)"do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it." After I wrote this I opened my e-mail to receive a link to N. Branden's wonderful article "In a time of rage, "passion and soulfulness": http://www.nathanielbranden.com/catalog/pdf/passion_and_soulfulness.pdf