DavidMcK

I don't see how you get 7 directions; First is center a direction? I would either reduce it to basically two directions (toward center and away from center) or talk about an infinity of directions; the 360 degrees infinitely divided. Occam's Razor would ask of us that if we can't specify something existing (and if it doesn't exist in a way involving time and space how does it exist?) in a specific way that we refuse to multiply our concepts without regard to necessity.

I've raised this issue before and haven't gotten intelligent comment: The main problem IMHO is the ongoing problem that Ayn Rand helped us to understand, namely that Republicans have nothing to offer but their 'No'. Of course as a Libertarian I say 'No' also, but how often do you hear of an alternative to the Democrats proposal? Step one is to identify the problem (medicare, medicaid the FDA all raise costs of health care) and to propose an alternative very strongly and adamantly: Pure lassez faire capitalism. Ok, so this won't work, Americans aren't ready to give up the huge government programs and anyone who proposes this won't even get elected; so what? Trading consistency for influence hasn't done a damn thing for Republicans, in the end they have neither or they end up adopting the programs of their alleged antagonists. You just keep advocating the right thing until the country is ready for it.

Good news Robert, and gracias for keeping us informed.

Robert, notice that each side was also delighted to discover an atrocity, and quickly used it for propaganda purposes: Makes the phrase "Kettle calling the pot black" the understatement of the century (20th).

NBC is owned by General Electric, not the state, and by 'they' I meant the newscaster, reporters and copy writers, not some conspiratorial 'they'. This was an invitation to make an educated guess about the outcome of this vote not to purvey some idiotic conspiratorial point of view.

I just finished watching NBC nightly news where they reported that a vote this week on the health care plan seems likely, and momentum is moving in favor of passage. They mentioned that a number of Democrats who don't need to worry about re-election since they are retiring seems to be solidifying. The main problem is the Republicans...they have nothing to offer to fix the rising health care costs, which are caused by Medicare and Medicaid. The only way to fix the system is to destroy the system and that is politically impossible. Hold on for a massive new program.

What do you believe he's trying to get at -- aside from listing as many things as he can pick out that he doesn't like about Rand's big novel? My impression from the quotes and the first two pages was that he was trying to buttress the Whittaker Chambers article in Buckley's 'National Review' by making a bunch of pretentious allusions instead of giving pithy concise arguments. Hard to tell after 2 pages, and I lost interest feeling a G.H. Smithlike headache coming on.

Well, then Weltanschauung’s got a vote or two. Had to see that coming. Would you care to share your opinion of the Bertonneau piece? I didn’t provide a comprehensive critique either, I mainly provided a sampling of “eye roll inducers” and appended some comments. Ich denk I’ve given it mehr time than it’s worth. Perhaps we can move on now to Bertonneau’s reference “King Pentheus in Euripides' Bacchae”. As Brüno would ask: In or Aus? Mmm, Funkyzeit! I agree with everything else you say from the 2 pages I read, just your take on that one word. From the quotes I've seen it is just more of the same pretentious references and very little intellectual content or disputation.

I associate Weltenschauung with a book recommended for O'ists, the teacher of Ayn Rand's teacher, the German historian of philosophy Windelband. I agree with the person who said it has become part of the english language like 'verboten', and it doesn't sound pretentious to my ears.

I managed to make it through two pages.

And there's this to help us understand reconciliation (which I had never heard of before this): http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/date-night-in-the-senate-a-primer-on-budget-reconciliation/ http://keithhennessey.com/2009/08/05/what-is-reconciliation/ What seems so different to me about reconciliation is that the purpose of it seems to be to ensure that Congress meets its budgetary goals..not to push through a massive program. The above article also mentions that reconciliation is suppose to be a 5 year time frame..not the 10 years that has been specified so far for this health care bill.

I'm also curious about the timing of Massa's resignation and the investigation of ethics violations....do you think somebody is playing hardball here? From the following article he says he used language in the privacy of his own home and office that might have made someone uncomfortable. ??? http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/Rep-Massa-Resigning-From-Congress-86658462.html

I found the above comments so completely confusing that I decided to track down a good article that specifies what is coming next and found this one from the NY Times (this is not pro or con propaganda btw): http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/a-handy-road-map-for-the-final-weeks/

I wonder how many of the examples from Darwin's books would be regarded as 'just so' stories. Darwin (as I'm sure you already know) didn't even have the gene concept much less the ability to compare dna. I suppose with the genome of all species is known the evolutionary history of everything will be known or guessed. Darwin's birthday just passed (feb. 12) so you could see the scientist working to sell Evolution ("Darwin's Ancestry Traced to Cro-Magnons!")but in my view Evolution sells itself; Darwin was a hero of factuality and seeing what he saw, writing it down and explaining it.

Here's a link to a Krav Maga school in NYC which is a school of self-defense used by Israeli's. I've seen this on the discovery channel, and its main characteristic seem to be that it is intent on being practical...no fancy pants waving your arms or legs around like Jackie Chan (whose movies I like btw). People in Florida should be able to find the same thing so if somebody tries to kick you you can kick right back. http://www.kravmagafederation.com/schools.php?school=1

It is hard to understand politically since pushing this thing has already produced a reaction (in Mass.) that has clearly indicates that has used his political capital to the breaking point on health care. Of course the elephant in the room is that the more medicare and medicaid spending goes up the higher health care costs goes up, and of course insurance. Touching those programs is regarded as a 'third rail'...touch it and your dead (politically). Very strange...you can't spend more without producing a reaction like the election of a republican in the seat Kennedy occupied..and you can't make cuts or eliminate the program. Obviously something has to give.

I can't resist stating that I would never recognize George from his picture on the link above..my memory of him is from the Tom Snyder program....many moons ago.

How about new tennis shoes to prepare for the next coming of a comet? I would like Nike's, if I get to choose.

It is also interesting that G Smith used the phrase "Mordecai at the gates" on another thread just yesterday or the day before...I had to look it up and I found out that he was the one that informed Esther of the plot.

I think that's bullshit. I think it's an example of Rand getting herself into her artistic creative zone and coming up with romantic fantasies about why a filthy herd would persecute a heroic individual. I think she got a little carried away, and confused reality with the fiction that she was trying to create. She didn't actually know the minds of others, or care to know them, before spouting off about what they believed or why they believed it, especially those she had never met and had only read about in vague terms in news stories. Claiming that masses of people, whom she had never met, weren't actually upset about murder and mutilation, but were instead opposed to heroism, defiance and proud individuality, rightfully comes across to people as bordering on insanity. It's something Objectivists should acknowledge as being nutty, or at least as Rand blurring fiction and reality while creating her art. It's not something that should be emulated by her idiot followers who have it twisted around in their angry little skulls that Rand's worst moments were her best. J The first writer still uses this episode to ignore the totality of Objectivism, the argument that Life and Value are connected, the ethics of individualism the bankruptcy of the Welfare state. I clearly stated that this admiration of a criminal is clearly indefensible, but I still stand by the point I'm trying to make: If someone does something horrible and tells people they couldn't care less about society and then someone does something of incredibly positive value, say writing Atlas Shrugged and tell people they couldn't care less about society and people respond exactly the same then it must be that the real crime is that somebody didn't care enough about others to suit them. If you haven't seen this in your own life then I don't know how else to make the point.

Thanks Ninth Doctor, for the link; it has been so long since I read George's book I had forgotten about his wager, it made me laugh.

I agree that this was a poorly stated defense of a horrible criminal, but don't miss the point embedded in here: What people were upset at was his lack of concern for society, not his crime. She transmuted this lack of concern into someone who did good things (i.e. revolutionizing architecture) and you see the same hatred and attacks. I think she even pointed out that of course the criminal did something horrible in her notes. This was like an experiment in social metaphysics. The writer of that article never pointed out that Ayn Rand advanced her thinking enough to say that her 'prime directive' is to never initiate force... as Ninth Doctor said the writer had to set up the weakest case before he tried to knock it down.

Good anecdote from Nathaniel Branden.

That sounds very exciting and enviable. This might be a good place to post an e-mail from Nathaniel Branden I just received: N AT H A N I E L B R A N D E N , P H . D . REACHING WITHIN Anyone who engages in the practice of psychotherapy knows that it is oftentimes as much a learning experience for the therapist as for the client. Nearly thirty years ago, I conducted a therapy group in which there was a man, a few years younger than I, with whom I had great difficulty relating. He was passive to a degree I had rarely encountered; he seemed to have a soul I can only describe as “limp.” He showed up at the group meetings regularly and on time, and he answered questions if asked, but he rarely initiated anything. And for the life of me, I could not make contact with that spark every therapist has to count on—that thing within a person that wants to live, that wants to be happy, that wants to do more than simply lie down and surrender to uncontested pain. On the infrequent occasions when he would ask to work on his problems, nothing we attempted ever seemed to lead anywhere. If we had what I felt was a productive session, by the following week it was as if it had never happened: He evidently had thought about nothing and retained nothing. I came to think of him as passivity incarnate. I thought of him as “the waif of the universe”—wistful, slack-lipped, helpless, and limp. As the weeks and then months passed, I grew more and more frustrated. It’s always been important to me to give every client I work with the experience of total and absolute respect. But one day with this man, I lost it—I exploded in exasperation and spoke as I had never spoken to a client before or ever would again. I said something like: “I need to tell you what I am experiencing right now. I am feeling that I hate the profession I’m in—hate doing this kind of work. I feel totally incompetent and that our sessions are futile. Nothing I know is worth anything when I’m dealing with you.” Sure, I confined myself to “I” statements and avoided “you” statements, but what I said was devastating just the same. That night, telling my wife about the event, I was horrified by what I had done. It went against everything I believed. It was totally out of character. What was the matter with me? I could not get the incident out of my mind, and a few days later at dinner with another couple, both of whom were therapists, I described what had happened and my mystified shock at my behavior. The man, Hal Stone, said to me, “May I offer a psychological interpretation?” Of course, I invited him to proceed. “I don’t think,” he said, “you have any trouble recognizing and owning most of your emotions: fear, anger, lust, or whatever. But I suspect there is one feeling you would never permit yourself and therefore would not recognize when it occurred. And yet all of us, simply by virtue of being human, would have to have that feeling once in a while. I’m talking about the feeling of passive helplessness. I suspect that the part of you that would experience such a feeling is disowned, split off from the rest of you, so that you’re oblivious to it. And then—in the person of this client—fate sends you a caricature of this disowned piece of yourself. And I suspect that’s why you reacted as you did.” Instantly I felt that what he was saying was true. The next week with the group, I told everyone about what had been revealed to me. I apologized to my client. I said, “If I could not recognize and accept the part of me that sometimes feels as you do, if that part was denied and disowned by me, there is no way I would be able to work with you productively.” My client seemed to come to life in front of my eyes. He felt understood. He felt accepted. After that, therapy took off and we began to make progress. What I learned from this experience was that whatever I deny and disown within myself becomes a limitation on my effectiveness in working with others. Today, in addition to practicing psychotherapy, I do corporate consulting, and the same principle is operative in that context. If, for example, I am working with a CEO or another executive who is resisting necessary change, I know that if I can make contact with the part of myself that sometimes resists necessary change, I will be more effective. If I am coaching a brilliant engineer who has difficulty working as a member of a team, I know that if I can connect with the part of myself that is attached to being the Lone Ranger, I will be more effective. If I am working with a manager who feels much more comfortable managing technology than managing people, I know that if I can connect with the part of me that can get impatient when people do not instantly grasp what I want them to grasp—and who sometimes hates to be bothered with “psychology”—I will be more effective. I will be more effective because—being more empathetic—I will cause the person to feel psychologically visible. Feeling understood, he or she will be more open to new learnings and more willing to experiment with new ways of operating. Self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence and interpersonal competence.

He's blasted the Iraq War so often he probably didn't feel the need to do it again, especially since his main point was that you can win elections being anti-empire building. Yes, he somewhat tailors his message (or re-emphasizes) according to whom he is speaking, but he understands the gold standard (not just as a rule, but conceptually), he ran first as a libertarian with the LP, and he is still the most libertarian person (that I know of) in all of government.