Robert_Bumbalough

Hello Mike, Pete, Bill Nice to be able to chat today. Hope all are well and prospering. Please forgive that I disagree with Mike where he typed about the murderer's manifesto that // I also glanced through his manifesto. Sick. Narcissistic and cheerful. // I too skimmed a portion of it and thought it a grim warning and call to war based on internet conspiracy myths and Kant style group-think subjectivism rather than self-aggrandizement. But then again war is always sickening. The guy's live stream of him shooting up the mosque showed him handling his weapons very proficiently; his guns, however, were covered with arcane markings that I speculate had occult significance in his distorted worldview. As for the charge of his cowardice, lets call a spade what it is. Muslims don't integrate or assimilate into the society of a country to which they immigrate. Instead they wage cultural jihad for as long as it takes to dominate in a multi-generational effort of conquest as is happening in Europe. And don't ignore that Islam is as tribal and wack or more so than Caucasian tribalism. The hope here is that Islamic State or Al Qaeda jihadist operatives remain in their mole-holes instead of retaliating against innocents. Meanwhile New Zealand allows the Mohammedans to invade their country and thereby kowtows to the Globalists oligarchs acting in true cowardly fashion, for it is the purpose of the State to protect the rights of the citizens from force, fraud, invasion and so forth. Anyways. Cheers and Best Wishes for Continued Success

Good points Grant.Thanks. Without rule of law, one guys freedom fighter is the next guys terrorist. //There wasn't, btw, any state left to speak of.// In the fictional dystopian world of AS, there were States mentioned. In Part 3 C.10 there's the scene where Midas Mulligan is planning his investments in New York and Pennsylvania, so even at the end the story presupposed Federalism. The States still existed so did the Country and the question of morality is irrelevant. Dagny murdered the guard. Ragnar committed piracy and is depicted as a terrorist. It's a matter of fact within the story. Morality is thrown under the bus in the story. Rand borrowed from Howard and put a bit of Conan into Dagny and the Strikers. Ferris, Mooch and Taggert were acting outside the Law. But killing the guard was also outside the law as well as immoral. There was no self-defense involved. That Dagny had a thing for Galt's penis does not morality make. Rand contradicted her principles and acted inconsistent. Denying that is to deny a fact. The moral thing for Rand to have her characters do was to file Habeas Corpus for Galt and plead for an injunction to cease and desist. The guards would have had to have honored the Court order, or else the US Marshals would have stomped on them using the proper power of the State. //Semantics--respecting what is and isn't "murder"--is a poor foundation for an argument.// Actually it is a good argument. //So, what they were doing to Galt was legal and therefore proper and what Dagny et. al did to them was illegal and improper?// Nothing I wrote indicated that. In the story, Ferris, Mooch, and Taggert were acting illegally. So were Dagny and Ragnar and the Strikers. Gosh I love chatting with you because you make me think. Me Thinks.

Well, in service of conversation I had to do my best to defend the protection of law and basal order of political bodies to facilitate interactions of juxapositioned Homo Sapiens some of whom may be Human or qualify as Man. Of course you're correct. The moral basis of politics once eliminated, renders protections of law of no effect or so I would think the dystopian fictional world of AS's United States would operate. However, in a fan fiction squeal I think using the idea of separate legal jurisdictions qua Federalism would lend literary gravitas to such a plot device as having the State police force be employed in hunting down Ragnar, Dagny, Galt, and their fellow conspirators. Perhaps the murdered guard's brother is a State Police station command staff officer, a Lieutenant, who wielding the respect of his officers can enlist them in an effort to bring the Strikers to Justice, for so doing will reward them with confiscated booty. Gotta love the Rico Act. See it might go sort of like if a family member of one of ship owners victimized by Ragnar's piracy or a relative of someone murdered by a roving gang of Maoists who blames Galt and was a Federal official who then deputizes the State Police lieutenant into US service. Their trajectory would take them to capturing the Strikers and putting them on trial; the plot would advance due to the police characters interacting with the seized journals of Hugh Akston; tension between a patrol officer who reads and discusses with his suck-up Corporal who is tight with the Lieutenant and the Federal official. The resultant courtroom drama would be in the Randian tradition with a defense attorney urging them to throw themselves on the mercy of the court. Meanwhile the Strikers would steadfastly maintain they have an inalienable right to defend Galt by rescuing him from the clutches of the evil Dr Ferris and his renegade gang of thugs who were acting outside the authority of the United States. They'd be saved by the patrol officer finding a legal defense that would sway the jury while exposing his bosses as exploiting their power under color of law. Defining the character of the State Police Lieutenant and the antagonist Patrol Officer and the process of how their psychological states develop and how the reader is informed of them without recourse to an omniscient narrator as Rand blundered in AS would be a task for a master story teller. (Oh look, there's a sign post up ahead: 'Next Stop: Character development').

Oh Criminy! I must vote for this passage as best laugh of the week.

Well back to why Peikoff had a heart attack upon learning that Branden and Rand had been banging each other. So if Peikoff thought of Rand as his mother, did he think of Frank as his father? And that Frank was a slacker must have bugged him? If so, then how could he not expect that Rand would have been playing the field to find what she couldn't get at home? And how did Branden hook up with Rand in the first place; he was just a kid during the War and wasn't old enough to buy beer when Rand was writing AS. Did she hustle him from some venue for young people? Was she out hunting for some young stuff? Or did they meet at the collage where Branden was a student?

This is what I love about this message forum. You guys are way smarter than for which you give yourselves credit. Be that as it may, I'll take the bait. Dagny's action was a criminal act of murder because there was no act of succession or declaration of independence to form a new political body by the minions of Midas Mulligan's valley despite that they'd bugged out. Merely bugging out to the valley did not form a new country. Countries can only be formed by express declaration . They were still citizens of the dystopian disfunctional United States depicted in AS and hence still subject to its legal jurisdiction. There was no war. Just because a cop is an ass hole doesn't justify killing him even if he's doing something really bad. If you kill a cop, you go to death row. As you pointed out, the guard was just being stupid, and as satisfying as it sometimes seems to want to strangle the life of some stupid shit, doing so will earn one a long stretch or a place on death row. Of course Ayn Rand recognized that the moral ethical paradigmn of government is it's most important aspect. When a government losses the support of the people while robbing and enslaving them it losses raison d'etre; nevertheless, the guard's life was still protected by law, if not US law, then by State law, and if not State law, then the ancient English common law. Dagny should hang. Galt refused the job offer. He could have taken Wesley Mooches job as economic dictator to impose laissez faire capitalism by eliminating harmful regulations and taxes, but Rand had him hold out for anarcho-capitalism. Let us conceptualize how fan fiction squeals might go. The strikers in the valley would probably hire Ragnar Danneskjold to provide security. This mother fucker has pissed off a lot of people. In the wake of the collapse of the United States in an anarcho-capitalism social system, others would form security services using weapons obtained from the former US military. Some of those would want to see Dagny, Galt, and Ragnar swing from a gallows. They'd be keen to form alliances with those who hold Galt responsible for not saving the United States by taking the economic dictator job. They'd be able to use the sort of rhetoric the Bernie Bros use to gin up support for an attack on the folk in the Valley. The screen would no longer be in use to hide the strikers because they would be engaged in trade and barter. The people outside the valley would not have gold and their paper money would be worthless and useless without the FED or USG, so to get resources the strikers would have to barter. Their position would then be known, so the pissed off persons who saw then as enemies would have ample opportunity to put ordinance on target. The families of the guards would want revenge on Dagny. The owners of the shipping sunk by Ragnar would want to see him rot. The socialists of the many People's polities would want to pillage the Valley. Internecine tribal war would almost surely break out. Eventually the strikers would be defeated. Enter a Conan character to do a bit of the ole Gehghis Khan.

Hi Tony. Well it's June 16th and a week later. Thanks for your remark. It's a good one too, and reading it makes me feel guilty because the USA is much closer to a total police state than the ideal noted by Jefferson in his inaugural speech: Like John Galt who willing to kill himself to save Dagny from torture, perhaps a committed Objectivist philosopher should think about pedagogy, but of course they do, so by extension those who willing to support in some manner their activities are less culpable. Maybe that my enjoyment of chatting here on OL isn't an application the second handiness fallacy would lend to me a freedom to hang out more often, but then again if indeed the USG goes full on Stalinist, I'll be one of the disappeared or so I would hope he quipped as he whistled past the metaphorical graveyard of bad ideas.

Piss me off some Randroids maybe did I. Bought I did. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LV0FX2S/?coliid=IEULYJTJI6IZ0&colid=2MMA4MVETAU5Q&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Cool. $$$$ We earned it. So when Dagny murdered the guard at Project F while breaking in to spring John Galt, she was justified because there ain't no such thingy as "society" and those who initiate violence deserve to get some back. Oh justice me psychopath down. Yeah Rationality.

Hiya Mike. Well, since Branden did it, I was thinking maybe Peikoff was doing the competitive anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better thingy.

Thanks for an insightful analysis. I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged. Now I hope Branden didn't think or feel he had something in common with the archetype illustrated by James Taggert. Fictional character, yeah, and no goons of thugs working for totalitarian police states were injured in the writing of AS; still though, I loved the scene where Taggert breaks down after Galt tells the boys how to fix the electro shock torture machine. Besides, he wasn't really interested in banging an older broad, (Holy Fuck. The sagging wrinkles. Yuck.) but doing so in service of The $ is earning it baby. Screw Valiant and the Randroids. I gotta go build stuff for which big money wants to pay. Hey maybe I got something in common with Rearden after all.

Hiya Pete. Been away for a week, but got some work done; still though GHS writes good stuff. His atheism book helped my shake that God superstition. Witchdoctoring aside, I and the other riders on this mornings Green train lucked out. A crazy was triggered and pulled a honking big ass large caliber revolver. The gun was in a gunny sack and the dude held it over the top strap while pointing it a the guy who dared to speak and saying loudly 'It's your lucky day that I'm not as mad at you as God. But I'm going to give it to ya. You're gonna get it. God is mad at you.' and so on for about a minute. Dude wasn't too crazy though cause he backed out at the next stop before the DART cops troubled themselves to break away from their donuts and show up. Could have been worse. Yee-haw. Now if only I had the guts to make the big bet when Bitcoin crashes next.

Double standards drive people batty. I wish it could be blamed on water fluoridation so I could post a clip from Dr Stangelove where General Ripper is telling Lt. Mandrake about it's evils because Kubrick's mocking was an early manifestation of cognitive dissonance by Dunning-Kruger. Personally, I'd like the USG to make it policy to lean on Mexico and the Central American govs to permit Laissez Faire and to disallow illegals to get any kind of welfare or subsidy. But the powers that be don't care about what anyone thinks unless it gets them more power. Sadly the contrary path leads to empowering religious conservatives who also trust in altruism.

Good points Wolf. A lifetime of crap thinking from a bunch of stuff from crap culture has left a me with a crap philosophical outlook. Having been raised as a child in a religious culture and having lived a life surrounded by those who accepted believed and practiced bogus associated ideas has inculcated a bunch of crap into my thinking. Nice work. Charity looks like a fun read. Thanks for the clue, and you can use my family name as a character, why not. There has to be a guy named Chris Cable somewhere. Almost everyone loves the sound of alliteration.

Very nice.

I'm no expert, but I can't understand why anyone in O-land would find this AS video wrong/

This argument is so stupid. No wonder people blow off O-ism as silly crap. So what if the cougar lady scored with a hot young stud. Poor Frank had to have known. Why on earth he didn't divorce Ayn and go do the Frank Loyd Wright unique architecture thingy is beyond me. If my wife did me that way, I'd walk. I'd be better off living in a flop house motel eating potato chips, Twinkies, and Diet Coke than to walk around like a zombie cuck.

Profound thinking my friend. --------------------------- // I've left the battlefield where people fight over the split. Ever since then, I've been able to see clearly that it generally boils down to money, sex and power with humans, including Objectivists. // One can't build a successful profitable business by pissing off their customers. Pollution Control Products jumps through hoops to keep their furnaces up and running for their clients. Market power comes from providing worthiness valued by those willing and able to pay which brings in the money that enables the wherewithal necessary to be the person exemplifying virtue. If one is such, then they'll be subjected to hero worship and maybe score while greasy and dirty. // Jennifer Grossman // Oh my, what a cutey. // The entire ARI-TAS kerfuffle stems from Rand excommunicating the Brandens for feeling they rejected her. So she rejected them. // If O-ism fans spend their time improving their products, sales and customer service skills, they'll make more money and live happier lives. I won't bring this topic up again. I was curious about Yaron's display, and your answer satisfies me. Now I know. // Also, both Barbara and Nathaniel never hid their low opinion of him--they always called him some variation of crazy,// It might have been the Mullet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlJD0i_WwdQ&t=13s // Peikoff never knew of Rand's affair with NB while she was alive. When he discovered proof in her papers after she passed away (he was her legal heir), he had a heart attack. Literally. It almost killed him for real. Although he has never said so, this is a form of rejection and I imagine it screwed with his emotions bigtime. Like or dislike Peikoff, a brush with death is an impactful event in the life of anyone. // Did Peikoff want to bed Ayn Rand? I thought their relationship was more like teacher and student or Wise Master and Grasshopper. // Also, both Barbara and Nathaniel never hid their low opinion of him--they always called him some variation of crazy, so with the discovery of the affair and the terror of almost dying over it, I think his hatred of them went into white-hot mode and has burned steadily ever since. // Leonard has outlived the four of them, Frank Ayn Nathaniel and Barbara, so perhaps he's happy to get the last laugh. Lucky for the Brandens he isn't a lesser man, for if he was we might well have seen another murder-suicide story on the news. // Notice that almost all major sins of the principals in O-Land in this split boil down to people refusing to hate the Brandens. In other words, the issue is not ideological. They all say it is, but it isn't. It's about relationships and rejection at root. If it were ideas only, the disagreements would be more civil and rational. You don't see a deep level of hatred of communism in their demeanor, for example, even though all self-respecting Randians consider communism to be evil. But notice how people involved in this inter-subcommunity fight get overly-emotional, mischaracterize the work of each other, etc. That comes from something other than ideas. From the way I figure, it comes from rejection by a loved one, and for the followers of that person, feelings of protection of someone who has suffered such rejection. People fight and the seed produces its toxic fruit. Thus, taking sides has become a precondition to making friends and this has nothing to do with the issues dealt with in Objectivist thought. // I want to think that I'm above that sort of thing. All O-ism fans are my friends because I can do business with them because I can respect them. Frank, Ayn, Nathaniel, Barbara are all dead and Leonard will be pushing up daisies before too many years go by, so it'll all fade. Only the ideas will remain and those who can use the ideas to leverage a competitive advantage will be more like the Hank Rearden and the Strikers and will thus make more money and have happier lives. // See this post as an example. Why would that be? Well, I was part of the history of this one, so I know from seeing it up close. Perigo and Barbara Branden used to be tight. And Perigo always dreamed of being an Objectivist leader. With her endorsement, he was part way there. They ended up falling out (mostly vanity issues) and she ultimately rejected him. When a book critical of the Brandens came out, he embraced it and has been on a crusade against the Brandens ever since. // This is like a daytime character drama soap opera. Gee, you could write a script that would sell. There are plenty of marketing companies that need good writers for product success story white papers and placement videos. Mike, you rock; I hope you're making plenty of money. // Also, Brook agreed to debate Perigo recently about immigration. Brook bowed out when it became clear Perigo would insult him to his face in public. So Brook rejected him and he has been on a nonstop rant against Brook ever since. From what I have read (and I don't read a lot of this stuff), some of the reasoning is justified. (I could go into it, but that's not the point of this post.) But much of it is just emotional hate-baiting based on being rejected. // Yeah, I got the same impression from Lindsay's posts. // I wish there were some intellectual depth to all this, but there is very little, mostly none. // Stephen Boydstun's stuff works good for satisfying one's intellectual hunger. But then again, concepts are open to subsumming new integrations, so long as the new facts don't contradict those previously integrated, so even guys like us can add to the sum of knowledge thanks to its hierarchical nature. //The ARI folks demand that Objectism be only what Rand wrote and, I agree, it is reasonable to make a classification of what she wrote as being what it is.// Okay. There's no profit in hurting their little fee-fees, so call whatever new stuff discovered that can be integrated without contradiction an addendum or something. // But they want to erect an establishment out of this where they can control the speech and thought of others. They feel threatened when someone who doesn't think like they do calls himself or herself an Objectivist. Ultimately, they don't trust individuals to do good thinking on their own. That's the main reasoning behind ARI's current hostility.// I love this bit from the AS part 1 movie. https://youtu.be/etzke3JW8O8?t=2m20s // (Although I believe the driver is money, sex and power, but not all that much sex. They need to get laid more.) // I think you're probably onto the right track. // The intellectual part of the issue boils down to a dictionary, believe it or not. Open any dictionary and you will see that almost every word in it has more than one meaning. When ARI folks use the word "Objectivism," them mean only what Rand wrote and don't want there to be a second definition. They claim they have the right to demand this. // Hey no wonder they experience so much rejection. // Also, I disagree with the worshipful rigidity of the fundies and, ultimately, don't think a society of people like that was what Rand was after at all. I know I don't want to be that--I don't want to be a fanatic or disciple within a closed-off tribe. // How about this as a theme for short story. In a distopian future a descendant cult of Rand worshipers are at their wits ends living in a post nuclear apocalyptic landscape; they are stalked by a group of equally bad off Church of Elvis worshipers some of whom are afflicted with a zombie disease. A war is averted by a Romeo and Juliet romance between a Randian woman and a sequined body suit wearing Elvis warrior. Their love ushers in a Renaissance by a collaborative discovery of an ancient buried library discovered after a brutal battle against a horde of brain sucking zombies. By teaching themselves to read using Atlas Shrugged and Elvis's biography they come to understand the two factions have more in common and a basis for rationality. So they work together in a division of labor manner to start rebuilding civilization. It'd take some work to flesh out the idea. The place to start would be describing characters. But it'd be fun.

Hi Pete, Thanks. Really good stuff.

Hi Tony. Yaron discussed why he disapproves of the Atlas Society and Jennifer, the lady who now runs the show over there, and I get that he has a legitimate reason for strong disapproval given benefit of the doubt about who ever is posting on behalf of AS in their Facebook page. Yaron says that person is posting quotes of the villians from Rand's stories and attributing them as if they were part of Objectivism. Regarding David Kelly, I didn't get why he calls him a fraud who does bad scholarly work on the first viewing. He states that Kelly's position that Objectivism is an open system allowing addition of any other ideas contradicts what Ayn Rand thought and so constitutes fraud. Discussion starts at 1:09:24 Link.

Hi Pete. How goes the battle? I'm delighted to be able to communicate with you. (Insert suitable exclamation!) I was unaware you had met and studied with Ayn Rand. How interesting. (Mike's description of the difference between her public persona and branding vs her private identity helped me understand why Rothbard wroter her off so that libertarians reject O-ism. ) What prompted my question and excursion into a bit of comedy was the Yaron Brook Youtube podcast last night. He railed against David Kelly, and I did not understand why. My apparently incorrect understanding is that the differences between ARI's presentation of O-ism and that of the Atlas Society were trivial fine points of epistemology and perhaps the way in which Oist ethics allows one to discover moral egoism. I thought that on the bigger foundation questions ARI and AS agreed. Brook's vehement condemnation of Atlas Society and David Kelly, however, gave me pause to question what I thought I knew. What's up with David Kelly, now retired, and why does Brook feel comfortable hammering his reputation?

Hi Mike & Wolf. Speaking of the end of love, I watched Yaron last night. He slammed David Kelly accusing him of being a fraud and fake intellectual. That, to me, seems over the top because: Yaron knows this. Is he applying a double standard in giving Ayn Rand a pass on her use of herself as a medium for an artsy selective recreation of reality to what can and should be instead of standing firm for the virtues Galt broadcast to the radio audience in AS? Why does Yaron sear David Kelly? What's his beef? Is he bent out of shape because David disagrees on some minor points? Or is it something of which I'm blissfully unaware that approaches criminal activity? ----------------------------------------- edit: This message brought to you by Equality 7-2521 Corp. thanks to the application of an artsy selective recreation of reality to what it could be given the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. I'm, perhaps in another universe, Equality 7-2521, and I approve this message. (No not really, but IFF the Wave Function of the Universe collapsed as seems to be self-evident. Existence Exists: waves arms about and says "I mean this stuff.") Food has this effect on me. When I eat, my blood sugar goes up, and I get happy. Thus I throw out a joke once in a while in celebration of my joke life so unlike that of a Randian Ideal Hero unless Eddie Willers qualifies

Yaron Brook discusses Ayn Rand's morality and why modern philosophers don't take her seriously.

Sadly the Reisling Sub Machine Gun wasn't up to the task of down dirty in the mud combat. Pity it was in some ways better than the M1927 Thompson and for sure less than 1/3 the cost, but alas it jammed easily when muddy. One of my family's cousins was mortally wounded in a night Banzai attack on Guam in July of 1944; he passed two days later. But by then the Marines had eliminated the Reisling. Nonetheless, when trolls argue O-ism fans can't be sure they're not brains in a vat or sims in the Matrix, I call upon David Kelly and Matthew McCormik to explain Kant's refutation of material idealism. I think Rand may have been perhaps somewhat influenced along those lines by some of his ideas. Certainly the ones she disapproved prompted her to think of ways to counter argue. But that's another story.

Oh good Mike. I learned the hard way to not take trolls who deny the axioms or myself trying to convince them not to deny seriously. Honestly, I'd rather change the wax ring under the men's room toilet. Dawson is long and thorough in his blogs. He's been at it for at least thirteen years, so he's dealt with plenty nutters some of whom were probably moocher rotters. On another note, reading Galt's speech makes me reevaluate my life. She was a hell of marketer. Trump needs someone like Ayn Rand to appoint as special trade envoy representative to solve the really stupid tariffs by causing everyone involved to stop an take a personal inventory of their minds. Steel and pipe fitting prices are on a rocket rally. Ouch. That's going to leave a mark.