dan2100

I agree -- and I'd have to read further back into the discussion to try to see why this became something to disagree over.

I dunno.. What about bottle fed children? I like breasts for entirely different reasons :-P My guess is you're right here and GS is wrong. Also, what about women who were breast-fed as infants? Wouldn't we expect them to be more inclined to be attracted to other women's breasts were his theory correct? And what about men who are not attracted to women's breasts? We'd have to settle this empirically, of course, but my guess is we wouldn't find them being more represented among the bottle-fed.

Perhaps dogmatic Objectivist would be better? Or maybe a Dogbectivist? GS; Dogmatic Objectivist is the better phase. I know, it was a joke! It might be a joke for you, but I prefer "faux Objectivist" -- just as I prefer "faux libertarian" for people who fancy themselves libertarians, but disagree with NIOF on some issue or other.

The portion I bolded reflects an unwarranted assumption--that existence necessarily involves time and space. You are, in essence, asserting that to exist, a thing must be comprehensible to the human mind, whereas all one can legitimately say on that point is that for us to make any legitimate statement about an existent, it must be comprehensible to the human mind. Things may exist in a way that does not involve space and time--but we can make no valid statements about them (even that they definitely do or definitely do not exist). If you assert that comprehensibility (at least in potentio) is a necessary trait of anything existing, you are actually making a Kantian style argument--the difference being that where he applied his categories to epistemology, you are applying them to ontology. You may be correct that all things existent are of necessity comprehensible, but it is a bit odd to have Kant revived even if revised under the Objectivist umbrella. Jeffrey S. I agree with you here. The view that existence would have to conform to the needs of consciousness is know, for Objectivists, as "primacy of consciousness," no?

Don't hold your breath. The Republicans were Statists from the git-go. The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln oversaw the dismantling of the original Federal system. Ba'al Chatzaf True! And the Republican Party has maintained the tradition of supporting big government to this day. The funny thing is, though, they tend to get praised or damned for lowering taxes, cutting government, de-regulation, and supporting free markets. (Granted, there are individual Republican Party members that go against the general trend, but they tend to be isolated and have almost no impact -- especially when that party is in power.)

I think from some of its members' and supporters' rhetoric... But in that vein, if one selectively read some Democratic Party material, one might come to the same mistaken conclusion.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned New Zealand.

Well, that's too bad for composers like Rameau, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Liszt, Saint-Saëns, Delius, Vaughn Williams, Messiaen and many others who wrote music that imitates bird sounds... What???? What kind of bird produced Fur Elise or the Moonlight Sonata? The Four Seasons? Gee... if one says/wrote "Quack! Quack!" or "Tweet-tweet" these are imitations. Would these be called art specifically music/literature? No, those are figures of speech under onomatopoeia. Come on. If Beethoven said that he could re-arrange the chirps to his style, then that is Art. Could you please post a sample of those 'bird calls' here? Surely, those would have been useful in studying notes, tempo, fine tuning the instruments, etc. but those are not Art in themselves! A side note: what's onomatopoeia for one person or group might not seem so for another. See, e.g., http://www.coolslang.com/in/Japan/PeraPera.php I do think that even when a composer tries to imitate bird calls and the like, she or he is still making art. In generally, the imitation is not exactly like the actual bird call -- a bird or a even person wouldn't be fooled. At best, a well executed composition of these recalls some aspects of the original call... Of course, the imitation plays a role in the total composition -- as opposed to when naturalists of old, without the benefit of recording devices, wrote out what they heard as the melody of this or that bird. In the latter case, the naturalist is aiming not at producing a work or art, but capturing the actual bird song. (Of course, one can speculate that there might be no difference in the end product, though this is no different than a novelist writing the same sentence for his novel that a journalist writes for her report. Most would likely call the former art while the latter would journalism -- even though some of the parts were the same.)

You could do that, but I would say that the chances of gaining general acceptance are slim. For a start, from a psychological – or even purely survival – point of view, we want to know that others are prepared to consider our own interests as important in their own right, and not just as the reflection of the interests of someone else. Isn't that the problem, though? Rand had a particular understanding of the term "altruism", and all power to her. But if her understanding contradicts the commonly used meaning, she's not going to be making much headway persuading us that altruism is necessarily a bad thing. I think the problem is more that in ordinary usage there isn't a clear idea of what altruism is -- just the default view that it's a good thing. This is no different, in many respects, in how in common usage "freedom" and "capitalism" are mixed bags -- often with contradictory elements. (Think of "freedom." Most people I talk to don't have a clear idea of what it means even in the political context. To a few of them, it can mean merely having the legal privilege to vote. One can just imagine them labeling a prison a free society because the prisoners are able to vote on having chicken or fish for dinner and can pick the warden from among a short list provided by the state.) Add to this, this is not merely a matter of Rand has her terms and everyone else simply uses different terms -- as if the only problem were translating Rand into English (or some other "natural" language) and everyone would agree. Instead, there are radical conceptual differences and these amount to, in practice, different outcomes in my view. So it's not merely assigning different labels -- as if she were some sort of pedantic philologist who wanted to make sure we used "whom" correctly and that were the only thing at stake. I also think -- and this is no big leap because I believe she explicitly stated this -- that she often tried to rescue terms -- "selfishness" and "capitalism" -- or use them to shock people into recognition. Finally, I don't think the goal, for Objectivists, Randians, and fellow travelers must be to persuade everyone. In terms of outreach, they should probably always face the likely outcome of being a minority. But being in a minority doesn't mean one is uninfluential. A tiny minority of people embraced the ideals of the Enlightenment and of Liberalism (in its classical form) and they managed to change the whole world. The actual number of outright "enlightened" or "liberal" people likely was always small and never anywhere close to being even a simple majority in any real world community.

Overconfident... bah! I am rarely overconfident because I am often right It is a snappy title, isn't it? If the goal was to stir things up, then it worked. I agree with the strategy of going to where you believe the point of miscommunication is and trying to resolve that. I think that since people are coming such radically different approaches and backgrounds, there will be debates over the meaning of terms. But I probably disagree with your other comments. I have to think it over.

Adonis, I am sure that many Muslims believe as you do, but ... the overwhelming majority? Your comment about "overwhelming your nations" may have been meant in jest. But it isn't particularly funny. It didn't strike me as funny either, but I believe his point was -- and here I think his point is wrong -- that were all Muslims basically violent fanatics, then the world would be overwhelmed by them. (I think it's wrong because this would have to count on everyone else on the planet just rolling over. Instead, such violence from one group of people would likely lead to a violent reaction by others. And the end result would be mroe mayhem, but it's not a given that the first group opting to being violent would win in such a confrontation. One need only look at history to see that violence and wars don't always end in the way the people initiating them hoped. No doubt, not a few of them would've done otherwise had they known the outcome ahead of time.) I think tihs oversimplifies the world into Muslim and non-Muslim -- as if all of the former not only think alike to a large degree, but actually work together as a team and ditto for the latter. Instead, it might be better to look at history, including recent history, not as of a battle between Islam and the West -- no matter how much some Muslims want to see things that way. Certainly, the examples you use -- Pakistan and Iran -- seem to show this up. The Pakistani elite seems to have obtained nukes not so much to promote Islam, but mostly, it seems, because of the threat, real or imagined, of other regional powers, such as India. The actual outcome of ten years of a nuclear-armed Pakistan seems to be a nuclear stalemate on the Indian Subcontinent. This seems unlikely to change -- and does not appear to be a prelude to Pakistan "fighting and dominating" anywhere outside that region. (Granted, it's not impossible, but the likelihood looks very small at this time and this is even regardless of what the Pakistani rulers say or believe.) Iran also appears to be more of a case of puffery and were it to get nuclear weapons it's likely, like Pakistan, this would be more for security against real or imagined enemies. Set aside the Iranian leaderships obvious bellicose and nutty rhetoric and look at its position as a nation state. It borders one nuclear power (Pakistan), is antagonistic to others (the US, Britain -- both of which is has had problems with in the past and both of which are now involved in military operations in neighboring countries), and faces the problem of having other actually or potentially threatening states in the region. From that standpoint, I'd be surprised if they didn't pursue the nuclear option. This doesn't excuse their policies or stances, but merely seeks to uncover what might motivate them. And this sort of motivation isn't clear "Islamic." Instead, it seems to be the reason nation states pursue getting nukes. (Another case was the UK's obtaining them in the early years of the Cold War -- which seems likely to be so as not to be merely a US client state.) Of course, the hyper-bellicose rhetoric shouldn't be ignored, but there's another case of such rhetoric regarding nuclear weapons: China. China acquired them in the early 1960s. In the times leading up to that acquisition, China's leadership used extremely bellicose rhetoric and the expectation of many at the time was that China would kick off WW3. That didn't come to pass. Why? My guess is the rhetoric is often a pose to serve something -- whether an internal constituency (remember, elites have to often unite their factions, thwart internal rivals, and keep the subject people from seeing them as the parasites they are; fiery speeches often serves this purpose -- or so it seems to me) and external actors (as a signaling device) -- rather than as a prediction of what'll actually happen.

Very true, Daniel! The meanings of terms is a matter of mutual agreement. What's important is that we come to some agreement and for some reason, that's very difficult in Philosophy. I think there's more going on here than merely debating the meaning of terms, but I do think it's extremely important to be clear about such meanings from the start for reasons that should be obvious. Also, usually I've found people tend to define terms not so much because they're enamoured to particular words, but because they're trying to be clear about the underlying concepts and often trying to undo what's unclear in the common usage. Self-interest is a case in point. Rand wasn't trying to confuse people by her usage -- or so I believe. Instead, it seems to me she was trying to overcome the default view of conventional morality -- and of most moralities -- that anything smacking of self-interest was, at best, amoral and, more than likely, immoral. In fact, the usual tack I find even to this day is if you do something out of self-interest than it's regarded as not being motivated by morality or principle. (This seems to be the view of moral philosophers like Peter Singer -- as I got from reading his works, such as How Are We to Live? : Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest, the title of which should already reveal what he believes morality to be about. Let me give away the ending: if it's anything at all, it's not self-interested.) Often, too, the default view of anything is a historical accident -- in Rand's terms, a package-deal -- albeit, for most holding it, likely an unwitting one. (I kind of lean toward "rational reconstruction" here: one starts with the cultural defaults and tries to rebuild these, rejecting views where necessary. Rarely does anyone stand outside everything in a given field and start afresh. I'm not sure if that's even possible, but, even if it is, rational reconstruction seems to be the best of what most mere mortals are fated to do -- if they attempt to do their best at all.) And the way to resolve the disputes here is, I think, to just admit Rand used these terms in ways often at odds with conventional usage -- think of her usage of "capitalism" in her times -- and try to figure out if the ideas behind her usage have any validity or suggest anything of value. But merely quoting the dictionary seems to me to avoid what she said and wrote on this. (Nothing wrong with referring to dictionaries. In my view, they almost never settle an issue.) Finally, someone earlier mentioned this debate seems far from settled. I think the person who chose "Settling" in the topic's name was a bit overconfident here. How would such a debate ever be settled -- short of all parties involved agreeing it's been settled, which seems improbable given how far apart on the fundamentals many on this board are. It seems to me, there will always be one or more people who feel the debate isn't settled... (Does it need to be?)

All the actions described are motivated by self-interest. For example, the self-interest in helping a stranger can be to create a social atmosphere of harmony from which the giver profites as well. Self-interest of the person giving up a career: feel appreciated by her family, not to lose their approval, etc. I disagree that all the "actions described are motivated by self-interest." You'd have to define just what is the self-interest here. Yes, you've provided rationalizations that you agree with for an action or for motives, but that's not the same. One would have to have a well enough defined self-interest for the agent in question to tell. And any defining of that agents self-interest in such a loose way as to include all her or his motives would not qualify. (Why? Think about it. There would be no cognitive value added by describing motives as self-interested.) Also, Rand's view here is that there's an objective self-interest that an agent might be motivated act against. With this and assuming it has merit, Rand can judge a person's motives against her or his self-interest. And, sure enough, this is exactly what she does -- again, supposing she's right about there being such a thing as objective self-interest. Rand here is acting, I believe, as moral psychologist -- if that's the correct term. Maybe she's wrong or goes too far, but your view here would basically collapse self-interest into whatever motive anyone has -- presumably, even contradictory motives -- and this erase the concept as anything meaningful in this discussion. (Rand can deal with mixed and contradictory motives too: they would be judge according to her same standard of objective self-interest. Now, there are likely tough cases she can't cover here. I'm not expert on moral theory. But the tough cases aren't of the sort you seem to believe.) Again, all are illustrative examples of self-interest motivating our actions. I don't have any negative connotation with the term, since it is a fact of the conditio humana, biologically hardwired in us. Again, if one adopts Rand's view, mixed motives can easily be accomodated. The example Panoptic gives has to be divided into two sets of motives -- ones for doing an action and ones for not doing it. The latter -- wanting to take a nap or watch a game -- might be argued, in this context, to go against one's objective self-interest -- especially if one posits that having a good long-term relationship with one's spouse is more important than some momentary enjoyments. As to "action for the sake of another be both altruistic and selfish," my view is Rand would disagree on this. In her view, an altruistic act is one that definitely goes against one's self-interest. So, it's sort of like asking, "Can an action be both for and against one's self-interest?" Also, if one's looking at motives here, I think her view is that there could be two or more motives for an action and one or more could clash with the others. But I'm unsure how far she went into this and if she considered one motive to be more decisive than another... In Panoptic's example, it looks to me like there are multiple motives, but they need not be contradictory. All the motives seem to dovetail nicely and this doesn't, in my mind, make for a tough case for Rand's view. And none of these motivations are anti-self-interest, in my view or, it seems to me, in Rand's. His wife would, I hope, be part of his self-interest -- not to be viewed as merely some person who co-habitats and occasionally provides other benefits, but has no special meaning in his life. In a sense, his wife has become part of his self-interest and is very high on his personal scale of values -- and these would, in my view, not contradict his objective self-interest. (How might it? What if he were married to a psychopath and she was, by Rand's standards, basically evil. Then his continued helping and valuing her would likely be acting against his self-interest.) A tough case might be one where all those motives are operating and maybe there's also some passive-aggression as in wanting to clean the care to rub his wife's nose in how much of slop she is. (I don't think that'd sink Rand's view, but it'd certainly make for a more interesting case.)

Does "rhetorical theory" include speech act theory? If so, are you familiar with the works of Reinach, Austin, and Searle on this?

I'm sorry but I don't consider women walking around topless to be equality at all and if that's your definition of equality then I'm sorry, it's silly.. It's indecent.. A man can walk around topless because he doesn't have breasts.. A woman shouldn't because she does.. It's public nudity and not really appropriate at all.. People should be free to be able to do what they want, providing that their actions aren't harming others.. Public nudity as you've described can be harmful to society. I think there are a few problems here, but let me focus on two. One is that you seem to presume women are only sex objects and that topless women can only cheapen them, making men go wild for their breasts. Actually, my guess is saturation with topless women would eventually lead to few men being distracted by breasts. Their open display would become little different than displays of legs or hair -- which, just a few decades or centuries ago, was almost forbidden in every nation. The other is the problem of public spaces. If all spaces were treated under natural rights, we'd only end up with two types of just spaces: privately unowned and unowned. (The former include jointly owned spaces too, but there'd be nothing owned by the public as such.) In such spaces, the owners would decide what's proper behavior regarding display of chests and the like. So, the issue wouldn't likely arise of "public nudity." (Of course, what's done in unowned spaces would, again, be decided by natural rights. There would be no natural rights violation, in my mind, to people walking around naked on unowned land.) Also, talk of "society" here means what? Obviously, you mean some people are harmed, but not "society." After all, those who would prefer to see topless women and women who'd prefer to go topless are not harmed. So, who do you mean and what exactly do you mean by "harm" here?

I'm not sure of the case you mention. I think we should create another topic for this discussion as it really has little to do with the current topic title.

I'd be very suspicious of someone who thought otherwise on those, but I'm curious why you think the other examples are not abusive on some level? Is this the place where you tell me you have children and when they were young, you beat them regularly and they've all grown up to be happy, emotionally healthy, and successful adults? I'm not sure anyone was recommending a "cookie cutter approach," but let's turn this around. Imagine an adult being abused by another adult. Of course, there's no cookie cutter approach, but, assuming the victim doesn't want to put up with the abuse, wouldn't you say she or he should either try to alter or exit the relationship? For instance, you have a "friend" who is emotionally manipulative. You can let him know you don't like that and won't put up with and keep the option of breaking off the friendship. (You might not deliver an ultimatum as a first step here, but try to persuade him to change the bad behavior and only resort to breaking off relations when that fails.) Bad luck. I'm not sure emotional abuse is unrelsolvable. One thing that can be done is to remove the child from the emotionally abusive situation. This doesn't require a state to do either. But I guess the solution in trying to make people better parents is manifold. One is getting children and adults to realize when an emotionally or physically abusive situation is happening. If the parents won't recognize it, then it might be possible for other adults to recognize it and attempt to intervene -- even if that means something like, for instance, the sister of the abusive mother basically breaking off relations and saying, "Since you're a emotionally manipulative with your children, I don't want anything more to do with you until you change." (Of course, this depends on conditions on the ground. One wouldn't want, I hope, to just break off relations and leave the children to their fates.) Another is, I believe, getting older children -- e.g., high school and college aged -- to realize they don't have to stay in the bad situation. They might learn to confront the abusive parent and also threaten to break off relations.

That sounds similar to something I wrote on this subject a few years ago -- "Architecture: The Missing Art Form" -- in Full Context.

That is a broad statement, could you be specific. Three to five examples if possible. Adam I agree my statement might be overbroad and certainly I didn't mean to say what reasonable or educated people -- understanding how vague "reasonable" and "educated" might be -- think of as good parenting cooks in what I'd label as abuse or at least bad parenting. Instead, I meant that I've seen abuse and bad parenting tolerated and, in some cases, praised... Three to five examples of abuse/bad parenting? I'll give some general categories -- ones that just came to mind as I'm no expert on child abuse or on parenting, though I'm not completely ignorant of either subject -- with a few examples peppered in. 1. Parents who tell their children what to feel -- as in cases I've witnessed where a parent tells her or his child that the child doesn't mean what the child says. E.g., "You don't hate daddy! You can't hate daddy!" This seems to me to be a clear case of telling the child what to feel -- i.e., telling the child to disown her or his emotions or, at least, not to openly reveal them. 2. Parents who emotionally manipulate their children -- as in cases I've witnessed where a parent tells her or his child to do something because the child will let down someone else if the child doesn't do it. E.g., "If you don't play the cello, then the whole party will be ruined." This seems to me to be an attempt to "guilt" the child into doing something that she or he would prefer not to do. (Here, too, I think this kind of behavior has a bigger impact on children and might be classified as a form of coercion.) 3. Parents who humiliate their children in front of others -- as in cases I've witnessed where the child is humiliated in front of other children or adults. E.g., a case I witnessed where the mother made her son say something extremely humilitating in front of others. I guess this is some kind of power trip game, but who knows? Maybe it was just to confirm the parent's power over the child. (Another form of emotional coercion, in my view.) 4. Threats of physical attack: I've seen many instances of this and even recall once a group of parents saying, within earshot of their children, something along the lines of, "I brought him into this world, I can take him out of it." (As far as I know, the parent did not kill her son. But what's the point of such a threat -- which seemed to be both on display for the other parents and for the child?) 5. Actual physical abuse: I've witnessed a few of these and they range from just aggressively dragging a child around -- like a case where a small child seems to be misbehaving (why is he misbehaving? by what standard?) in a public location, his mother grabs his hand, and yanks him away. -- to more severe cases -- which I won't mention here.

I think that without defining just what self-interest is, it's hard to say. I also thought that what Christopher was getting it is that without knowing much more one can't tell much about a given action. For instance, the case of the person sacrificing "15 years" (of her life, presumably) -- years should could have spent partying, dining in fine restaurants, going on long vacations to exotic locales, and the like -- one has to know her ends. What if Rand were to write about this person, but put the twist on it that she really, deep down, wanted to be, say, a professional ice skater -- while becoming a "top plastic surgeon" and a "multimillionaire" were only what, say, her parents wanted her to do. And let's say that this [ice skating] is really identified with her self-interest -- becoming a professional ice skater, even just an average one, would actualize her self and end in her being a happier, more harmonious person even if she had less money, etc. In this case, even though she definitely invested those years in medical school, internship, residency, and working at a practicing toward a goal -- so that these "sacrifices" were really only provisional, really only a means to an end -- and she attained that goal -- becoming a " top plastic surgeon" and a "multimillionaire" she still sacrificed her self to her parents' wishes. And, note, here that outward measures don't necessary tell us what's in a person's self-interest. If they do, then the successful jewel thief might be viewed as pursuing his self-interest because after stealing some jewels, he has more money than before. This is not to say worldly success is of no importance here, but I'd be careful about reasoning backward -- especially reasoning backward from what looks like a great outcome to the actions that might have played a role in getting to that outcome. (Note also that there's another problem with reasoning backwards, especially as pertains to an isolated example. This is that we're not sure, in this example, of why the person actually acted the way she or he did. If, to use an off the wall example, I found a huge hunk of gold while mountain biking, you might reason backward that my new found wealth was intended by my mountain biking. In fact, I might have been mountain biking for pleasure or, actually, experiencing it as a no fun work out -- something I do to stay in shape, but derive no other pleasure from. In the latter case, someone might reason backward from finding the gold to the "sacrifice" of mountain biking.) All of this said, I do agree people often use "sacrifice" in a variety of ways that can play into an altruist moral code. But the cure for this is nothing more than being clear about these things from the start.

I think this segues into the topic of child abuse and of bad parenting. I think much of what passes for parenting today is if not abusive at least not good parenting. But this makes it sound as if in the past things were better. The historical record, however, tends to make this time look much better than former times. And most of this change seems due to changing cultural norms.

Why is that? It's a phenomenon of the human psyche after all. Don't tell me that this is in the realm of "subjectivism"? Also, I think what you meant by "dreams" are aspirations which an individual could take full control of and thus be rational about. I don't think that's what Brant meant. I think he was admitting they are and that, from an Objectivist perspective, one should be rational about them, but Objectivism, as a philosophy, says little about them. I'm actually not sure about that last point... Also, Objectivism as such doesn't say, "This phenomenon X is in the realm of subjectivism, so we must completely ignore it." Instead, I take it, the problem is what the relevance of given phenomena are. For instance, the Objectivist view of not using emotions as tools of cognition -- which is perhaps an oversimplification -- is not a denial of emotions existing. Nor does it mean Objectivism, as a philosophy, must remain silent on just what emotions are, what their role is in life, and why they do seem to interfere with cognition at times.

While I do agree that one must distinguish between the phenomenological and ontological where one can, but the problem is not so much that as that by defining egoism or selfishness as doing what one wants and then saying basically people do what they want, one completely undermines the distinction -- i.e., with that sort of definition in use, one can't distinguish any action that's not egoistical or selfish. As for self-sacrifice and altruism, one also has to be careful here about defining them so as not to make any act into one of sacrifice or, if not going that far, making almost every act into one -- as in me giving a total stranger spare change at Starbucks so that she can get her latte suddenly becomes an act of self-sacrifice for me rather than simple and rather minor charity. Certainly, champions for sacrifice of the more extreme sort will probably try to compare such minor acts of benevolence with, say, devoting your life, in what Rand and her seconds would consider self-destructive, to some cause or other person. (I'm thinking of the person who, say, decides to give up a rewarding career and personal happiness maybe because she feels duty to her parents -- i.e., to live life they way they want her to live it. Things like that. Of course, without some standard of self-interest, this all becomes very hard to discuss or make sense of -- save by giving examples and hoping the others agree with one's intuitions.)

We can assume envy is a human universal and if you haven't experienced it you'd have absolutely no idea what anyone is talking about talking about envy. It is a question of how you deal with your feelings. I have little respect for psychiatry and none at all for anything attached to Sigmund Freud, self deluded and a fraud. God-like psychiatrists pretending to be doctors sticking ice picks into your brains, ordering hysterectomies for epileptics and so on and so forth. I do think envy is, if not universal, certainly widespread. I also think it does play a large role in society -- probably larger than most might admit. But I think the Girardians are making it into their do all, be all theory -- and I've seen them apply it to art, social institutions, and personal behavior. What's more, it seems that for Girardians if envy and scapegoating are the problems then Christianity is the solution and nothing else will do -- or as I wrote back in late 2008: "Now, the usual take on this is sans Christianity, we'd all be scapegoating into the sunset. Of course, that Christians scapegoat seems unregistered, but I also wonder if Girard and his seconds believe that, accepting scapegoating is the central social problem to overcome if the only response is to accept the Jesus myth. In fact, I'd argue that this sort of scapegoating-transcendence narrative leaves scapegoating in place. In essence, humanity is stuck in scapegoating mode and only either divinity can change this or a dogma can hold it in abeyance." I'm not sure I'd completely dismiss Freud or his Leibnizian notions, but I do think psychiatry as a profession is basically wrongheaded and no more than charlatans armed with the power to coerce anyone unfortunate enough to fall under their grasp. (What would I accept from Freud? Probably just the core notions that there are subconscious drives and that much of one's psychology is established early in life. These, however, are not astounding conclusions and predate Freud. I certainly disagree with his reading of just about everything in life into his theory of the psyche.)

By the way, someone in a Yahoo group had an interesting take on Girard: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LeftLibertarian2/message/26120 Note how he believes there might be some value to Girard's view on scapegoating and particular how the notion might be useful in the statist context.