caroljane

Individual intelligence is the dirty little secret in Objectivisim, as it is in every other group of humans engaged in mutual endeavour. It is analogous to the class-based avoidance of publicly discussing individual income levels, which Mr. M. Marotta has pointed out elsewhere on this board. Objectivists have special difficulties with this universal phenomenon. Ayn Rand did not help her nascent movement much, when she made an offhand quip that an individual IQ could be raised by 20 points. Objectivism is about thinking, thinking for oneself and only for oneself, thinkly correctly and efficiently, and, if you want to, helping students of objecivism to do these things. The philosophical underpinning is that the "self-made soul" is naturally intelligent because it is naturally rational, and naturally gets on with being productive and happy and so on unless the government manages to enslave it.If the soul is too young to grasp rationality, it will make itself later unless its parents thwart its individual rights, or its schools refuse to teach it to reason properly. In adult life, people often assort themselves into loose IQ groupings of various kinds, and speculate as people will on the relative intelligence of various group members. IQ testing itself is a hugely contentious area. The score is meaningless in many real-life contexts anyway, except if you score high your life is a little easier in most cases. Objectivists tend to have high-normal intelligence, but if they don't, there is considerable pressure on them to achieve it, or to prove that they have always really had it but injustice has prevented people from recognizing it. The Randian hero is sublimely intelligent. Other equal but maybe not so intelligent individuals recognize it, accord it due respect, worship it and so on down the scale. It's a class system, which exists parallel with the delusion that we are all "middle-class" because we all finished college and/or had a good job at some point. We all know where we are in the system. Or we think we know.

We post nonsense because we hardly have two brains to rub together in all our silly heads, but we know that you and Michael in your bountiful humanity can someday help us to achieve such rubbing . This is is written in continual gratitude. I should add for the sake of full disclosure that an Objectivist kissed me once, well OK I kissed him, but he kissed me back, and he later integrated that I had not deserved it and I fully understood his reasoning, indeed agreed with it. The three years in between the two events were fun though.

We post nonsense because we hardly have two brains to rub together in all our silly heads, but we know that you and Michael in your bountiful humanity can someday help us to achieve such rubbing . This is is written in continual gratitude.

I've read the first two. Now I'm going to read this one. "The wickedest daughter-in-law in history" (fictional history?) is simply sucking me in. I just love evil badass women! Everytime I try to get away from Neil--he pulls me back in!!! --Brant big ego too, for less reason I'm afraid Sorry to butt in but "evilest daughter-in-law in history" is definitely my aunt shirley as has been proven definitively,and not whoever this whoever person says it is, and if somebody is plagiarizing about her we are all going to sue. This is serious, we know what we are talking about, we all used to work for conrad black.

Generic brand-- Brandenbutter-- oh dearie me.

Brando Butter! Yes! MSK, this could be a great tie-in somewhere for your internet marketing! Negotiating the intellectual property with Comrade Sonia could be tricky, though.

This leads to the related issue of the cheaperness of the margarine, which often bedevilled my Canadian youth. Is it of more value to purchase the American margarine, and smuggle it across the border, factoring in the cost of gas,aand smuggling it across the border with the associate remote but not impossible risk of having to pay the duty on said margarine, or to buy the local butter? Should the individual rights of a family member who declares he will starve to death rather than eat the margarine, outweigh the rights of the parents to rationally purchase the spread of their choice, or the sibling who has logically concluded that his brother should just go ahead and starve? I fear a can of worms sautees could be opened up here.

more at http://patdollard.com/2011/01/unmasked-obama-coming-to-tucson-to-campaign-not-support-mourners-sham-exposed-see-the-tragedy-campaign-slogan-and-wait-for-it-logo/ Ms Pantihose (well, as Mr Boydstun indicates, you don't seem to have a surname so I thought I would help you out). Lincoln could have used the Gettysburg Address in his campaign platform.If you were around then, I suppose you would have pointed that out at his funeral.

A bio would not be complete without an account of how, in 1994, I was kidnapped, beaten nearly unconscious, bound and gagged, wrapped tightly in a tarp, thrown in the back of a pickup truck (while being told I would be shot if I cried out), driven miles to somewhere in the Oklahoma countryside, dragged out, tied to a tree, and repeatedly had a gun pointed at my head. I remained tied to that tree for over six hours until daybreak. Ghs How harrowingly horrific. I had an entirely different could-have-died experience in that same year! I set myself on fire (not on purpose). I was stirring oatmeal on the stove, wearing a genuine Japanese cotton kimono which obviously had no fire retardants, and my whole left sleeve was instantly on fire. I stuck the arm instantly into the sink, which was full of dishes as usual, but could not get enough water on it so ran into the shower and got the fire out. Two interesting things I remeber: 1. I distinctly saw myself, as if from the ceiling, running ablaze from the kitchen to the bathroom. Somehow, simultaneously, I saw myself rolling on the floor, also ablaze. 2. The clinical shock afterwards. I could do nothing but apologize, to the 911 operator, to the EMTs, to the receptionist at my husband's work, for being so stupid as to have tried to incinerate myself. I also felt overwhelming relief, not that I was alive but that I had been alone in the house, and my family did not have to see what happened. I don't remember feeling any other emotions at all. It all happened in seconds.

Thank you for posting this, as I might have missed it. The rain puddles touched me unbearably. I remember my own 9th birthday, the best ever with a wonderful party and my first big bike. And my sons' birthdays, and the blessing that they continue to have them. The magnificence of America is in Tucson today.

I did it again. I know how my intecheptitude must exasperate everybody. But it's just the name of Beliveau, I get overexcited. Heroes do walk among us!

You have provided a superb dose of common sense. You are, of course, right about the armaments industry. Ever read "The Arms of Krupp?" or "The Guns of August"? The Kaiser's government had new toys, everybody else had to have them, WW1 and 20 million die, and onward through the 20th century. I grew up in utter physical safety in a small town, and have lived for over 30 years in Canada's largest city still with that sense of safety, which I never really thought about till I unwisely commented on this topic!I walk the streets at night alone, etc. Never once have I felt or been threatened, and my experience is not that uncommon. I never want to lose that freedom. If you don't mind, I'll add a kind of omnibus here to questions I've been asked by Pippi during this skirmish. Pippi, thanks for helping my tech lameness, I have only sole-owned a computer for a short while. You've asked: "Do you know how lucky you are"? Yes, absolutely, and I know that it is luck as much as my own abilities. "Have you even read Rand"? Yes, most of what she wrote up to the mid-70's. I'm not a now- or ex- or anti-Objectivist. I am deeply interested in the Objectivist movement and the minds it attracts. I have known some Objectivists well, and I have seen Objectivism help them in many ways. I am not attracted to Rand's ideas, but I admire her as a unique and fascinating human being. Her life was an epic of triumphant achievement, great love and tragedy, which like classic tragedy proceeded relentlessly from her own character. "Why are you here anyway?" Because I want to be. BTW I teach adults, so the kids in the public school system are safe from me. Michael,I have been inaccurate -- I have in fact been threatened on the street here. Just last week in fact. I was going home from my nightly devotions at the Shrine of St Jean de Beliveau when I was set upon by a gang of Bobby Orrites. Things could have gotten ugly, but fortunately they opened up the rink for shinny so the crowd dispersed.

I think that's a false alternative . I should have been more clear. Of course I am not afraid of Shayne or Brant or responsible gun owners. I am afraid of guns, period, and the irresponsible, irrational, criminal or innocently infantile who will always get hold of them, when they are ubiquitous. I am afraid of the armaments industry and the NRA, with their huge resources. If they achieve their aims they will change my culture and force me to consider myself continually at risk of my life, assuming everyone on the street,like me, could be armed.To you that is secure self=reliance; to me it would be intentional paranoia. As to governments,mine (local, provincial, federal) have not intruded on my life or harmed me so far, in my own estimation. What can I say, I'm Canadian.

Mr. Keer: You have sworn at me and called me names, as is your right and common practice, and some of the names were accurate, but in your latest mischaracterization you have gone too far. In calling me a housewife you insult not me, as you intended, but housewives everywhere who work hard for no pay to keep their homes clean and attractive amongst their other multiple 24/7 duties. I do have a house and have been a wife, and have frequently been unemployed outside the home, but real housewives would never admit me to their ranks. Retract your invective, Sir. It is an insult, up with which I shall not put. To possible visitors if you're in town: Don't show up without calling first. A week ahead is preferable. And don't bring your guns.

I ask you to give up nothing. I ask you to think about the price of your right to self-defense, which others pay.

"Apres moi, la deluge!"

Brant and Shayne, what I advocate is that you think about tools as separate from the humans who use them, just for a minute. They exist for a purpose. Cars are manufactured to carry people and things. Bread knives are made to cut bread. Our hands are there to manipulate objects and if we're lucky, other people. Drivers deliberately run down their enemies, people stab their spouses and strangle their siblings. But most cars, knives and hands are not used for these purposes. Guns are manufactured solely to maim or kill living creatures. They are miracles of engineering and often objects of beauty. When used properly, they always do the job for which they are intended. I know the gun is the symbol of your liberty and entwined around your heart and soul. I just wish you could disentangle it a little from your brains. As to me being a coward and a teacher, I am guilty as charged. In fact I am the vice president of the Canadian League of Cowards. Of course I am afraid to be at the end of your guns, either now, or in the apocalyptic Latter Days which have been due since 999CE.

Who are you who presumes to grant me a "privilege"? God? How do you propose to exercise your authority if not without guns? Where did you get the "privilege" to wave your guns at me? Shayne Sorry, I wrote too hastily. I should have said, " I can grant you no privilege and have no power to". I thought my point that you are holding the gun and pointing it at me should have made that clear.

You're a teacher? You need to learn to think. A "WMD" is a WMD because of its indiscriminate destruction potential. A gun is very discriminate. This all boils down to rights. As in: by what right do you strip my right of self defense from me? Shayne No, Shayne, we are cooking on different stoves. To me it boils down to human bones. Real ones, bones instead of people, because of the dearest-held principles of others who are still alive. I strip no right from you. I deplore the carnage that happens because such destructive potential exists as a right, instead of a privilege. Guns are not discriminate. People are discriminate. Guns are not discriminate, people are discriminate

You're a teacher? You need to learn to think. A "WMD" is a WMD because of its indiscriminate destruction potential. A gun is very discriminate. This all boils down to rights. As in: by what right do you strip my right of self defense from me? Shayne No, Shayne, we are cooking on different stoves. To me it boils down to human bones. Real ones, bones instead of people, because of the dearest-held principles of others who are still alive. I strip no right from you. I deplore the carnage that happens because such destructive potential exists as a right, instead of a privilege. Guns are not discriminate. People are discriminate. Guns are not discriminate, people are discriminate

Until proven otherwise, this piece of human garbage has the inalienable right to bear a semiautomatic weapon. This crucial symbol of your liberty will last forever while Christina Green age 9, born on 9/11, crumbles into dust. Possessing a weapon does not require the right to possess it. The ability to kill someone does not give one the right to be a murderer. If this guy had brandished his weapon a hundred feet away from Giffords and advanced to her screaming he was going to kill her, someone else would have the right to shoot him down in self-defense with his "inalienable right to bear [his own] semiautomatic weapon." --Brant We will always see this issue from opposite ends of the gun barrel. Responsible hypothetical use of WMDs makes the existence and accepted private ownership of WMDs no less dangerous. I consider 30 people a "mass" of people: 30 individuals. As the armaments industry with its notable business success record, continues to eye Canada as a nice little market whose tiresome government restrictions frustrate honest profit, from my side of the barrel I can only see dead people. And one of them could be me.

Honoured Aristotle, my boyfriend is an Objectivist (I'm not), and he says it would really turn him on if I won a debate with him. How can I do that? --Stumped in Seattle Greeings, Lady Stumped. You cannot win such a debate. I is inconsistent with the Law of Identity that an Objectivist can ever lose a debate, or even an argument with a non-Objectivist. But what happens, you might ask, if two Objectivists argue? Foolish girl! No wonder your boyfriend is looking for an excuse to dump you. Your dumb question flies in the face of reality. Objectivists of their essence do not argue with each other, as they share the same premises and proceed logically to correct conclusions. In the unreal hypothetical case that they might argue, however, of course they would both always win. Have you not even heard of the Law of Pyrrhus? (Guest advisor is the Sybil of Cumae. Ari had more valuable things to do with his time this week,)