john42t

Which one? I relate to that extremely. I grew up without male role models. The best male influence was geeky. The only dominant, assertive male there was was also a complete moron, so that I unfortunately drew the wrong conclusion of associating male dominance with primitivity. Although I didn't swallow the feminist pill completely on an intellectual level, it sure took its toll. This is one of the reasons why I have issues with pedophilia-scare: Accusing a man of sexual offence is the feminist's most potent weapon and the one I was always scared of most. I think the public growth of "kink" is a natural reaction to the leftists damnation of authoritariansim in general and the traditional marriage in particular. Many people desire authority in relationships, especially in sexual ones. Since it was considered to be a sick perversion in normal relationships, it's natural that people begin to seek it explicitly under the admission it's not normal. What else can they do? The surge in submissive men could have many causes, one of my pet theories is simply the "de-manning" on men you mentioned. At any rate, I think those effects are symptoms not causes. That also goes for pornography in my book. Also, one has to be careful: Do you know how frequently or healthy people had sex 50 years ago? It's very difficult to say, McKinsey or not. Maybe the internet is, to some extent anyway, only revealing issues that have always been there. Very fascinating topic. EDIT: I should note that Germany's climate regarding feminism has changed dramatically. But where it seems that Germany has recovered, the US seems to have just reached her peak - if I get the correct impression from over here.

People you care about benefit. Selfish, not selfish, I'm not emotional about the choice of words here. Unless I suspect I'm dealing with someone who wants me to suffer for people I *don't* care about.

People suck in bed when they've got little self-worth - which is exactly what you would expect if they had been former altruists. It's not the fault of the medicine that mostly sick people take it, and it is not to be expected that they recover only from reading Atlas Shrugged or live in the vicinity of Rand.

So it's a misunderstanding. You call my behavior stupid, altruism is something else for you, got it. You agree with me that it was wrong to give this relative money. That basically means we're in agreement, all we're fighting about is definitions. Now that we got that sorted, we can both laugh about it and relax. There's no real conflict. Right?

One would hope she would rather have loved you. Exactly, the Objectivist concept of loving someone else - "It's still all about me". Weak, very weak. I once gave a close relative of mine my savings for some property investment. I didn't do it out of love in the Objectivist sense: A feeling of compassion, closeness, gratitude. No, I think I didn't even like that person at the time. My motivation was the moral code of self-sacrife that you are so fond of. I thought it would make me good person. It would somehow mean something. The result was hatred, first of that relative, then of myself for feeling that way. I bet you would never behave like I did. You wouldn't give all you have to a person you don't even like. When you think of self-sacrifce you think of a mother who loves her child. Such a mother would self-sacrifice when she *didn't* care for her child.

So does socialism in the form of progressivism. That's why I'm suspicious why anybody would call it fascism except for the reasons leftists do it.

I'm not on hers.

It's a law school. Everyone is coerced to deal with the corrupted legal system. So even if the school is financed entirly by the contributions of rich law firms with private clients in big business cases, that will have a strong parasitic component. And that's presuming it is just that: No research projects funded by the government, no student loans handed out by the government, no laws protecting academia there, no laws regulating admission (anti-discrimination, etc.). The more of these things, the more that institution is a government institution, be there official funding or not. There's more ways to extract values from free men than merely making them to pay money. The beneficiaries of such ways are also "net-tax-receivers", if those benefits outweigh their own contributions. Don't get me wrong, I support the legal system, I'm not an anarchist. I just advise to distrust them. EDIT: If somebody in the know could shed some light on the amount of government interference, I'd be interested to hear that.

Why's that?

Keep it going. I would be interested in Paul's primary target groups (I suspect is was primarily non-Jews and losers). He was probably not only the first Christian, but also the first self-hating Jew that is recorded in history.

He gets it from the socialist part of America: He's a professor. That's why I keep hammering on the net-tax-receiving thing all the time. Deep down something in his brain knows full well that in capitalism he'd be a nobody. Hence his hatred of it.

What was the threat here? Clearly you can't force somebody to fly somewhere he doesn't want to...

It's neo-mysticism, the most prominent representative of which is Marxism. That's why Marixsm is often used as a label for all of neo-mysticism. Neo-mysticism is more correct but makes you sound kind of Randroid.

One would hope she would rather have loved you.

When we're already nagging and bitching, I hate it when people call corporatism (as in big business blending with government) fascism. It's a leftist strawman. The British Empire had no separation of business and government whatsoever, to throw it in the same pot with Nazism is absurd. Fascism is a *collectivist* ideology (everyone has his place, we're one big organism, one people - one leader, etc.). There's nothing inherently collectivist about blending government with business. Fascism does not mean "anything I dislike". :-)

My stance is: Don't enlist unless you really want to - don't enlist out of a sense of duty or guilt. People who shove you a "Insted of me, other people die" are collectivists, they do not mean it well with you or anyone else, they merely want to elevate their own sacrifice to something it's not. Concentrate on financial an intellectual independence - on what *you* want to do with your life. It belongs to you, not to them or your country. There's also the practical side of getting along with your countrymen of course - that might be a reason to enlist unless you want to leave the country. That said, I'm pro-Israel of course, and I do know the peril she's in. But it's unlikely that it's your job to save her. And here's another thing: Look at the biographies and abilities of people who try to make you feel guilty - you very often find that they want to force their own standards on to you for the simple reason that they themselves have nothing else. I'm pretty sure that goes for the leftist hippie as much as the IDF veteran. That doesn't mean that those standards are wrong or worthless. But it does mean that you should be distrustful about people's motives when they approach you with moral righteousness.

Interesting observation about the types of civil wars. On the competing governments thing: I don't understand how this is supposed to work either. I understand monarchies: Privately owned competing governments on *different* territories. Rationalist is often the label neo-mystics apply to themselves to fight the religious. Rothbard was very much a leftist: He thought government is the source of evil, Rand thought hippies are the source of evil (short version). That's why he sought to ally with hippies to bring down government, whereas Rand allied with government to crack down on hippies. He worried about big business, Rand worried about corrupting influence in schools. It's such a cliche, it's almost comical. The left-right model works much better than most people think. And I'm so much with Rand on this. ("Mozart was a red" is funny though.)

I believe that. I laid out my case in a . (EDIT: the video is old, I didn't make it for this response)In a nutshell, I think most people confuse the *rational faculty* having a blank memory of conceptual information (no *conceptual* information is innate) with instincts (components of the brain peripheral to the rational faculty, such as those responsible for a response to sexual imagery, the physical pain mechanism, etc.). I have no reason to believe otherwise (I don't know of any innate concepts), so Occam's razor demands to assume it. I don't know what Peikoff thinks about this, these are my own thoughts about the matter. I hope I'm not falling prey to the the post analytic ad hokum lack of understanding fallacy here, although I do admit that to be a rather cool name for a fallacy.

The most fascinating case I know is Dawkins. Accused of promoting selfishness, he argues that his Selfish Gene defends altruism: Blurring the concepts he wants to tell us that what the Pope demands and what Selfish Genes want us to do is somehow related. He's afraid of being outside, of not belonging to the "society" that pays him and that demands allegiance to the moral code it's based on. He's a net-tax-receiver.

The good side is that the tide can be turning. In Germany there is a different trend even though there is *no* ideology pro-freedom. It's just pragmatism: People see that the state doesn't work, the see the leftists are all in the media and in public education, they stop trusting them. The climate changes, the state is somewhat shrinking, welfare has already been significantly reduced. Long term planning is possible in Germany to some extent, creativity is still smothered (as it was for about the last 150 years), but I'm optimistic for that to change too. The US/UK/Commonwealth countries are still heading in the wrong direction, but I believe their tide is about to turn as well.

Only if you do it the wrong way. It's like kindness and altruism blurred. It doesn't have to be blurred, it's only when people (often on purpose) do blur them. I agree that it's almost entirely done the wrong way, but that's just like philosophy is almost entirely done the wrong way. Before Rand I thought philosophy was pseudo-science, now I believe that it is a proper science that is corrupted. I have a similar view on Darwinism.

That's why I said 'reciprocal atruism' is more confusing. Here I agree with you, and the concept has nothing to do with altruism: Reciprocal altruism is as much altruism as pronouns are nouns. I would say yes, it doesn't have to be conscious. It can even be applied to the level of genes: Genes can "trade" in a sense: They can exist in mutually beneficial company. The same concept applies to the organisms they create, such as chimps. Of course genes don't "want" anything consciously, but the metaphor works nonetheless. Genes compete, collaborate and prey on, just unconsciously by natural selection. The nice feeling of company we human beings have when we socialize is the phenotype of genes that survived because of the many advantages of primates living in groups. Since on average such instincts are beneficial to most individuals, I would class it as a trade on that level. Conscious trading is the advanced version of it only human beings are capable of.

I believe 'group-oriented' behavior is much more confusing, it sounds like reciprocal altruism (helping each other out), which is yet again a totally different concept. It's true that there is a difference between the altruism the moral code to self-sacrife and altruism the self-sacrice. But to tell those two apart is way less confusing and in a way it's proper for them to have a term with at lest a common stem. Biologists refer to self-sacrifice, the moral code of altruism is what demands self-sacrifice. I see little confusion here.

It's a fascinating list, I especially like how honest he phrases point 15. He could have said "good ideologies", but he only required "consistent with those of the authorities". I bet he did this to avoid to be mistaken for a shallow do-gooder. That man was smart and consistent, his corruption deep down on premises most people don't reflect.

That makes sense. My upbringing was atheist/Marxist/egalitarian. I don't mind religion emotionally, in fact I even find it to have some bizarre appeal in case of some sects like fanatical Puritanism. But I when I read the human rights charter, it feels as if I'm reading the words of the devil himself. :-)