Arkadi

BTW, a friend just forwarded to me this message from his employer: "This weekend we celebrate Memorial Day to honor the men and women who lost their lives serving our country. The weekend will be filled with picnics, and celebrations, marking the unofficial start of summer. When you’re enjoying time with your family, and relaxing, please take a moment to honor the men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our wonderful country. I will never forget the brave men and women who forever bleed RED, WHITE, and BLUE! " It resonates with me. And I would consider piggish warding this feeling off by something like "it was not a sacrifice at all."

Brant--In some cases even more, for some of my friends do not follow the media either. I just simplified it for clarity.

Greg--I do not watch TV, as I said; but (1) I believe that I need to know who is the President of my country, (2) I learn it from my friends, and (3) they learn it from the media. If they were not following the news, I would have to do this myself.

Greg--So, you learned who had become our President from your neighbors? And how did your neighbors learn it, if not from the media?

p.s. Moreover, for most people the media news are the only way to get access to factual truth about not only the world at large but even events in their local community.

Greg--TV news contain lots of factual truth. Your belief that it is 100% lie (like in North Korea ?) smacks of paranoia, in my view.

Greg--If I watch TV with an understanding of its design to capture me emotionally, I am immune to its aforesaid design, just as I am immune to being emotionally captured by fiction, if I view it with an understanding that it is a dramatic portrayal which is not real. However, most people forget this when watching fiction, because they watch it precisely for the sake of being captured, i.e., for same reason as they wach the news.

Greg--Well grasped! I stopped watching TV and reading newspapers at the age of 19, and I believe that all media news "is...designed...to make you upset, angry, outraged, and afraid of things over which you have no personal control and for which you have no personal responsibility." But is not this true of most fiction movies and books as well?

Peter--Again, I am very much impressed by your capacity to digest stuff. As a teenager, I was reading at the speed of 100 pages of belles-lettres per hour whatever happened to be entertaining. But since then I have slowed down considerably and got a feeling that whenever I read or watch anything that stimulates no reflection in me on my own, personal or social, experience, is a distraction and a waste of time.

Peter--This is impressive! Do you have time, also, to read books? In particular, world classics (neglecting which cuts one off from the culture that is broader and deeper than just American one).

Brant--Because I assume that at this forum people know their Rand well enough (as well, at any rate, as good Christians normally know their Bible), and it is boring to dig locating the citations.

Brant--It would help if you stated precisely what view that I attribute to Rand you believe she had never expressed. But if you're not up to that, it is Ok with me, I'm all for the freedom of expression.

Brant--I would appreciate your being more specific and analytical in your critique; otherwise it does not help.

"Have some confidence in a majority of people's rationality..."--I do have such confidence. And majority of (American) people elected FDR four times in a row.

"if you value your property, and your country matters to you, you will be glad to pay what would be a chosen and minimal tax"--Chosen--by whom? Even so, you and I might disagree about how the tax is to be spent. If your view gets the majority of votes, and I remain unconvinced, the implementation of the decision would be a violence against me. And violence, on Rand's declared view, should not happen in an ideal state. This brings to mind her own ridiculing of principles that are (supposedly) good in theory but not in practical implementation.

Anthony--I brought the term "consistent Randian" into this discussion as referring to those who stick dogmatically to Rand's thesis that in ideal state there is to be no violence against any individual, only defense of individuals' right. This thesis is self-contradictory (and thus utopian), for any taxation is violence against some.

Anthony--I recall us discussing the notion of "sacrifice" before in connection to warfare. Yes, people hope to survive, but if they happen to be killed in battle thus helping others to survive, those others, in gratitude, say that those killed "sacrificed their lives." That's how the language works. As to the issue of race, it was not me but my interlocutor who brought it in, and I did not follow up on it. What I am saying is very simple. If you want to be a consistent Randian, your are to be for the privatization of absolutely everything, including police, elementary schools, garbage collection, driveways etc. I met such people, and I have nothing to discuss with them. For me such view is insane. And I doubt that Ayn Rand herself would be willing to live in such a capitalist non-state. But if you admit that not everything should be private, then the question is where you stop. Germany and France today are examples of stopping more to the left from where US has been so far.

Yes, "opportunity" was there and has been there all the time. Sergey Brin is just one example that comes immediately to mind, and there are many others.

Anthony--Yes, surviving. That is exactly the word I was using a bit earlier in this thread.

Wolf DeVoon--I was not saying it was "unique" to the Irish. Your objection (if it was meant so) was not ad rem. On the contrary, I was referring to the case of the Irish as typical.

Is, in your view, the following statement false? "The Irish often suffered blatant or subtle job discrimination. Furthermore, some businesses took advantage of Irish immigrants’ willingness to work at unskilled jobs for low pay."

Wolf DeVoon--You're welcome to falsify any evidence I bring in; I would appreciate that. This is how forums are effective in helping people who, like myself, are willing to get rid of their false beliefs. Your comment, however, does not do this job but only shows your own bias.

Wolf DeVoon-- Fitness includes all the gifts of nature, including IQ and the will for survival. Of all the poor population of Europe only the fittest fled. But many of even those immigrants literally sacrificed themselves for their posterity. "while many Irish men labored in coal mines and built railroads and canals. Railroad construction was so dangerous that it was said, "[there was] an Irishman buried under every tie." https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/immigration/irish4.html

Brant--My friend is a social worker in foster care (a job to which he's wholeheartedly dedicated, but which is quite stressful and takes a lot of energy unpaid for in cash); he has one car, is single, earns 42K, and takes care of his dysfunctional (and handicapped) relatives. I'm not saying he is a victim of anything. He just has lots of health problems. And this drains him financially (let alone physically).

coincidentia oppositorum.