How many of us are there?

[Chris Grieb]

How many Americans consider themselves Objectivists or Libertarians?

On the Cato blog and in a piece by David Boaz and David Kirby estimated the Libertarian vote at over 10% of the voting population. A conversation I was listening into at Cato Institute yesterday a group of people who worked at Cato poo=pooed this idea citing that at the time the prescription drug coverage was being debated only two percent of the population was opposed to this idea. In 1980 polls were taken by the Clark campaign suggesting that as much as 8 % liked the idea of a Libertarian candidate. A recent poll about Atlas Shrugged had an 8% figure of people who had read that book.

My question to OL readers is how many Libertarians do you think there are.

[BaalChatzaf]

How many Americans consider themselves Objectivists or Libertarians?

On the Cato blog and in a piece by David Boaz and David Kirby estimated the Libertarian vote at over 10% of the voting population. A conversation I was listening into at Cato Institute yesterday a group of people who worked at Cato poo=pooed this idea citing that at the time the prescription drug coverage was being debated only two percent of the population was opposed to this idea. In 1980 polls were taken by the Clark campaign suggesting that as much as 8 % liked the idea of a Libertarian candidate. A recent poll about Atlas Shrugged had an 8% figure of people who had read that book.

My question to OL readers is how many Libertarians do you think there are.

Libertarian voters, or those with libertarian inclinations. I know many people who hate the anti-drug laws (for example) but would not vote libertarian. I know many people who are live-and-let-live types who do not oppose government programs like social security. The are probably many more Americans with a libertarian streak than their are libertarian voters.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[mvir9]

How many Americans consider themselves Objectivists or Libertarians?

On the Cato blog and in a piece by David Boaz and David Kirby estimated the Libertarian vote at over 10% of the voting population. A conversation I was listening into at Cato Institute yesterday a group of people who worked at Cato poo=pooed this idea citing that at the time the prescription drug coverage was being debated only two percent of the population was opposed to this idea. In 1980 polls were taken by the Clark campaign suggesting that as much as 8 % liked the idea of a Libertarian candidate. A recent poll about Atlas Shrugged had an 8% figure of people who had read that book.

My question to OL readers is how many Libertarians do you think there are.

Libertarian voters, or those with libertarian inclinations. I know many people who hate the anti-drug laws (for example) but would not vote libertarian. I know many people who are live-and-let-live types who do not oppose government programs like social security. The are probably many more Americans with a libertarian streak than their are libertarian voters.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I agree that the distinction needs to be made.

In my experience, some people hold libertarian ideals, but they aren't familiar with Libertarianism. As well, a number of Libertarians will not vote Libertarian because it is a "wasted vote." Instead, they choose the person that fits their political beliefs as much as possible from either of the two mainstay parties.

Ah, politics . . .

(edited for a typo)

Edited November 29, 2007 by Virginia Murr

[Jody Gomez]

I consider myself an Objectivist. I do not consider myself a Libertarian. I may agree with some of them sometimes, but hell, I agree with some Christians sometimes.

[Chris Grieb]

The replies I've gotten suggest that Americans don't think in principles.

There's still a lot of work to do. But I think we knew that.

[BaalChatzaf]

The replies I've gotten suggest that Americans don't think in principles.

There's still a lot of work to do. But I think we knew that.

Principles and $1.67 will get you a cup of coffee at our local Dunkin' Donuts™.

Social habits have more traction in our society than Principles. It is possible to live a normal life time without formulating a single metaphysical, ethical or aesthetic Principle. Most people manage very well on rules of thumb and workable approximations. Homo Sapien as been around at least a quarter of a million years (if you go by the fossils). Humans have had explicit logical and metaphysical principles (that we know about) for maybe ten thousand years. What did humans do before that? Somehow they managed to make tools, find shelter, invent language and hunt meat successfully. In an intellectual sense few if any got beyond the twelve year old stage of mentality. The average life span was probably between thirty and forty years but that is good enough to make the reproductive cut which is all that nature cares about.

Moderns have inherited a more refined standard from our civilized forbears; The Egyptians, the Babylonians, The Assyrians, The Greeks and The Hebrews. Living together is large numbers (towns and cities) probably selected for more social intelligence (in order to find a mate). In such a situation abstract intelligence (as opposed to tool making and food getting skill) took on a greater weight in reproductive success. When people got smarter, they also started thinking in Principles.

Now we live in a society where dimwits get a free ride on the brain work of their betters (a comparative few), so it is not so surprising to see mental acuity becoming de-weighted as a factor in reproductive success. I suspect that the degree of political sophistication among the yeomen in the period leading to American independence was higher on the average than it is today. In those days of yore, one had to -read- the broadsheets to know what was going on. Now the dimwits just watch sound bites on T.V.. The downside of our current technologically based society is that it does not demand mental prowess beyond what is needed to hold a sufficiently well paying job, for survival.

Robert A. Heinlein, who in his better days, was a bright bulb among authors had this to say:

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At

best he is a tolerable sub-human who has learned to wear shoes, bathe,

and not make messes in the house.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

Few people know that before humans hunted for meat they ate tofu.

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

Brant; On tofu I don't think so.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

(sigh)

A rule of thumb is a kind of principle.

Your kind of logic here is akin to saying that a person eats no food at all, he just eats meat.

Incidentally, one way more advanced thinking in principles starts is by thinking in rules of thumb.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

(sigh)

A rule of thumb is a kind of principle.

Your kind of logic here is akin to saying that a person eats no food at all, he just eats meat.

Incidentally, one way more advanced thinking in principles starts is by thinking in rules of thumb.

Michael

Whenever YOU speak of principles, you speak of deep principles, usually centering around metaphysics. Rules of thumb do not require deep thinking. They are learned by repetition and involve little or no reflection. Leaning to tie one's shoe for example is not the same as mastering the mathematical theory of knots. One learns a few heuristics and one ties his shoe. After a while it become automatic and habitual. Compare "leaflets three, let them be" to a scholarly treatise on poison ivy, its etiology, its chemistry etc.

However successful or unsuccessful Rand may have been philosophically, she was going for depth and I sense that this is the context in which you invoke Principle. Rand was a system builder. Most people are simply not interested in intricate philosophical systems. Most people manage to go through life without struggling or mastering deep principles. They acquire fairly simple procedures and protocols based on appearances with no probing to depth. That is generally good enough for the unexamined life. To dive deep one must accept the pain of effort and focus to achieve the reward. Most people do not do this. Or if they do, they have this urge squeezed out of them early in life by being forced to attend to "practical" matters. That is why very few people become philosophers, mathematicians, scientists etc. etc..

Most people run on habit. They are not fully aware. In a certain sense they are mentally only half alive. This is quite sufficient to sustain physical and social life over a period of decades. Give most people steady meals, a pint to drink and something to screw and they are happy. Must people die without ever having lived a fully human life. It is sad, but that is the way of things. They never even knew what they missed.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited December 1, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Whenever YOU speak of principles, you speak of deep principles, usually centering around metaphysics.

Bob,

That's quite interesting because it is so wrong. I always try to use precise meanings. Just because I have discussed SOME deep principles, this does not mean that ALL principles are deep ones. I have never even implied anything like that. On the contrary, I have discussed principles on the light side (like in movies, etc.) and on the humorous side (like my lampoons of Objectivist guru wannabes and many other places).

Principles are arrived at mainly by induction—often with a good deal of deduction complementing it. That goes for deep principles and for rules of thumb. Matters of degree are not matters of kind. With your background in logic, you should know that.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Whenever YOU speak of principles, you speak of deep principles, usually centering around metaphysics.

Bob,

That's quite interesting because it is so wrong. I always try to use precise meanings. Just because I have discussed SOME deep principles, this does not mean that ALL principles are deep ones. I have never even implied anything like that. On the contrary, I have discussed principles on the light side (like in movies, etc.) and on the humorous side (like my lampoons of Objectivist guru wannabes and many other places).

Principles are arrived at mainly by induction—often with a good deal of deduction complementing it. That goes for deep principles and for rules of thumb. Matters of degree are not matters of kind. With your background in logic, you should know that.

Michael

My own principles are firmly between deep and shallow. That's because I don't want to hit bottom when I jump into life and because I don't want to drown, eiher.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Most people run on habit. They are not fully aware. In a certain sense they are mentally only half alive. This is quite sufficient to sustain physical and social life over a period of decades. Give most people steady meals, a pint to drink and something to screw and they are happy. Must people die without ever having lived a fully human life. It is sad, but that is the way of things. They never even knew what they missed.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I wish better for you, Bob.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

I wish better for you, Bob.

--Brant

Grant me a boon, pray do. Do not wish me well. Thank you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[mvir9]

Most people run on habit. They are not fully aware. In a certain sense they are mentally only half alive. This is quite sufficient to sustain physical and social life over a period of decades. Give most people steady meals, a pint to drink and something to screw and they are happy. Must people die without ever having lived a fully human life. It is sad, but that is the way of things. They never even knew what they missed.

Ba'al Chatzaf

As unpopular and pessimistic as this posit may be, I agree. This is the intellectual emptiness that Rand fought against, and it is the same intellectual emptiness that causes me to shake my head in frustration on an almost daily basis.

Why do people go to church on Sunday? I would confidently suggest that at least 7 out of 10 people do it because that is what they are "supposed" to do. Actually, I would be thrilled to find 3 people that could explain to me WHY they go to church without relying upon "because the Bible tells me to" or because "it's what my parents did."

The same thing applies to politics. I would be happy to find 3 out of ten people who could explain to me why they vote they way that they do -- without resorting to "I like him, he seems like a nice guy" or "he wants to save the children" or "my parents voted that way."

Even though I may disagree with him at the most fundamental levels, I have much more respect for the person that understands why he thinks and acts as he does then I ever would for someone who agrees with me but doesn't know why.

[Wolf DeVoon]

intellectual emptiness that causes me to shake my head in frustration on an almost daily basis.

You're an interesting person, ma'am. Thought so a long time. 20 million Objectivists = 0.3% of global population, most of us concentrated in the US, which is especially frustrating since the Jeffersonian separation of church and state seemed so liberating 200 years ago, the flower of which was Mark Twain, I think. Rand came late to the party, long after it was kaput.

The past couple of decades has been particularly dense, I think, beause the Greenspan put opened the floodgates and nicely reproduced the Roaring 20's. Maybe he was a destroyer in disguise. The economy is certainly destroyed, isn't it? Took a long time to pull off, had to be a playboy of sorts to gain their confidence, but yes, I think Alan Greenspan probably promised Rand he'd destroy the US economy. Makes as much sense as treason (to his Objectivist moral peers).

Shocking idea, me rehabilitating Alan Greenspan. Ironic as Messabi ore.

Edited December 4, 2007 by Wolf DeVoon

[Jody Gomez]

The replies I've gotten suggest that Americans don't think in principles.

There's still a lot of work to do. But I think we knew that.

Explain.

[Brant Gaede]

I wish better for you, Bob.

--Brant

Grant me a boon, pray do. Do not wish me well. Thank you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Okay: May your tires be always inflated.

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

Jody; Could you give me a little more time?

One thought is that maybe Americans don't think.