Brad Aisa

OMG... I think I am becoming an "Objectivist Against Obama Against McCain Against Obama Especially Against McCain But Even More Frantically Against Obama For McCain Except I Can't Support McCain... wait... I Am So Horrified By Obama That I Guess I Have To Hope For McCain"

I don't think Dr. Peikoff is suggesting that religion has somehow supplanted bad philosophers in intellectual terms. He was speaking politically, and stated that he sees the religionists as a bigger threat to American freedom than the more secular socialists. Just observe the worst countries -- are they the secular socialist/communist dictatorships, or the religious/theocratic ones? Even the "democratic" theocracies like Egypt, or western-allied monarchies like Saudi Arabia are far more repressive places to live, in many ways, than, say, a country like China or maybe Cuba. One fundamental aspect is that religion is predominantly intrinsicist, whereas socialist ideologies are perhaps more rational and objective (albeit wrong.) You can battle a morality that is mistaken, but there is no way to combat one that is Intrinsically Correct ("the Bible says...", "the Koran says...", etc.) FYI, Environmentalism is basically a religion, in this sense: it is almost completely an intrinsicist morality (earth is Good, existence of species is Good, climate unmodified by human activity is Good, etc. -- no one values pollution, so factor the objectively valid aspects out of "environmentalism", and you still have 95% of its content, which is pure intrinsicism -- and notice the religious-like tactics of its adherents, such as eco-terrorists, animal-"rights" activists, etc.)

Yeah, well, there is "goes to church on Sunday" Christians and then there is "Adam and Eve walked with the dinosaurs" Christians. As Dr. Peikoff pointed out, Palin's selection was almost certainly motivated in part by an attempt to pander to the evangelicals. It is very scary when that extreme of irrationality of the religious right have come to have an entitlement to at least the bottom half of the ticket. You know... if the Republicans were punished hard, as Dr. Peikoff suggested, until or unless they drop the right, then the Democrats would become the power holders, and the religionists would just migrate over to the Democrats and form a new wing there. And THEN we would have the secular socialists and the religious altruists under the same party tent, which would be sweet...

It's true, that it's all irrational, but I think one can draw the line based on a few characteristics: 1. is it going to affect how they approach policy? many classically religious people who accept religion as a personal matter do not bring their beliefs into politics--Canadian politicians, especially Liberals, have traditionally been very good this way (3 of the most gay-rights-friendly politicians were devote Catholics, and several Catholic Prime Ministers disavowed any attempts to overturn Canada's lack of abortion laws on religious bases.) 2. is it just fairly abstract religious belief, that doesn't really tie to actual life? belief in "god" and mythological religious figures tends to be quite abstract and disconnected from real life Notice how the creationists fail this test-- they believe very absurd concrete nonsense that directly contradicts vast quantities of very clearly documented scientific evidence. If there is such a thing as Dr. Peikoff's "inherently dishonest ideas" I would put Creationism into that camp.

Dr. Peikoff echoes my own personal sentiments exactly. I have been saying here all along that the religious right and the Republicans are vastly more dangerous than the Democrats, and that in this election, both sides are equally awful and there is no one to vote for. I think the people arguing otherwise have not been eating their Objectivist Wheaties. IMHO.

Palin said in a rather dishonest interview that she thought evolution should be taught in science class. (The interview was dishonest, because both the interviewer and Palin skirted around the substance of the issues, essentially making it seems as if Palin is a perfectly reasonable, rational individual.) The context of that question was the seeming fact that Palin is a creationist. THAT is such an egregiously irrational viewpoint that it disqualifies someone for the position of President.

Yaron Brook is awesome!!!

People have a tendency to try to get away with whatever they can. In the last 60 years, our military and foreign policy has been so permissive and irrational, that other countries have been able to get away with almost anything. Under a sterner and more rational foreign and military policy, the potential thugs of the world would have a much clearer idea of what to expect. This is Betsy's "big stick" theory. I think there is a good balance to be had in here: being very tough when need be will intimidate some and keep them from being too tyrannical; for the more irrational, invasion and replacement is the cure. I think our last (almost) fully rational military response was to Japan. If we had continued rational policies on to defeat the Communists, then maintained thereafter, the world would be a vastly saner place today. "Just War" theory has been a textbook example of the power of morality and fundamental ideas.

Back in the days when Men were Men and Armies were Ruthless there was such a thing as total surrender, followed by occupation, followed by withdrawal. You are much better off setting up a proper government before you leave--it will save you being at risk again, and will add to the net world freedom and trade, all benefits. Without this intervention, the most likely result is just more tyranny which necessarily always devolves into war.

I too enjoyed this movie a lot. I thought it was very moralistic, and purposefully provided you with a range of moral characters and particular moral (and unmoral) choices on which to contemplate. I also thought it was very pro-mind, and I found I had to engage actively with the movie at all times. The plot was also more unpredictable than a lot of Hollywood movies these days, so that was a refreshing treat. And I think Leonardo DiCaprio is an awesome actor--what I especially like is that he has this fairly waifish school boy kind of looks and physical stature, but he plays huge, larger-than-life characters (like spies, an international diamond swindler, Howard Hughes (!), etc.) and makes them believable. So in a certain way, his characters are that much stronger and more powerful, precisely because it is the character from which the power must come, not a big hulking uberman physical presence.

This whole mess was caused because there is no objective way to centrally manage the money supply, not in a single country, not in the world economy. Since there is no objective way to manage it, it means that it becomes essentially a stochastic (random) process--sometimes money expansion will be too little, some times just right, sometimes too much. And sometimes, the extremes will be very extreme. Just like any randomly distributed variable (think the bell curve...) In this case, in retrospect, we can see that WAY too much money was pumped into the economy for WAY too long. It did not trigger large consumer inflation, but look what it DID cause inflation in: the home business. As Greenspan himself pointed out, there was so much excess capital floating around the world investment community, and a lot of it went into mortgages; of course a lot went into expanding all kinds of production (ex. the car companies, etc.) It was all bogus--all a house of cards. And THIS is the type of thing Greenspan explained (although not too well imo) in his article on gold money in Ayn Rand's book on capitalism. Now he is acting like he never even expressed these ideas before, about objective control of the money supply via private, commodity money.

I probably should have been more clear: I meant that we should not invade and overthrow an enemy and then not set up a proper government, because that is pointless--it will very likely just devolve again into tyranny. If we would have a properly strong and aggressive military philosophy AND not stand for non-free governments afterwards, we could largely avoid all these wars. (Of course that is probably preaching to the choir here...) And people are being too dismissive of the Afghanis--it doesn't matter that "the great unwashed masses" may be ignorant or whatever, they are never a critical component, it is the middle and upper classes, the educated people, who matter (just like in Iran.) And *those* civilized people are the ones who are most morally deserving of our support, even if our primary purpose is to establish a civilized regime that will not further threaten us. For example, if a student can be thrown in jail for 20 years (or sentenced to death!) just for expressing ideas, how in the world can such a regime possibly fight the remaining Taliban and Al Queda, morally??? They can't--in fact the Taliban are, on those terms, much more consistent, and have the moral upper hand.

A student generously had his death sentence commuted to 20 years in prison in Afghanistan. His offense? Asking some questions in a class at university, that were considered to be blasphemous. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081021/ap_on_...ournalist_trial It is completely wrong that we would invade a country and liberate its people from tyranny (regardless the fact our own motives were to rid us of an objective enemy) and then fail to insist that the new government be conducted on civilized principles.

Those candidates were chosen by those who CARED the most, the ones who participated in the primaries. History is not made by ideas... history is made by the people who care the most. Their ideas then prevail. There is a PROFOUND difference in these two ideas...

I really fail to see the analogy. To make the analogy proper, one would have to conclude that not voting was the logical way to apply the principles of force to elections, not the other way around, trying to say that my comments about elections imply some other action than following orders under compulsion, as you are attempting. When all you are offered is a choice of unacceptable violation of rights by either choice, then not participating is the proper action. Frankly, if Objectivists were more focused on a positive political agenda, aka something like the Objectivist Party or a Capitalist Party, they wouldn't have time for this kind of frankly useless bickering...