I'm an Objectivist. Debate me.

@Talon

I’ll respond to your posts when I have more time becauase they are long and need to be read without me being rushed.

 

I Iike Martin Buber's description of community. Somewhere in another book he says both massification and individualism can be sociological pre-conditions for propaganda. In Communism the face of man is made anonymous, masked by the masses of people; in individualism, the face of man is exhaled above all others to distortion and unrecognition. And by the way, if there is no society (aggregate of individuals), then there are no markets (aggregate of buyers and sellers). Randianism is a cult.

Do you guys and girls like the Bee Gees? I kind of miss them. Even socialist scum like myself likes the Bee Gees.

 

degenerate antichrist Rand's history is well known - look up the links provided if you still are under the delusion that she was morally fit to preach the way she did

 

Hyperbole.

Solzhenitsyn, like his compatriot Boris Pasternak, was a Nobel laureate. Obviously, he was respected by people all across the political spectrum.

It's no secret that Solzy was a Leftist and a nationalist, and it's no secret that he was deeply religious, too, but to compare him to the people you mentioned is quite a stretch. That would be like comparing you to Stalin and Pol Pot just because all three of you are Leftists.

And?

How does anything you posted invalidate the observations I cited? If you have an argument to make, present your case.

Some of the most devastating critiques of the Left have been made by Leftists and former-Leftists speaking from their own personal, ideological and political experiences as Leftists. For example, this scathing polemic against the so-called "anti-war" Left was written by a well-known Trotskyist and published by an uber-partisan "progressive" propaganda bullhorn:

Anti-War My Foot
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/09/the-phony-peaceniks-who-protested-in-washington.html

 

No rush. I look forward to hearing back from you.

 

And Martin Luther King, Jr., was a womanizer. This isn't the Catholic Church and no one needs to be perfect to contribute to the conservative cause. Condoleeza Rice doesn't get excommunicated simply because she supports abortion rights.

Your idiotic equating of nationalism with Naziism is noted and ignored.

 

Stalin and Pol Pot were Christian just like Hitler. I subscribe to none of the ideologies these people did unlike so many of you on this forum.

 

I suppose that means you also ignore the stupidity of you right wingers equating Antifa with liberalism.
Nah, not likely.

 

Thanks.

Right, good. I couldn't remember and couldn't be bothered to look it up. The copy I have said that Filmer's work was quite respected in his day until Locke ripped it to shreds.

Because I read so much on-line or on the computer these days, the stacks of books I have to read mostly go unread. And there are a lot of them. I've restrained myself from going to the library or buying more books at the second-hand shops until I whittle down the stacks I have now. On my list, though, is Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, supposed to be a better rebuttal of the use of IQ as a measuring stick, and Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies, which I've heard good things about.

 

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

LOL - I can relate. I've got more books than my library can hold and they're starting to pile up everywhere. It's gotten so bad that my wife has offered to buy me some more bookcases because I haven't had time to build any.

Curse you, Amazon!!

 

Generous of her. I'm slowly realizing that I'm going to die of old age before I get around to rereading any of the great books I have read just because I have so many books to finish reading or that I want to read for the first time.

On the subject of shelves, my father bought a new double wide mobile home in 1990 and had it custom made with floor to ceiling bookshelves extending the length of one wall in every room except the kitchen. It was one of his few really inspired ideas.

 

I'm beginning to wonder the same thing of myself. Last week I stumbled across James Michener's account of the Hungarian revolt of 1956, The Bridge at Andau, which I read decades ago but I wonder if I'll ever get a chance to re-read it (awesome book). Same thing with Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, and at 650 pages I seriously doubt I'll ever find the time.

WOW - That is inspired...

 

Pol Pot went to a Catholic school but is there any evidence that he was ever a practicing Christian?

 

You'd think after communism fell everyone would value capitalism once and for all.

I really liked the quotes you mentioned from the book. It's all quite true.

To add on, I think people have forgotten what it means to be free. They look to the government and their leaders to solve their problems instead of solving their problems themselves. They refuse to take responsibility and play the victim. They wish for the world to be better, but don't take any responsibility to make it better. If you place all of the responsibility on the government, give the government all the power, it's no wonder countries go into totalitarian dictatorships.

It's frightening because America is closer to Stalinist Russia than the original principles presented by the Founding Fathers. And yet, people still depend so heavily on the government to make their life better and the idea of liberty doesn't matter anymore.

I was also listening to Ayn Rand talk about the New Left. The New Left realizes that their communist utopias have failed to deliver financial abundance and that capitalism clearly demonstrates that it can deliver financial abundance. Lefties now denounces capitalism because it creates abundance. Because you are wealthy, you should be ashamed for it. They make you feel guilty for exploiting the environment and placing the economy above climate change because they're so scientific... They've resulted to fear tactics that cannot be checked or challenged.

I have not read Ludwig Von Mises yet. I've only read from the Mises website from time to time to help me answer certain questions, especially questions regarding the Great Depression and the financial crises of 2008.

I've been reading some Plato because they have been requirements for college. But you're right, I should read more leftist books. The list that I have created is a giant echo chamber.

But I'll read those books.. and interesting, I thought Karl Marx was the father of socialism/communism.

I definitely will in the future!

I think you are absolutely right. I have been closing myself off lately to new ideas. A lot of lefties would accuse me of being closed-minded, but I assumed it was because I just disagreed with them. But hearing it from you sounds more authentic, so I'll definitely move away from being so rigid.

Thank you! I really appreciate it! And it's comforting to know that there are people out there who still think along the lines of the classical liberal.

 

Wow, how many books do you know? Do you have a list of books you can give me? You mention books that I've never heard of.

Yes, nihilism is evil. America is quite nihilistic. It's scary, honestly. I don't think America will be around much longer.

 

Okay, so let's get into this. First of all, what gives you any insight into my epistemology?

 

going to school

it was also said he had an Epiphany late in life

 

Conservatives and Republicans (two very different groups, I have come to realize) have no problem denouncing Nazis and Naziism on a regular basis. Democrats and liberals (two very overlapping groups) seem to have a real problem denouncing Antifa.

 

Science has demonstrated the scenario that I explained. Here we are 88+ years later and not taking it at face value. There is no shortage of head-in-the-sand turkeys.

None of the above. I left the matter as an open-ended issue since some people prefer one option over another. The most sensible conclusion is that some kind of intangible intelligent filtering process is inherent.

 

You misunderstood things. Reality is real. The point is that existence does not create itself even though it appears to be doing so. The subjective part is the transition from energy pattern to objective physical reality, from waveform energy to particle energy (solid matter). In our reality, there is a close link between cause and effect, IAW we experience a near 100% logical physical consistency. But it is not 100%. There are rarely occurring paranormal anomalies, but the system makes sure they don't happen regularly enough to support scientific verification that insists on repeatability.

Tom Campbell’s viewpoint: the present is a virtual reality assembled from one microsecond to the next according to probability factors.

The world is lost in a constant flow of blood because of material obsession, excessive pursuit of self-serving interests, and failure to realize what is our proper place and purpose in relation to the rest of the universe (Creation, which includes other energetic realms beyond our ken, beyond our usual experience and perceptibility accustomed to the range of 3 dimensions).

 

I didn't state that physical reality is subjective or nonmaterial. Its formative basis is subjective, since it arises from the conversion of waveform energy to solid particle/matter, a process that is subservient to an intangible intelligent filtering process as demonstrated by the double slit experiment revealed 88+ years ago.

Watching it per se does not register the passage of photons through a slit via detection/measurement and record it as data. The effect of knowledge of the data and corresponding result has everything to do with conscious awareness. Note that nobody since the 1920s/1930s has been able to refute said experiment. The best they could do was claim that wave decoherence into particle mode also occurs in the absence of any apparent observer/consciousness. However, a Logos or larger consciousness system or universal belief does not announce its existence.

 

I love ice cream on a Sunday afternoon.

 

You would think that because you are a rational person, but "progressives" (socialists) aren't rational people. They are in thrall to a utopian faith that seeks to create an impossible world for an impossible humanity. They're basically a cult, which is why Jean-François Revel referred to them as the Cult of Fiasco.

Very much so, and having been a "progressive" before he became one of Europe's best known liberals (in the Classical sense) he fully understands how socialists think and operate. Here in the States we refer to these apostates of the "progressive" faith as Second Thoughters and David Horowitz is arguably the most famous of them here in America (I happen to be a former New Leftist myself). For the conservatives and libertarians who have never been a "progressive" their insights are quite valuable, and from my own experience I can say their insights are quite accurate.

Unfortunately, you're right, and all of this has to do with the decline of Individualism in this country. Not surprisingly the decline of Individualism in America has coincided with the rise of socialism during the 20th Century. This probably would have happened much quicker and earlier if it wasn't for the Cold War. The socialists and Soviet sympathizers in the Democratic party were on the verge of taking it over when FDR died, but Henry Wallace and his fellow "progressives" marched out of the party after Harry Truman decided to stand up to Stalin and the USSR and they formed their own political party:

Progressive Party - United States, 1948
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1948)

After wandering in the political wilderness for twenty years, "progressives" started marching back into the party during the Vietnam War and their coming out party was at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. After that, "progressives" began their Long March through the Democratic party and in 2008 they managed to elevate one of their own - Barack Obama - to the highest level of the party. In the process they penetrated the rest of our nation's institutions - government, media, schools, etc. - and used them to push their collectivist ideology and agenda. Naturally, part of their Nihilistic effort to fundamentally transform the United States of America (to use Obama's dog whistle) was to attack and undermine everything that stood in their way and, of course, that involved a full-on assault against Individualism and everything associated with it, from individual freedom to free enterprise/free market capitalism to the Constitution. As I mentioned earlier, this destructive process is eerily similar to what Dostoevsky observed in pre-revolutionary Russia and wrote about in Demons. Nobel Prize winning author Boris Pasternak later expanded on this when he criticized the pointlessness of the Bolshevik Revolution and the foolishness of the men responsible for it in Doctor Zhivago, which aroused the fury of the Soviet authorities after they failed to suppress its publication (Pasternak successfully managed to smuggle the manuscript out of the USSR to Italy in 1957 to get it published).

But the New Left hasn't realized that their utopian fantasies have failed, Appleo. They insist that they weren't implemented properly or they were implemented by the wrong people - they've made up a litany of excuses for why their project has failed but they have never accepted and acknowledged that it can't work. Why is this? First of all, because they're irrational people who are operating on faith, not reason. Secondly, because they don't understand human nature and economics. Third, because they fail to see that within the seed of socialism is contained the germ of totalitarianism. Fourth, because "progressives" are stinking drunk on their own Kool-Aid - they think they're morally and intellectually infallible and the myth of their infallibility must be maintained at all costs, even when that means lying to everyone including themselves. As I've said many times, humility and introspection are not "progressive" traits. The only "progressives" who possess these traits are the former "progressives" such as myself who had the courage, honesty and fortitude to admit to themselves and others that everything they believed in was wrong. That's not an easy thing to do.

Here's another thing: collectivism appeals to weak-minded people. Individualism is difficult. It requires thought. It requires work. I often requires sacrifice. It's easy to be a collectivist. It's easy to be a conformist. It's easy to make others do what you should be doing for yourself.

That's a good website - I read it often, as well (my wife used to be a member of the Institute).

LVM's seminal work is Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. Individual conservatives and libertarians, along with libertarian groups such as Students for Liberty, have been pushing hard to get that book included in more college curricula, along with the works of other pro-free market philosophers and economists.

I've found books on the history of the Left and Leftist ideologues particularly informative and useful.

Here are a couple of online libraries you should consider Bookmarking - there's a treasure trove of information in both:

Discover the Networks: An Online Database of the Left and its Agendas
https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/
http://archive.discoverthenetworks.org/individual.asp
http://archive.discoverthenetworks.org/group.asp
http://archive.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?type=funder

Paul Bogdanor
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/politics.html
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left.html
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/deniers.html
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/chomskyhoax.html

I consider François-Noël Babeuf (b. 1760, guillotined 1797) the father of socialism/communism but others might go back further to Gerrard Winstanley (b.1609 - d.1676) of the Diggers/True Levellers, which was a proto-socialist movement in England.

Good! Remember, you're doing this for yourself.

You're most welcome, and I'm sure I could learn a lot from you and your perspective, as well. That's one of the great things about discussion forums such as this - it gives people such as us an opportunity to meet each other and exchange information and personal observations.

 

I own hundreds of books - mostly History - and I can't even count how many more I've read over the years. You're never too old to keep learning.

I'll be glad to make you a list in the next day or two and I'll avoid the ones that have already been mentioned.

Yes, Nihilism is evil and our body politic has become poisoned with it.

Call me optimistic, but I don't think America is lost - I think we are standing at the crossroads. We can either continue down the path of self-destruction or we can rediscover our strength and vitality and build a nation that is even greater than the one our worthy ancestors handed down to us. It's not going to be easy - nothing valuable and worthwhile ever is - but as long as there are young people like you there is always hope.