I'm an Objectivist. Debate me.

Well, Gelecki, I see you don't need any help defending your position. I am copying your response for my own benefit. Thanks.

 

You know, I once had a physicist tell me: When you touch something, you don't really touch it; you're just manipulating molecules. I said it then, I'll say it now, how bizarre.

It's like saying, water isn't really H2O: its electrons interlocking. How bizarre. You know, like how blue isn't really blue until it hits an eye that sees that wavelength as blue. Oh really.

You know, like that tree in the forest that falls that no one ever heard. Did it go thump?

 

.

Again, this is gobbly-gook that signifies nothing and is even worse than the "the sound and fury" of an idiot. Why? Because its much more pretentious.

 

While were recommending books and authors:
Isabel Patterson's: God of the Machine
Inge Scholl: The White Rose
Richard Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker
Harrison Salisbury: The White Rose
Anatoly Marchenko: My Testimony

And for a good Ayn Rand read: The Red Pawn

 

And don't forget the NT Bible and Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf"....to be consistent with your reading list that includes Ayn Rand.

 

pffff... are you really serious?

 

Hahaha. They are a cult and they think they're smart too, which is pretty funny.

I feel like everyone starts out as a progressive. I know I did because of the public school system. But yeah makes sense. If you're deep into the other side, you have a lot of great insights when you come out of it.

How could anyone be a soviet sympathizer? Like what goes on in your head.

Really depressing. Obama is one of the worst presidents ever. I see so many critiques of individualism and it's always so confusing to me.

Well I mean some of them must have at least realized that they're wrong... right?

You're absolutely right with all four reasons.

Again, you are absolutely right! It really is easy to be a collectivist. You can pretty much take no responsibility for anything.

That's cool that your wife was a part of that.

We really need that at the colleges because the colleges can pretty control the minds.

Bookmarked!

Dude, I hate Noam Chomsky. His old, raspy socialist voice. It is so disturbing to listen to.

Good to know.

Of course! Freedom of speech allows the truth to come out with the power of conversation.

 

Can any right winger who support the theories of antichrist Rand present any evidence that her schemes actually work?

This should be interesting in view of the fact that she did not actually live by those thoughts which have been so strenuously defended by her disciples on this thread.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ondemns-violent-actions-of-antifa-protesters/

You were saying?



Compare this to the Republican financing of Nazis as shown in the writings of Antony Sutton.

 

"in the strongest criticism of left-wing protesters that any Democratic leader has made."
"The statement was quickly ... ridiculed by some on the left."

You were saying?

I have no idea who Antony Sutton is or why I should believe him.

 

His epiphany must have been that the people were too stupid and scared to blow his head off so he kept killing the gutless fools.

 

Atlas Shrugged was a big influence to me. When I read it at the age of 20 I was an extremely left wing (almost a Communist) person but Atlas Shrugged really changed my thinking. Not right away. It was a gradual process over the year evolving into a mix of libertarian and conservative views.

As far as a philosophy to live by, I go with something I believe I read in an Alan Watts book, i.e., "If I'm hungry I eat. If I'm tired I sleep." Works for me.

 

But who will clean the toilets then?

 

There was an error in this list. I've correct it. The correction is Harrison Salisbury, The White Rose. It now reads Harrison Salisbury, Black Nights/White Snow.
My apologies for the error and any confusion.

 

Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, America in the 19th century, the standard of living today, Venezuela before Chavez, the Apollo Program, the Manhattan project, Apple, Dell, Marinos, Ayn Rand, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Frederick Douglas, Muhammad Ali, Cyrus Poonawalland, Silicon Valley, on, and on, and on.

It is not to say they where Objectivists, but to the degree they practiced reason, creativity, self-reliance, intelligence, and without violating the rights of others, they were practicing Objectivist principles.

Where you find prosperity, you find capitalism, objective law, respect for property rights, and reason.

To the degree a nation practices capitalism, objective law that respects property rights, and is basically rational, you find peace and prosperity.

To the degree a nation practices collectivism, i.e., socialism, communism, fascism, i.e., the wealth is controlled by the state for the good of the nation; you find death, starvation, knocks in the night, rivers of blood, screams of horror.

The results of capitalism and socialism are easy to find... all one need to do is look.

 

America in the 19th century ~

Hmmm. Slavery, genocide of Native Americans and Hispanics in the Southwest, Gilded Age with its massive poverty and urban congestion, Civil War, etc.



The standard of living today ~

This largely the result of FDR reforms, though revisionist right wingers would readily deny that.



Muhammad Ali ~

One of my lifelong heroes who pointed out the racism and other deficiencies of society, etc.



Andrew Carnegie ~

One of the biggest supporters of proto-Nazi eugenics:

https://www.philanthropydaily.com/how-the-carnegie-corporation-contributed-to-ncs-shameful-past/



Manhattan Project ~

The Nazis had one such program of their own. Hardly a sign of "progress" but a quest for destruction.




I can say more but your list just doesn't quite prove that Rand's crazed ideas were rational. Especially since she did not live by them nor has anyone else.

 

you mean quickly supported by Dems

Sutton - I have linked to him MANY times on this forum. Click on search.




you were saying ??

 

Godwin's Law...

 

Anthem had the same effect on me (I was 22 when I first read it). I had never read a book where someone took collectivism/socialism/communism to its logical extreme, and it wasn't difficult to note the similarities and parallels between Rand's dystopian socialist future to the bleak and gray world I was seeing in the Communist Bloc during the 1980s. What a horrible world that was.

To think that this year will be the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall...



It's amusing to hear collectivist imbeciles like Barack Obama prattle about how him and the rest of the Babeuvian Illiterati are on the right side of History when History rendered its verdict to the contrary in 1989.

It's been three decades now and they still haven't figured that out...



They're the Flat-Earthers of our time.

 

Slavery: An error that should not have been made, but one the capitalistic north corrected. (As a side note, let's remember that after the civil war and slavery was abolished, it was the Southern Democrats that wrote the Jim Crow laws, not the capitalists.)

The Indians: For the most part roving nomads, with some exceptions, but overall with no development for eons. Inevitably, they were defeated by reason. America's mistake was in not demanding their unconditional surrender and an end to their tribal nations. The Indians' mistake was sticking to the tribal traditions and not embracing Western Ideology. Their lot in life is of their own making.

Ali. How bizarre. We agree.

Carnegie: Whatever his sins, his successes in the industry, especially the steel industry, is astonishing, and deserves merit. By using his mind to create a thriving industry, he achieved a degree of success very few of us will ever enjoy; but because of his success, many of us enjoyed the fruit of his labor. Thank you, Mister Carnegie, for you wealth creation; it made my life better.

Manhattan Project: It destroyed Japan's will to fight and saved millions of lives; but even more important, it created the nuclear age and an abundance of energy we haven't even begun to tap yet. Thank you, all who worked on the project.

In conclusion; Liberty sets the creative mind free; tyranny destroys it...and tyranny starts with a gun, just like socialism.

Damn your smears and your false bravado.

 

By someone who is obviously unskilled or robots.

 

I have not read Anthem but based on your comment I will.

 

So now anyone not an Objectivist is a Commie and a Flat Earther?

Rand was as much an extremist as was Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, she'd have slaughtered her millions with the best of them, she just never got into a position of power.

Just once, why couldn't we get a Great Man (or person) who had a sense of humor and admitted himself human like all of us.

We had one, Ben Franklin, pity he was never President

 

It is funny, which is why I refer to "progressives" as the Babeuvian Illiterati.

Of course, that might be a little too obscure for those of us who don't know who François-Noël Babeuf was.

I agree - when you're young, idealistic, naive and ignorant of the people, world and history around you it's easy to become a "progressive", especially when the Leftists in the media and our schools are busy indoctrinating you into their ideology and agendas. It's tough to break out of that - a lot of people never do, and some people son't even know otherwise. Several months ago I was listening to some Leftist clod on NPR who was genuinely amazed that there were different viewpoints out there. He couldn't even comprehend the concept.

Things were different in the 1930s and 40s. The socialist project in the USSR was still a work in progress and there were a lot of "progressives" in America and the West who still thought it would work and rooted for its success. On top of that, you had LW propagandists such as the infamous Walter Duranty of The New York Times who were denying the reports of Stalin's atrocities in Ukraine, as Noam Chomsky would later deny the reports of Pol Pot's atrocities in Cambodia.

While the dissidents who were struggling for their lives and freedom were critical of the "progressives" who supported the Soviets and turned a blind eye to their crimes, what can we say about the "progressives" amongst us today who should know better? I guess we can excuse the ignorance and intellectual laziness of the young proles you weren't alive during the Soviet Era but their elders have no excuse. In fact, many of them are not only ignoring socialism's failed past, they are actively attempting to negate and obscure it so people will forget about that past and the lessons to be learned it.

Those of us who abandoned the New Left did, but the New Left has become the Old Left, just like an acorn becomes an oak, not a maple or a pine.

I forgot the part about historical amnesia. If you forget the past you are doomed to repeat its mistakes.

Which brings to mind something RW humorist P.J. O'Rourke once said:

One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license.

Noam Chomsky is scum, and he is arguably the greatest pseudo-intellectual charlatan of our times (Paul Bogdanor's "Chomsky Hoax" lays that out in excruciating detail). His old buddy Howard Zinn wasn't much better. Both of them have poisoned countless young minds with their Nihilistic venom.

Speaking of which I have that book list for you. However, instead of throwing dozens of books at you I would prefer to encourage you to dedicate a significant amount of time to an entire field of study: History. If we don't understand our past we can't understand where we are and where we are headed.

Anyway, here's a short list. You''ll note that it's not all about politics and many of the books that are about politics are of the "Know Thy Enemy" type. At this point in your studies, Siedentop's Inventing the Individual and Mises' Socialism might be where you should start, but Solzhenitsyn's Warning to the West may be the most urgent.

If you have any questions about the books feel free to ask.

POLITICS

Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis
By Ludwig von Mises

Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism
By Larry Siedentop

Warning to the West
By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era
By Jean-François Revel

The Road to Serfdom
By F.A. Hayek

The Politics of Bad Faith
By David Horowitz

Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals
By Saul Alinsky

HISTORY

Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism
By Joshua Muravchik

A Conservative History of the American Left
By Daniel Flynn

Communism: A History
by Richard Pipes

Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom
By Andrew Napolitano

A History of the English Speaking Peoples
By Winston Churchill

The Oxford History of the French Revolution
By William Doyle

The Spanish Civil War
By Hugh Thomas


BIOGRAPHIES

Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution
By Mark Puls

The Cost of Liberty: The Life of John Dickinson
By William Murchison

NOVELS

Demons
By Fyodor Dostoevsky

Doctor Zhivago
By Boris Pasternak

 

''tyranny starts with a gun''


correction: British tyranny ended with a gun - consider the example of Washington and the Minutemen



''socialism''

read the writings of conservative Antony Sutton


''Carnegie''

Was responsible for the Homestead riots in which many innocent died. That's terrorism and it was caused by the capitalist who claimed to be ever so beneficent.



''smears''

Native Americans suffering genocide due to ''Their lot in life is of their own making.'' is a smear and a defense of racist American proto-Nazism.



"Manhattan Project"

Ironically, the HUAC and McCarthy both accused several members of being commies. They smeared these patriots just like did with many others all of whom were liberals.