I'm an Objectivist. Debate me.

First of all, permit me to congratulate you for refusing to blindly follow the "progressive" herd and exposing yourself to thinkers like Ayn Rand. I was first exposed to her work when an Objectivist friend of mine I used to debate about philosophy and politics challenged me to read Anthem. My views on politics have never been the same, and I consider Anthem and Henry David Thoreau's Walden the two books that have had the most influence on my Individualist thinking. However, I didn't stop at reading Rand's work - I kept reading the works of other Individualist thinkers and artists and between their ideas and my own I developed my own personal views and philosophy.

Precisely because you are young, open-minded and new to philosophy and politics I encourage you to do the same - read more work from Individualist thinkers. Don't restrict yourself to contemporary writers, either - the roots of the Individualism that Rand embraced can be traced back centuries and you might be surprised at the sophistication of their work. Sometimes I think the generation that Founded this country (America) in the mid to late 18th Century is more intelligent and sophisticated than we are, and they didn't have the benefit of our own experiences over the past 200+ years. For example, several years ago I finally got around to reading John Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies, which was written in 1767-68 in response to the passage of the Townshend Acts, and I have yet to read anything since that time that has surpassed its brilliance and eloquence.

Furthermore, by exposing yourself to other thinkers, writers and artists you'll run across observations such as this by the late Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in Warning to the West:

Those quotes are from speeches Solzhenitsyn gave in 1975.

Then you have other prophetic observations such as this from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, which was written at the time his fellow Democrats were enacting the Great Society/War on Poverty welfare programs during the mid-1960s:

As you can see, it's helpful to read the work of your ideological and political opponents, as well as their history.

I think I've written enough for one post - you get the point.

Who else besides Ayn Rand have you been reading and studying?

 

Your quotes from Solzhenitsyn and Moynihan are astonishing in their prophetic clarity.

 

They are astonishing, and in the case of Solzhenitsyn's Warning to the West, profoundly unsettling. He saw what happened in his own country during the early 20th Century happening in Western nations when he gave those speeches in Britain and America following his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974.

In that respect, I've also found Fyodor Dostoevsky's Demons remarkably relevant to our own times. The parallels and similarities between the Nihilists in pre-revolutionary Russia and those of the Nihilists who have pledged to fundamentally transform the United States of America are striking, and we find them following the same violent and destructive trajectory.

 

I've read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and have seen at least one movie based on the novel. Fascinating read. His presentation of the criminal mind is outstanding and distrubing.

I will need to read his Demons. You a very good poster. Excellent command of writing. Are you a professional writer?

 

He was referring to the Soviet Union, which Ayn Rand escaped from and condemned in no uncertain terms.

Actually, she was suffering considerably because she wouldn't accept the benefits that she was entitled to until William F. Buckley convinced her that she might as well take advantage of the benefits as long as they were available rather than go on suffering. I have written an extensive defense of hypocrisy elsewhere I can find and copy & paste here if you're interested in it, but the short answer to hypocrisy is *shrug* so what?

I don't think you could find enough Republicans to have committed as many acts of degeneracy as Democrats have.

Democrat Pedophiles and Sex Offenders Outnumber Repubs, many Dems re-elected.

As for the Republicans, that's the Boy Scouts and the NFL caving in to the degeneracy of liberals, not the Republicans embracing degeneracy. Meanwhile, the result of these constant attacks on the Boy Scouts of allowing in homosexuals, girls, transgenders, and who knows what else has led to a 2/3rds reduction in the number of boys in the group and likely filing for bankruptcy soon. (Personally, I don't give a damn, I think camping in the woods when you have a house to live in and a bed to sleep in the dumbest idea ever, and doing it with a bunch of other males just compounds the stupidity. And no reasonable father is going to send his son out camping with a homosexual transgender man without supervision, that's just rule #1 in protecting kids from sexual abuse.)

Because conservatives accept the idea of sin. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, or in secular terms, everyone's a ****-up. A better question is why do liberals use conservative hypocrisy to dismiss conservative ideas rather than address the merits or demerits of the ideas themselves? Is it because they can't address the ideas and can only attack the person who proposed the ideas? Why do Democrats attack Republicans for hypocrisy but defend their own who have committed the same sins, Bill Clinton being the primary example? Why must we "believe the woman" unless she is attacking a Democrat?

It was the only thing I didn't like about Rand as a Christian. Now that I'm an atheist, too, it doesn't bother me so much. In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt had erected a giant dollar sign as an object of reverence and worship. She doesn't it call it that, but that's clearly what it was. Not a good idea to worship money even as an atheist, anymore than it is a good idea to worship the state like liberals do.

 

A good summation of some of her good points. However, I think you've left out the main one, one which no other philosopher before her or since has managed to incorporate into his/her thinking, and that is to point out the reduction of every other political philosophy to a defense of one of two systems, the king or the priest. Those who saw politics as turning on matters of force defended the king, those who saw politics as turning on matters of faith defended the priest. But force and faith were the only two systems available, she said, until capitalism arrived. Capitalism, Rand pointed out, gave rise to a third way, a way in which neither force nor faith had any claim on man, but only equal and voluntary exchange, benefit for benefit. Force, she said, was the means of the brute, while faith was the means of the mystic, but both are equally detestable. This, I think, is a profound insight and an utterly new way of defending capitalism from its detractors, who would return us to the system of either force or faith.

 

I was taught on never to mass debate in public shame on you guys. I think you all need to stop right now.

 

Quoting Rand, "If a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled." She wrote that all problems stem from statism and government and did not restrict herself to criticizing Bolshevism which, ironically enough, had been set up and financed by Wall Street Republicans.

She had written that government has no right to control individual choice. She made the choice to drink, smoke, use drugs, and engage in degeneracy of all kinds so that she brought this on herself. If she had any character, any integrity, she would have openly admitted to deriving money from the government - a practice she condemned so often in public even during the time she was taking government money.

You must be dreaming if you believe that garbage. Never in human history has there ever been a bigger collection of moral misfits than your heroes in the Republican party. I can give you a dozen links to prove it but have done so enough times on this forum already.

And yes, the Boy Scouts are controlled by your party which governs their behavioral standards. Blaming Dems for what happens to them is like that idiot Reagan blaming trees for auto exhaust pollution.

Laughable. Democrats demanded and forced Al Franken, Rod Blagojevich, and others to resign even before the slightest evidence was president. In Franken's case, no charges were ever made because Republican Tweeden (his accuser) is a female pervert who has been seen rubbing her crotch against men, thumbing them in the butt, and sticking her tongue into multiple men's mouths. Why didn't the right wing condemn her for her hypocrisy and sexism???

It is your Republican heroes who expand the Pentagon and military industrial complex. If you have read my posts over the years you know fully well I have called for their dissolution just like our Founding Fathers would have demanded. Not one of your fellow righties has ever applauded my call like a real patriot would do.


There is nothing more hypocritical, more unpatriotic, more morally unfit, more Pharisaical than right wingers whether they call themselves Republican, CONservative, objectivist, or whatever. That facts speak for themselves.

 

You were taught wrongly.

This forum exists to promote debate. While I do not agree with right wingers, I fully support their right to express themselves by using forums such as this one. As always, they learn how wrong they are. Many times over the years righties have told me they learned a great deal from me (on another forum last night I was told that again). Live and learn as they say. That's what this forum promotes.

 

Democrats - definitely the thinking type. Republicans - definitely the thuggish moocher type.

 

Well, obviously, that settle the question...about the your misnomer.

 

Yes you definently seem like you enjoy mass debating a LOT, as with all good things pleade use moderation.

 

And this is the truth Mr. Truth is btchn about, but can’t defeat with empirical evidence, nor sophistical syllogism.

Ayn Rand:

“”My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

Is she wrong because loved sex? Is she wrong because she smoked cigarettes? Is she wrong because lived as she chose?

In other words, Mr. Truth is saying: Man is not an heroic being, because Ayn Rand slept with too many of them. Man’s happiness is not his moral purpose, serving others is...because Any Rand got drunk; productive achievement is not his noblest activity because Ayn Rand received Social Security; and reason is not Man’s only moral absolute, Atruism is, because Ayn Rand wrote fanciful, fantastic fiction.

My lord, what a wench.

Well let each soul decide for themselves what is truth and what is not, and then look in mirror and decide what that smile says.

Read Anthem, We the Living, The Foutainhead, Atlas Shrugged

 

I am neither a conservative or liberal. And it bothers me that you draw a straight line between these groups of people and make such broad assumptions. It's like group politics or whatever you want to call it. No one is 100% conservative or liberal and both conservatives and liberals are good people. We need the balance.

I believe in progress as any liberal does, but that does not mean throwing away all of our traditions. I believe in tradition like any conservative does, but that does not mean I don't believe in progress. I want a society that maintains traditions that are valid and good, and destroys the old and outdated traditions. Both liberals and conservatives and everyone in between are good. Deciding which progress is good, and which traditions are good isn't a simple issue. That's why in a free country we want people to practice their progressive ideas or traditional ideas WITHOUT government influence. The people that practice the right combination of tradition and progress will be the most prosperous.

The problem that I have with liberals and conservatives is that they result to government to enforce their beliefs on everyone else. Conservatives say, "Gays can't get married and the government will forbid you." They want to reunite the state and church. Liberals say, "Everyone should get free money and I will use the government to do it." They want to unite the government and economics. But doing this only enforces authoritarianism and I don't understand why anyone would want that. A free country of free people can figure out what is the right course of action. Not an all powerful government enforcing whatever the majority vote decides.

 

What you're saying doesn't make sense.

 

Thank you for acknowledging the positive.

 

That moment in time when you find a book that changes your entire worldview is always amazing. Ironically, I learned about Ayn Rand in public school during my sophomore year. We read the book Anthem and I enjoyed the book. I agreed with everything in it, but I just agreed. I didn't really understand the deeper point behind the book. It didn't register in my brain. Also being a sophomore, I didn't know what socialism was, or what the real difference between a democrat or republican was. It wasn't until Donald Trump got elected that I thought learning about politics would be a good idea. I studied basic politics, and I took the political compass test. And then I compared myself to all the other major influential figures in politics. Mao and Stalin were left-wing authoritarian, and what I knew from history was that they were the WORST leaders to ever exist. And of course Hitler.. So I looked at the opposite part of the political, because if they were the worst, then the best would have the be the opposite logically speaking. And of course I saw Ayn Rand. And I then I remembered reading about her my sophomore year and that she had a philosophy. After learning more about it, it was clear that it was a philosophy that completely opposed totalitarianism. And so I read Atlas Shrugged to see what she really had to say about everything, and of course I loved what she said, and so I have loved Ayn Rand ever since.

I agree with you that I should definitely expand my views to other writers. Ayn Rand has opened me up to to the modern world of right-wing freedom-based politics though, that I would have otherwise never have known. People like Lauren Souther, Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, Stefan Molyneux, Milo Yiannopolous, etc...

I totally plan on reading more than watching youtube when it comes to politics.

Well because Ayn Rand has seemed to really nail down politics and life for me, I've been doing my best to read more of her non-fiction work, and the work of other Objectivists. Viable Values by Tara Smith, and an Objectivism by Leonard Piekoff. And the 5 pillars of self-esteem by Nathaniel Branden. I really want to understand her through and through and find some flaws and disagreements as well. So I'm also going to read writers that directly oppose her. Robert Nozick's critique of of Rand. Michael Huemer's, "Why I'm not an Objectivist."

Once I've covered everything in Ayn Rand, I figured I'd branch out a little further. I found a good list of books from the Mises website, and I've decided that I'm going to read those next.

Fredrich Bestiat - The Law
Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
Mises, Human Action
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty
Nozick, Anarchy State and Utopia
Mises, Socialism
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom
Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine
(Of course Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead were originally apart of this list)

 

Spoken like a true Republican Pharisee - it's only wrong when Dems do it but it's perfectly OK for holier-than-thou Republicans and Objectivists.

 

The Virtue of Stupidity: A Critique of Ayn Rand and Objectivism

https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Virtue-of-Stupidity-A-Critique-of-Ayn-Rand-and-Objectivism


“It is not a novel that should be thrown aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

---- Dorothy Parker about Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

The so-called philosophy of Ayn Rand, known as Objectivism, has become a rather odious cult in the United States. Europeans find it baffling, while academic philosophers use it as opening for easy jokes. If a philosophy conference is getting especially dull and grim you can simply say the name Ayn Rand and you will get at least a few amusing jabs at her. Followers of Rand are impervious to any criticisms of her work however. When one mentions the obvious problems and contradictions in her work they are greeted with an almost religious parroting of her maxims. Maxims are really all they are because Rand rarely gives justification for any of her claims but simply states her point of view as emphatically as possible and then she (or her followers) accuses anybody who disagrees as being irrational. What follows is a detailed critique of Ayn Rand’s philosophy with the work of REAL philosophers used to form a number of objections to her claims. If anybody doubts that my portrayal of Rand is an accurate representation of her philosophy then I invite you to go to aynrandlexicon.com where her philosophy is presented in great detail by Objectivists ....




A great read. Tells it like it is.

Objectivism is phony and the point has been proven countless times especially because its professed adherents fail to practice it. Instead, they rely on the state more than anyone else.

 

Physical reality has a nonmaterial, subjective basis. Per Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, a particle’s momentum or its location can be determined, but not both. Electrons within atoms do not exist as distinct orbiting entities but as cloudlike effects. Tom Campbell’s viewpoint: the present is a virtual reality assembled from one microsecond to the next according to probability factors.

Scientists thought they had nearly everything figured out after the discovery of atomic structure. However, the stunning results of double slit experiments done in 1920-1930 disqualified materialism as the basis of existence. When the registered events of impulses passing through a slit are subjected to conscious awareness, the output pattern becomes mostly just 2 bands instead of the usual numerous ones typical of an interference pattern of 2 wave sets interacting. Light (an example of waveform energy) has the inherent characteristic of wave/particle duality and makes a conditional transition from waveform energy to particle substance (photons). Erasure of the registered data (a recording of the detection/measurement at the slit) before it is subjected to conscious awareness results in production of the usual interference pattern.

Action consistent with data parameters is a process of adherence to program logic. The latter implies a connection to intelligence and purpose, IAW a being, albeit functionally omnipresent yet pervasively intangible and possibly very remote (the programmer is invisible to the program).

Energy is intrinsic in matter, as evident in high-rate atomic vibrations. The logic acting conditional to the shaping of material reality is invisible and unknown. Among many possible world scenarios, who or what influences the selection (God? The Logos? The larger consciousness system? The universal mind? The consensus of universal belief?)?

 

PFFT!

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/jail-survey-7-in-10-felons-register-as-democrats
"60-80% of welfare recipients are Democrats"
https://wallstreetpit.com/89671-are-welfare-recipients-mostly-republican/
"Financially, Republicans fare better than either Democrats or Independents"
"Republicans have higher well-being than Democrats or Independents."
"On average, Republicans are more charitable financially and otherwise than either Democrats or Independents. Despite the perception that they’re stingy — either because of personal wealth or policy positions that don’t advocate for a government-backed public safety net — numerous studies have found American Republicans to be among the most generous people on earth, and not just financially. Republicans also provide more volunteer hours and donate blood more frequently."
https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demographics-republicans/

Not only are Republicans not the thuggish, moocher type, Republicans are simply better people overall than Democrats.

 

Okay, I read it. It's crap. He starts off by mischaracterizing her positions and then goes on to mischaracterize her philosophy. I wouldn't even say Kant is her greatest nemesis, I would say Nietzsche is. Kant at least had the good sense to say that human life is the greatest value. Nietzsche, on the other hand, dismissed all life except the life of the ubermensch, which is usually translated as "superman" in English, but would be more accurately translated as "overman", or Hitler, to be specific.

 

Well, I can’t speak for Republicans, Democrats, or Objectivists; as for me: Ayn Rand is an amazingly heroic figure. She overcame immense obstacles; she solved the body/soul dichotomy; she discovered how we form concepts; she is to philosophy what Einstein is to physics; and most importantly, she took Man off the cross and put Him on a pedestal—not to be worshipped, but as an ideal to be adored, loved, admired, and emulated.

But you want to desecrate,her. Because according to your observations: she loved too much, smoked too much, took social security and Medicare, and spoke ill of religion, especially Jesus

Yup. These are truly mortal sins.

Ayn Rand:
“Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the nonideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the nonideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used.”
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/religion.html

And on Man:
“ it is not in the nature of man—nor of any living entity—to start out by giving up, by spitting in one’s own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption, whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consists of abandoning one’s mind; security, of abandoning one’s values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.”

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/man-worship/2.html

And the greatest gift she has given us is a vision of Man that radiates with joy and possibilities, with love and heroics, and with achievement and creativity. A vision that shows us: Man has right to live, not as a scraficial lamb., but as a hero; Not as a Stalin, Mao or Maduro, but as a Ford, a Carnegie, a Wilbur and Orville Wright, a Fleming, a Salk, or a John Galt.

In other words to right to be; the right to reach for the best within us, the right to grow wings instead of wearing ball and chains, the right to hold our heads high, seeing a vision of tomorrow, and knowing that vision is possible today...the right to say good morning to the universe.

But you keep desecrating her.

Me?

God bless Ayn Rand; she’s earned her place in Atlantis, the home of heroes.

 

For most of us, it was either Ayn Rand or National Review that opened our eyes to the fact that we weren't alone in our thinking. Welcome to the group.

Good idea. I'd add Dennis Prager and PragerU to that list for YouTube, and if you have time and like a good laugh, check out Evan Sayet. His "unified field theory of liberalism" is both funny and profound. Oh, and you probably already know Pat Condell, but if you don't, now you do. Another one who is both funny and profound.

A good list. I highly recommend Friedman's Free to Choose as an easy read that will get you saying, "Yes, yes, yes!" Fair warning: Nearly every conservative who reads Free to Choose gets an almost irresistible urge to buy a hundred copies and give one to everyone s/he knows. Another good one is Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative (ghostwritten by L. Brent Bozell). I've read that one several times. I mentioned Machiavelli's The Prince in an earlier post, I'll recommend it again here. The sequence of philosophers that precede Ayn Rand is also good, Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas. And then of course John Locke's 2nd Treatise on Government. If you want to read the 1st Treatise, I recommend getting a copy that includes the essay to which John Locke was responding, otherwise there's a lot you won't understand. Absolutely get the abridged versions of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. The unabridged versions are not worth reading. Hayek is easy to read, Mises is a slog. The Federalist Papers. Only a few of the entries were written by Madison, but Madison's offerings are much better than Hamilton's, even if Hamilton had a much greater impact on the structure of the American financial system. George Washington's Farewell Address (https://wallbuilders.com/george-washingtons-farewell-address/) is well worth the read. I can't imagine anyone in our political system today having the brainpower to deliver such an address, never mind the guts to do so. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago isn't strictly political, but does highlight the horror of communism in a way no political tract can. It's a real page turner, too, it reads like a novel while being an absolute journal of truth. Set it aside for a time when you have a week with nothing else to do because you will be totally engrossed. Herrnstein & Murray's The Bell Curve is a great great book, probably the most significant book of the 1990s. I actually read every page of the 500 page collection of "debunking" essays to The Bell Curve and found them all completely unresponsive. Not one could or did challenge the data. Lynn & Vanhanen's IQ and the Wealth of Nations extends the basic idea of The Bell Curve to national prosperity. Most of the criticism of the book centered around the lack of robust data. Rather than updating the original book with new data, they've written a sequel, IQ and Global Inequality, which I have not read and so cannot speak to. There are probably a few more I'm forgetting, but that's what I can think of right now.

 

Yes!! Great red pills.

I already watch PragerU. There's a lot of right-wingers that I watch I just can't name them all at the moment. Sayet and Condell I have not seen, so I'll have to check them out.

I will definitely read all of those in the future! Thank you for that awesome list of books!