Here is a platform question more for the state or local level. My real estate bill has charges for mosquito spraying, water, library, public school, city administration and county administration. Additionally I pay for drivers license, car sticker, tolls. What would you eliminate as a govt service out of these

ha-ha my "fault." I meant that I served the ball and you should volley if you want the discussion. But, as for that, yes, I am currently in the Texas Military Department. And, yes, of course, I did it for selfish reasons. I am not one of those damned altruists...

But thanks for your your thanks.

Mike M.

Thanks for your service. I hope you did it for selfish reasons.

We should have a separate discussion on that. Philosophy is subject to experimental verification. It is not a rationalist, idealist structure, all synthesis and no analysis. That is the error of the Continential rationalists contrasted with the British empiricist. It was a false dichotomy.

We can explore the question here, but I believe that a separate discussion under Philosophy is warranted.

I served.

What I struggle with in regard to Rand's definition of life is not the pre-birth time, but the post-birth but pre-rational though period and the time after which Alzheimer's or dementia sets in.

Okay! I too am a writer. I do not expect my readers to agree with everything I say in one of my literary offers. When I asked mother if I could read 'Peyton Place', her response was, 'Yes, but take it with a grain of salt'. I knew what that meant.

Well, let's see, a fetus cannot take the Oath of the Gulch. Neither can an infant, nor someone without the mental capacity to understand it. It comes down to at one point can one exercise a rational self-interest. Rational thought, I think, requires birth, but one can't be sure.

Good question. I'm not trying to make a pro or anti-abortion argument here, merely find out if there's anything in AR that we could extrapolate to a general position. I use interests, I admit, as a very general term. What I really meant was an eventual interest in having a life. The good question is when self-consciousness develops. I don't have an answer to that and will not attempt to here. Maybe I'll just leave that issue at "centrist" (default case) and be done with it.

My (insert your preferred deity here if applicable), what have I started? :) I love how these questions just take on a life of their own and start a major thread.

Well, you can start with the question of what is the essential nature of government? What is it that every government is or has or does? Some subsidize art. Some built giant tombs for their kings. Essentially, they exist to protect the society from outsiders and to minimize conflicts within the group.

We can look at the alternative cases in which governments do other things in addition and see how that worked out. How are those freeways looking? Education? Healthcare?

Right, I got that at first, but I wanted to address the "Objectivist Party" thing because you could have used other labels such as Libertarian, Individualist, Freedom First, Old Republic, or whatever.

I am not much of a gamer. My wife and I were in a D&D Club about five years ago for about a year. We played a lot of it as Moria or Rogue on the computers back when our kid was growing up. The three of us had a good time running characters. I have done Risk, of course, and I have this monstrous World War II game I could never get anyone to play. It clearly takes a long weekend of cola and pizza. So, just to say, I understand the context.

Confederate election of 1900... Interesting...

There is a premise that I think qualifies as an axiom that you cannot really project an alternate history because you only lived in the history you know. Still, you have to accept the pure chance of fate. Hitler survived World War I as a runner. The odds were against that. Did he cause World War II or were larger forces acting? It speaks to your view of the world.

Personally, I think that it cuts both ways. Absent Edison, the incandescent lamp may or may not have been invented at that moment, but the technology was a given. And he did have a competitor in Westinghouse. So, while your own personal choices do make a difference, certainly to you, it is not clear what history would be like if only....

Please define what you mean by interests. How can a fetus or even a baby who has not developed a self yet, have any interest. It is totally dependent on biological processes of the mother and within the fetus and also the mother's choice to let the fetus continue to develop and finally be born as a baby. Biological necessities are not interests, else one would consider that a plant or bacteria or even a virus have interests.
Interests are based upon conscious minds. Interest presupposes a self consciousness. A life requires certain biological processes which are necessary but not an interest of the organism. When a self consciousness develops, then interests by the organism develop and not before.

Philosophy is not an experiment. Objectivism is based on facts of objective reality and is not something which must be tested against empirical fact. If it were necessary to test it, it would not be Objectivism. Here, the difference between those who consider Objectivism to be a closed system and those who question aspects and make changes to it creating other objective philosophies.
Objectivism is a philosophy created from facts of objective reality by Ayn Rand and cannot remain Objectivism with changes to it. One applies it to ones own life in as non-contradictory a way as possible. Other objective philosophies, depending upon how contradiction free, are possible but should not be linked to Rand's Objectivism.

You need to read the Tracinski newsletters on foreign policy he's put out in the past. Very good reading on what to do. I believe York at the Ayn Rand Society has also done serious foreign policy statements you can use.

A correct approach indeed. When I discover that I am talking to someone who claims to dislike Ayn Rand, that person, more often than not, has only "heard about" or "read about" Rand but has never actually read any of Rand's works.

Rand's lecture and publication of 1961 "The Objectivist's Ethics" is the simplicity beyond the complexity for a base of reflection. She did not iterate the differences between freedom and liberty. The latter being fundamental for community. Everything you've asked is directly related to how we behave in community structures. All of this begins with self. Hope this helps.

Well.... I know an objectivist party couldn't/wouldn't exist. It's just a computer game. :) There are also user-made scenarios involving the Confederate States Election of 1900, so, yeah...

It's the ultimate conundrum, though, which is why I believe similar ideologies like Libertarianism struggle in elections. It's a Catch-22: If you're against a lot of government power, but in order to pass laws removing government power, you first have to attain government power to do it.

I could imagine a twisted pseudo-Objectivist society in which the government has the same size an intrusiveness of typical modern governments, but every program is promoted as part of an effort to punish evil-doers and as a cause for citizens to pat themselves on the back for being morally superior.

"Objectivist political theory asserts that the only proper functions of government are the military, police, and courts. [...[How that gets carried out was never explored by Ayn Rand"
Is this really capital-O Objectivism if it's not tested against empirical fact.

"So, you can see why if imposing a new government to improve Iraqi culture is unrealistic, the same applies to the United States."
Which religious tradition people follow is orthogonal to whether they accept reason vs. a literal, fundamentalist view of religion. I think you're right that imposing a new government will not change either one of these. The one that matters, though, is reason vs. fundamentalism. If there were an effective way (region change or other method) to make people change religious traditions, it wouldn't solve anything if one set of myths were substituted for another with no increase in reason. It might actually make these worse because people changing religion might fire up the anti-reason people who believe one religious tradition is better than another.

I don't read books 'about Ayn Rand'. I read all her books and quite frankly my dears, I don't give a d____ what people write 'about' her! I have my own thoughts on that subject!

A critical plank in an Objectivist foreign policy would be something akin to Star Trek: The Next Generation's Prime Directive. Though Captain Jean-Luc Picard occasionally violated the Prime Directive in situations where the Enterprise crew accidentally got embroiled in life's thorny situations, he was correct in saying the following:

""The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules; it is a philosophy… and a very correct one. History has proven again and again that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."
– Jean-Luc Picard, 2364 ("Symbiosis")

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/...

Rand did explain why an Objectivist Party could not exist, yet at least for two presidential elections (2008 and 2012), there was a presidential candidate running as an Objectivist named Tom Stevens.

http://www.objectivistparty.us/6443.h...

The Ayn Rand lexicon is quite thorough on what she thinks constitutes life an on the abortion issue. While I am not in favor of any government telling anyone what to do or not do in this situation, I do have some philosophical disagreements with Ayn Rand in regard to both beginning of life and end of life issues. In particular, I think that Rand's definitions with regard to life undervalue life. These perspectives come from the challenges I have had in my tissue engineering research/development and with regard to my father and his father with regard to the ravages of Alzheimer's disease.

I thank you for the sources, I've read Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, and am partway through Fountainhead, I haven't yet seen the answers to my questions (at least not directly). I will check some of the other sources.