Well let me ask you why people would even consider thinking about individualism and objectivism in the culture of today?

The economy is booming and socialism is promising to spread the wealth of the Rich to the not so rich.

My point is simply that people seem to only embrace change when current conditions are unsatisfactory. Translated, this means they need to see collectivism producing disaster before they will abandon it and even consider something else.

I never said that collapse of current collectivism would simply and blindly result in the acceptance of objectivism and individual freedom. I think that it will take a great sales effort to promote capitalism and individual responsibility over collectivism.

A collapse of this country is not a solution to anything and should not be desired or engouraged. It would only make life much worse.

It "facilitates" nothing good, which pipe dream is an anti-intellectual, anti-Ayn Rand emotionalist desire evading the necessity of reason and philosophic understanding of individualism required for an advanced civilization.

When you become an eager apologist for the likes of the neurotic leftist ideologue Bradley Manning you have reached a nihilistic intellectual bottom in your quest for ends without means, in denial of causality.

All of this has been discussed at length and in detail. You have never had any answer to it but emotionally cling to a desire for nationwide destruction, always returning to it as if it were an untouchable metaphysical absolute. It is a false premise.

The collapse of statism isn’t the solution in itself, but I do think in practical terms it will facilitate the acceptance of individualism and rationality. Our culture is fixated today on making everyone feel good and the supremacy of emotion over reason. Why would the great mass of people give that up if it’s “working”.

Ayn Rand did not think that her ideas "would somehow magically win out". That is preposterous. Nor did she write Atlas Shrugged to show that "failure of the statist culture was needed before society could repair itself", which is equally preposterous.

You write as if you have never read Ayn Rand's own ideas and what she wrote about implementing and fighting for them.

Ayn Rand spent a lifetime explaining and arguing "the serious issue of what needs to happen in order for the ideas people hold dear to change".

How many times does this have to be discussed here? Have you already forgotten all that has been written about it, which you could not answer but seemed to be beginning to understand?

This included what Ayn Rand wrote herself about her purpose in writing Atlas Shrugged, but you ignore it because it clashes with your desire for a grand collapse as the Big Solution.

How many times does statism have to fail before the magic conversion of society that you predict sets in? Do you think that statism has not yet displayed its failures in countless previous collapses and destruction? Why do you think people keep trying it despite the record?

Exactly how do you think that another "real collapse" would "open people's minds" to principles of individualism they have never discovered and do not know or understand? It is you who thinks that ideas take hold by magic.

You write as if when you first read Atlas Shrugged you were attracted not to its values and the intellectual means of achieving them by the "men of the mind", but to a defiantly nihilistic glory of dramatic collapse, destruction and widespread misery as a moral goal -- and as if you have never since read or thought about Ayn Rand's non-fiction explanations and emphasis on proper, rational principles and spreading their understanding.

Instead you continuously circle back to calling for destruction and collapse as the answer to all problems, clung to as an emotional absolute you can't let go of as your own version of the Glory of God's Wrath as a projection of your own.

A serious issue is what needs to happen in order for the ideas people hold dear to change in the direction of individual responsibility and freedom. You may think that ayn rand thought that these ideas would somehow magically win out. She did write the story in AS showing that failure of the statist culture was needed before the society could repair itself. Right now we are witnessing that ever increasing failure,

The leftists want the capitalistic system to
fail so they can take over power and put in an elite controlled collectivist system. They might not get it in 2020, but it’s pretty certain they will in 2024.

You might think California will recover, but I don’t see it before a real collapse opens peoples minds to individualism. Before that it’s most likely the people there will just go after the free goodies

Ayn Rand did not advocate deliberately crashing the country or attacking our own military, let alone in the name of leftist anti-war rhetoric. She was not a Bill Ayres. She emphatically rejected that mentality and the actions it leads to, including those by activist-felons like Manning.

She repeatedly emphasized the importance of the role of ideas in the course of a country and repeatedly emphasized the necessity to spread the right ideas of reason, egoism and individualism in a civilized manner as the only way to correct the coarse of this nation. She rejected the libertarian anarchists and subjectivists, as well as those on the left, as the opposite of her views.

You have no idea what will happen when, in California or anywhere else. There are many paths possible for a mixed system. If a Dark Ages style complete collapse does eventually come it will be as a consequence of dominance of bad philosophical ideas much worse and much deeper than today's mixed statism politics alone, or from a massive physical catastrophe.

The political trends are bad and worsening, with only secondary temporary backlashes, because of the bad ideas of unreason, altruism and collectivism now widely accepted. Unknown is what the country may have to go through over some long period of time before a new resurgence of reason and individualism can raise the culture out of stagnant tribalism and statism of some degree even worse than what we are currently headed towards.

Following the New Left mentality of attacks on the military and trying to deliberately sabotage the current system into a collapse is a horrible strategy that will will never help anyone. It only feels right to those who harbor dark nihilistic emotions taken as their absolute as they lash out at society with no understanding or strategy for improvement beyond their own wishful thinking for reform by magic -- while they gravitate to the negativism to the point of wanting to see a collapse, even at the expense of their own destruction, as in a death wish.

Ayn Rand was not Bill Ayres. She never supported the likes of a Bradley Manning.

We just disagree on these issues. Look at California to see the statist path the USA is on. If it continues the society will follow the path ayn rand predicted in AS, but it will take 40-50 years

You cannot avoid criminality by calling it "whistleblowing". You don't acknowledge the legitimacy of protecting military secrets or the consequences to innocent people when they are violated. Manning's leftist rhetoric calling war "war crimes" does not excuse his criminal actions.

You have no knowledge of whether the system will "eventually collapse" or when or why, or how to "end" a "strike" that has no meaning other than a floating abstraction, or how to "rebuild a system" leaving out the entire realm of the ideas and basic premises that people hold. This has all been discussed here many times. You can't answer it but always come back to the same bitter "bring down the system" false premise.

The constant, bitter nihilistic rhetoric always circling back to the same defiant emotions replacing both means and ends is the opposite of Ayn Rand. She rejected and denounced the anti-intellectual, anti-philosophic libertarian "hippies of the right" for good reason.

I dont regard whistleblowing as a crime. I regard the things that the whistleblower brings up as crimes that need the light of day.

Eventually, the system will collapse on its own, strike or no strike, At least a strike CAN be ended and the system rebuilt more quickly than if it just totally collapses due to government strangulation

A sweeping, nihilistic sanction of criminality out of hatred for the government has no defense. It is no better than your previous desires to bring down the entire system with a "strike" as a supposed means of reform.

We just disagree on this issue

We do not need criminal hacking of military computers to tell us that people are killed in a war both directly and as a byproduct.

There is no excuse to continue the endless circling in search of a rationalization to make Manning into a martyr. He's a convicted felon and a radical leftist, not a victim and not a freedom fighter.

Hatred for this country does not make him anything other than what he is. Leftist "anti-war" "war crimes" rhetoric does not justify anarchy.

The basic principles of nuclear fission were discovered, demonstrated and published by physicists in the 1930s. That much was not secret.

Building a chain reaction nuclear fission bomb was a complex engineering problem pursued in secrecy in the 1940s, first in the US, Britain and Germany, and later in the Soviet Union. There was no one secret, although the existence of the development of an atom bomb was a big political secret until the two bombs dropped on Japan to end WWII. It was then loudly no longer a secret. The two bombs dropped on Japan were entirely different designs, one using uranium and the other plutonium. They had been developed in parallel, each with its own multiple problems to overcome and whose technical solutions were all supposed to be kept secret.

Klaus Fuchs and others inside the development projects were feeding information to the Soviets both during and after the war and by 1949 the Soviets had tested their first bomb, years before expected. The Rosenbergs, arrested in 1950, were part of the spy ring that made the Soviet success possible by providing numerous design and technical details to the Soviets as they were evolving.

There was no one "secret of the atomic bomb" to reveal at the Rosenberg jury trial, and the jury would not have been able to understand all the technical secrets. So I don't know what is meant by "it was decided that the jury should be told the secret to the atomic bomb". There had been a steady stream of information passed to the Soviets by the Rosenbergs, Fuchs and others.

You can read the full transcript of the trial at https://famous-trials.com/images/ftri... but it's over 2500 typed pages.

What about the "rights" of the non-combatant innocent people that the armed forces killed, and then hid the proof? The evidence should be brought to light and the perps punished.

"The" secret? I don't know, of course, not being an atomic physicist. But I assume it was how to make an atomic bomb out of uranium. Anyway, it was supposed to be kept secret.

Breaking into classified military information to disseminate it is a "true crime", not merely a "government rule". He exposed innocent people to a wartime enemy, violating their rights and those of everyone else dependent on defeating an enemy. The US fighting a war is not "crime".

He is guilty of violating one of our statist government's rules. I am saying that I dont agree that what he did is a true crime which violated someones rights. In fact he proved that the government itself was guilty of violating very specific human rights. THAT was why they wanted to hide what they did, and why they need to silence Manning, Assange, and Snowden, as well as any others who date to dispute the actions of the statist government.

Manning boasted about his crime and confessed when arrested. He was convicted in court on multiple counts and sentenced to 35 years. Yes, that means he is guilty. Stop making excuses.

convicted felon is not a statement of guilt in itself. It just indicates that the government uses. You could be called a convicted felon on a drug trafficking charge, which is one of number ofaa victimless crimes which arent crimes.

Allegedly helped Manning hack.

You contradicted yourself. You can't be internationally public "under the radar".

"All actions" of the government should not be "out in the open". Military secrets are properly limited. Another example is sealed court records such as unrebutted grand jury testimony accusing innocent people.

We live in a mixed system, part free and part controlled, under which people are generally living very well compared with the rest of human history. It is not wholly evil.

Not everything the government does is wrong. This is no place to lash out with bitter, nihilistic anarchy.

Emotionally lashing out in the name of total "evil" at everything, even to the point of condoning convicted felons like Manning, is not rational and not helping anything.

I hope you live much longer than "maybe a year or so". Whatever time on earth that anyone has should be spent in pursuit of values, not the libertarian-anarchist mentality of bitter, sweeping renunciation.

Manning is convicted felon who confessed and boasted of his crimes. Stop making excuses for him.

I have maybe a year to live, so I dont care at this point. I will go to my grave thinking that our statist government is basically evil and doesnt deserve to be protected. All its actions should be out in the open for people to see

Those were the government's way of covering up what they did

You just publicly announced what you are doing on an internationally public forum with a record of being exploited for inappropriate injunctions to violate the law and bring down the system. That isn't "under the radar".