Isn't that the best feeling? To realize you're among like minded thinkers? Welcome :)

Yes someone finally gets it!!!!!! Thank you! ( I'm new here not used to having people with the same ideas)

When complying means aiding in your own destruction.

The destruction of private property rights against ranchers and everyone else, especially in rural areas, has been going on for a long time. Clive Bundy surely knows this. The difference is that the bureaucrats have generally learned to strangle people slowly over time, dividing and conquering one family at a time, rather than risking adverse publicity in open confrontation revealing what they are doing to people and how far they are willing to go.

Manipulating the laws and the court system is more pragmatic for them than overt force in front of cameras. They saw this firsthand from the reputation they earned from the Frontlines documentary For the Good of All on the National Park Service http://www.landrights.org/VideoGoodOfAll..., as one notable example.

The difference seems to be that radicals in power like Holder and Obama have more difficulty restraining themselves and did not anticipate what would happen in Nevada. The government agencies don't often make that mistake since they generally grasp that the public has not yet been made ready for what is in store for us. Some of the progressives are so ensnared in their own propaganda and ideology that they have less such understanding. It was not that government agents stopped out of physical fear of the ranchers. They have more than enough fire power to take what they want.

This is the significance of the Clive Bundy incident; it was not a new escalation in government plans and policies. The ranchers out there know very well what they have been put through for many decades, though most of the public does not. The temporary withdrawal of government agents in Nevada changes none of it.

There is a continuation of it in comic book form, seasons 3 and 4. But I dont think there is enough interest out there to see it made into the TV series again.

I wonder if the same things where said before the american revolution. As for surviving, if I am not willing to become a mayrtr for what I believe in most, my faith and my country I need to re-asses my priorities.

Yes sll, the Jews even walked into the chambers, many carrying their children or leading them by the hand.

It did, but some of it got silly. I was bummed when it ended... it was just getting good.

A violent attempt to overthrow a government is always "illegal", whatever you think of the nature of the government. No amount of rationalization using the ideas of the founders can make a "revolution" "technically legal".

In the time of the founding of this country there was a prevailing cultural endorsement of individualism and freedom. Overthrowing a government like the British Crown could be presumed to be on behalf of something better. The kind of oppression that Americans resisted then was predominantly ordinary corruption, not a culture ideologically corrupted on principle by widespread acceptance of collectivism and statism. Even if you could bring down the US government, which you can't, and survive it, which you would not, it would make things even worse, not better, as the ideological vultures come home to roost.

Changing the course of a culture and a nation requires spreading ideas, not shooting at bureaucrats with imagined romanticism of muskets. "Brave words" are needed now more than ever, and they do not consist in suicidal threats against the US government.

What is still possible and how long it would take is another matter, but there are no shortcuts bypassing the role of ideas in human action and its consequences. Please don't make it worse than it already is through suicidal acts that would be used as an excuse for persecuting anyone who continues to speak out.

Your sheer arrogance in attempting to speak for 'the rest of us on this site' while at the same time advocating a placating attitude towards your masters is an astoundingly disingenuous support of the enemies of natural rights and individual liberty and Objectivism. I for one, soundly reject your recommendation of living in fear and trepidation of what such enemies might do in response to my exercise of my natural individual rights, including most of all the use of the mind and the expression of the works of that mind.

I will offer that a life of fear under slavery is not a human life as I understand it. Your suggested approaches to the issues discussed on this site are those of a lap dog that accepts occasional kicks in the ribs as the cost of free meals of scraps and dares to think that all the other dogs should do the same in order to spread the kicks out.

I thought it brought out a lot of the real issues that come up when all of a sudden the federal and state governments are gone. It really brings out the deep seated ideas of individuals, and one would really hope that the people in your town were all Objectivists (which they werent in Jericho). I say that nuclear terrorism isnt a likely thing to happen, BUT a destruction of the US dollar IS likely to happen, and how would we all deal with that. Our savings would be destroyed, and government fiat money re-printing really wouldnt work to fix things. Why would I want a "new dollar" when my "old dollars" just lost their value.

As I understand it shrugging is letting go and to refuse to support the looters who depend on your hard work for their gain. So I completly agree on where you stand.

It was a bit hokey...got better as it went along, just when it was getting to the meat of things, it ended. :(

Wrong... if you decide to no longer sanction theft, or abide a power monger, or to be part of any group or friendships that includes other who are forces that work against your freedoms....and you walk away, that's a shrug. Anytime you remove your mind or money from looters is a shrug.
Ayn Rand removed herself from communism, she took her mind and major future earnings and left. That's a shrug.

There is nothing wrong with discussing the bad and declining state of the country. Discussing in public what you plan to do about it may or may not be wise. Plotting a violent revolution to bring down the US government is something else entirely.

No, it depends on what you do for your own life, not what you decide not to do That doesn't mean that 'shrugging' in some way under certain circumstances isn't or can't be a good choice, but there is an enormous difference between that and what Ayn Rand did.

The second amendment was put in place so that, if and when our government grew to large we would be able to rise up against it. The founders of our country knew that nothing lasts forever, and wanted us to be able to defended our liberty should the time come. So technically a revolution on the part of the people would be legal. I believe the time is coming when we need to defend ourselves,our rights, and our country. The time for debating this is nearly over brave words without actions are worthless.

You are not the voice for the gulch ewv... if straightline wants to exchange ideas about how to handle a tyrannical gov, I, for one, welcome his input. What is he dragging us into exactly anyway... take a look around you Ellen, we're at the threshold of hell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC3vZmdj...

Um....isn't shrugging a deliberate positive act for one's own life???

Ayn Rand knew very well the direction of the country and so do we now. It is not an excuse to misuse this forum as a place to plot a violent revolution to bring down the US government, nor would that do any good even if you could do it, which you can't. If you want to engage in illegal, suicidal activities out of your frustration please do it somewhere else and take responsibility for your own actions without dragging the rest of us into it.

One last comment and then I am done. I have watched this thread with mounting dismay. Nobody has challenged the assertion, which is stark, obvious fact, that the US government grows ever larger and more repressive, and that our liberty is shrinking and what's left of it is under continuous threat. Yet, I see many arguments that essentially hide behind Ayn Rand. Were she alive today, she would see where we are inevitably heading: towards a police state. At some point, we will face a choice: slavery or resistance, and what I have seen here is a massive evasion of that issue. Citizens of other countries will face the same choice; there will be no place to hide. No other options--shrugging, leaving the country, discussion, Constitutional amendment, honest voting, etc.-- will be possible. You will either resist or submit, period. By the time that point is reached and it is obvious to all that those are the only two choices, effective resistance will be impossible. If Ayn Rand had been unable to escape the USSR, what would she have done? I submit she would have resisted rather than submit to that totalitarian regime, probably at the cost of her life. Ayn Rand had a safety valve--America. We won't.

Closed mind was meant for Robbie. Yes both the culture and the system must be changed. An American Morality must be agreed upon. It's all there in the Society Project. Just look.

Yes I know your general circumstances and I'm not talking about that (or anything about your name). Ayn Rand left the Soviet Union for entirely individual, selfish reasons actively pursing her own personal goals. It had nothing to do with "withdrawing support": she didn't expect her leaving to have any effect on Soviet Russia, she didn't care, and wasn't making a "statement" by leaving, she just wanted to escape -- physically, intellectually and emotionally. It was analogous to someone breaking out of a prison: he wants out, not to make a statement of withdrawing support for the guards and "shrugging"! She did make a major statement specifically about what the Soviet Union was doing to people in We the Living, but that wasn't why she left -- it was a deliberate positive act for her own life, not a shrug.

If being "closed" minded means refusing to accept or entertain a known falsehood then there is nothing wrong with it. An active mind is not a mind "open" to everything. One might agree that under some current conditions progress through discussion is unlikely and further discussion is no longer worth the effort, but a declaration of disagreement without regard to understanding and reason is evasion, and an "agreement to disagree" as a phrase commonly employed rotely today is much worse.

It is typically an evasive bromide that is not an agreement at all. Neither side agrees on anything. Each continues to pursue his ends despite such an "agreement". It is at best an implicit "agreement" to stop reasoning or talking at all and to instead use political means to impose one side or the other, substituting force or manipulation for reason. Such an "agreement" is an invalid concept employed as a euphemism for power politics.

The use of this bromide is especially nasty when coming from a politician who puts you off with "agree to disagree" and then forces his agenda down your throat with his coercive power. Those with no respect for reason have no difficulty either employing dishonest invalid concepts in their flim flams, or the use of brute force to shove their agendas down your throat, with or without calling it an "agreement", "compromise", or "consensus".

It's not a phrase that should be used, and any reference to futility of further discussion should be made very clear.

In this case the premise of original sin that people always are or become corrupt and that no change in the system of justice or other policies can prevent its widespread occurrence is false. If it were true than it wouldn't make any difference whether "people" or "the system" are corrupt because no one could do anything about it anyway. That kind of thinking invoking determinism does indeed prevent reasoned discussion.

The system as it actually is is no longer the system you are talking about, and is corrupt. It is a corruption _of_ the original system which you are referring to. The necessity of Constitutional amendments is to restore the Constitution, reversing the damage, not to rewrite it as if the original were corrupt from the beginning.

Reverse the subsequent corruptions and close the loopholes and ambiguities in current constitutional law (and the rest of law) to the extent possible, with some corrections to specific procedures limiting abuses of the original concept, as now better understood from experience.

But none of that is possible without restoring the American culture to embrace American individualism with a proper moral foundation.

The corruption of so many current officials today is more than their personal immoral behavior and more than that of tolerating it as they are voted into power and encouraged. The corruption is much deeper, requiring a change in the philosophical outlook widely held across the culture.

That is much more fundamental than either a "corrupt system" or a "corrupt people" -- as "corruption" is often meant with respect to agreed on principles hypocritically ignored. It requires reversing and correcting philosophical corruption at the root. The ideas predominantly held by the people determine the course of a culture and a country, and that is all that can reverse the current downward spiral.

But people are not innately corrupt. Given a rational philosophy and the reasons for it there is no reason or honest motive not to behave with integrity, Give people a contradictory philosophy contrary to the nature of human life, making it impossible to follow in practice, and hypocrisy is inevitable, as been the case through most of human history -- people have been told to believe in miracles or mysticism, to think with faith or other irrationality, to sacrifice themselves out of duty as the essence of morality, or to live for the tribe or dominate or submit to other tribes all controlled by authorities whose purpose it is to rule. Hypocrisy abounds for some semblance of mixed survival and manipulation.