I have a post wherein I ask that very question:
http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/40...

"Rights" are a convenient fiction used to regulate the interaction of members of a society.

You have no "right" to anything.

The thumb system is messed up. I gave you a +1 and it dropped you to -2. I then tried giving a -1 and it dropped you to -3. I had to keep switching it around until I got you back to where you started.

What is a Right?
http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/40...

If he's a bright young engineer as you say he is, if you give up on him, he can never be "fixed".

This would depend upon one's definition of "collectivist", of course. What you initially describe I would define as "tribalism" more than "collectivism".

This is why it's important to be able to define our terms. There have been times when I've used a term, been asked to define it, and when I tried to do so, learned that it didn't mean what I thought it meant, and had to change to other, more accurate terms.

"Inconceivable!"

Don't be lazy. If you're going to use a term, be ready to define it.

There's a difference between being "anti-Christ" and "antiChrist".

And I'd say you can't be anti-Christ and be pro-Rand. Anti-Christian, as in the various sects of the belief system, perhaps, but not anti-Christ, as in the teachings put forward by Jesus Christ.

But that's just my opinion.

You do realize that the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution? That the first 10 Amendments were made the Bill of Rights because a Bill of Rights had already been promised within the Constitution?

Do you consider yourself an Objectivist? Are you saying that the 1st Amendment protection of the right to speak is flawed, or simply wrong?

Are people only able to speak that which you, personally find appealing?

I can understand people wanting to silence me for the remark I made that got me censured. I can't understand people wanting someone silenced for disagreeing with their premises.

What evil does he bring into the world? By expressing his ideas? By trying to explore the questions addressed by Objectivism?

What are you afraid of?

Holy crap; they fixed it. I was able to give you a thumbs up (last time I tried to give someone a thumbs up, the thumbs up took a point away).

anyway, I gave you a thumbs up for adding, "according to Rand".

As I've said in another post, "true capitalism" is simply common sense, applied.

That would be the very essence of the Declaration of Independence.

"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

And this is not true. Otherwise, every abused housewife would never have married her abusive husband. People fall in love with their subjective vision of a person, an object, or even a philosophy all the time. One can't point at someone and say, "well, what they love isn't really the way they think it is, so they're not really feeling love". Well, one can, but s/he'd be arrogantly wrong.

It's possible, but unlikely. If you love money above all else, you are likely to do whatever it takes to attain any money - even at the expense of their own morality.

http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/4c...

http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/4c...

I don't have a problem with concepts, We have a Bill of rights, We only lose the concept of a right when we try to take rights away from others. . He said they are only a concept. No they are not they are the first 10 amendments to the constitution. They were added before the states ratified the constitution.

Actually, I don't believe Ayn Rand ever accurately or correctly defined "collectivism." From what I understand, she seemed to think that collectivism automatically equated to Communism, which it really doesn't. Communism is simply one specific type of collectivism. In truth, collectivism is really just a societal outlook in which the natural interdependence which human beings have upon each other is emphasized, and any group with a cohesive set of beliefs could rightly be labeled as "collectivist."

Even Capitalism can be called a collectivist system, as no one can live in a modern society without depending in some way on the work of others. Tell me, would it be possible for you to be reading this message right now if other people had not invented, designed, and manufactured all the various components of your computer? I doubt it. How many of your material possessions are purely the product of your own effort, and no one else's? If you stop and think about it, and I mean REALLY think about it, you'd probably realize you have absolutely none. Everything you own, and I do mean everything, is produced through the collective effort of human beings interacting and cooperating with one another on a massive scale.

There's an essay titled "I, Pencil" by Leonard Read, in which the point is made that no one actually knows how to make a pencil because all of the knowledge, skill, and labor necessary to do so is beyond the capacity of any one single individual. From the harvesting of lumber, to the mining of ore, to the refinement of the graphite, to the cutting and shaping of the wood (not to mention all of the tools and machines required to even do these tasks), if you trace the material origin of any pencil back far enough, the amount of work required to produce it quickly exceeds the scope which any individual could ever hope to achieve by acting alone. When Leonard Read wrote this essay, he was not advocating Communism or Socialism. Quite the contrary, his point was to emphasis the absolute necessity of free market trade by categorically describing in explicit detail how even something as simple as manufacturing an ordinary pencil was so incredibly complex that no mortal man could ever hope to even comprehend the entire process, let alone control it.

The idea that collectivism is somehow antithetical towards the productive forces of a free market system is a laughable claim, as collectivism in fact just as integral a part of Capitalism as it is of Communism. The only difference really is that Capitalist collectivism operates primarily on a horizontal (or egalitarian) axis, while Communist collectivism imposes a more vertical (or hierarchical) axis. Under Capitalism, differences of opinion are permitted. Under Communism, they are not.

When you stopped speaking to your two friends because they were, as you put it, "enthusiastic collectivists," do you mean to say that they were supporters of socialist ideology and the Communist Party, or was it something simpler like advocating government welfare and gun control? Or do you just mean that they were part of a different group than you, that their opinions were different from yours, and that you were incapable of tolerating anyone who didn't conform to your own authoritative way of thinking? If you refuse to associate with anyone except those who share and reaffirm your own narrow set of beliefs, then who is the real collectivist? Does it even make sense to use such a term as a pejorative? Perhaps "authoritarian" would be more appropriate...

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil

I think she had a lot of misconceptions as well, primarily in her belief that Christianity (or any other religion for that matter – she also implied a lot of negative things about Buddhism), inherently leads to Communism and/or Socialism. It's kind of funny, because many Christians insist on the exact opposite – that a lack of religious faith leads to Communism. But really, Communism is just collectivized ownership over property and the means of production, and I personally don't see how religious faith (or lack thereof) would lead to any conclusions about property rights one way or another.

I'm not completely, one-hundred percent sure about this, but I have a theory that Ayn Rand actually bought into a lot of the Communist propaganda of her time, some of which declared that Communism was the logical and moral outgrowth of the Christian faith – a tactic which many Communist groups used to try and justify their economic theories, as well as to recruit faithful churchgoers to their cause. If Ayn Rand believed them, then that would explain why she felt she had to attack Christianity in order to attack Communism. In her mind, the first would always inevitably lead to the second, just as surely as the number one precedes the number two.

However, in "The Communist Manifesto," Karl Marx mentions how incredibly easy it is, in his opinion, to give Christian philosophy a Communist veneer. But if he calls it a veneer, that implies he didn't think it was inherent in Christianity to begin with, but rather that it was something being added onto it.

As Ludwig von Mises discusses in his book, "Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis," there are some verses in the Bible which could be interpreted as supposedly supporting Socialism, but there are also other verses which could be interpreted as being against it, and people who have an agenda to push will typically pick out the verses that support their agenda while ignoring the ones that contradict or conflict with it. And because there are Christians on both sides of the argument, Christianity and the Bible are made to simultaneously fight both for and against Socialism and Communism. Therefore, Ayn Rand's belief that religion automatically leads to Communism cannot be called rational or logical, which is ironic, considering how much she trumpeted those values.

In his book which I linked above, John W. Robbins points out how there are several ways in which Ayn Rand had actually unwittingly accepted and internalized many of the tenants of Communist philosophy, in spite of the fact that she hated and despised it. But given that Ayn Rand had attended high school and the University of Petrograd during a time when the Communist government controlled Russia's entire educational curriculum, it really shouldn't be surprising that Communist ideas would become so deeply embedded into her mind that she could no longer recognize them as being of Communist origin. One of the remarkable aspects of human psychology is that once we have thoroughly internalized an idea, given enough time, we eventually tend to forget where the idea came from – we will believe it to be our own. In the words of John W. Robbins, "Ayn Rand escaped the Soviet Union physically in 1925. She never escaped it intellectually."

No, they don't. They just want to be able to openly exercise their religion, as protected by the 1st Amendment.

Exposure to an idea isn't the same thing as having that idea imposed on you.