Being rational is a lot easier than pragmatism and the rest, but it takes effort to develop the proper methods and habits to make it natural. Even then all life take effort and there are hard problems to solve all the time. That does not mean that overcoming challenges is equivalent to misery, and not doing it makes it a lot harder.

There is no character assassination against you.

You wrote in your post: "According to some Gulchers, if you do not follow Objectivism to the finest dotting of i's and crossing of t's, then you are a heretic and should be expelled. The ideologically impure in GGO have grown tired of defending philosophies that they themselves have derived from first principles. This is the most important reason why the Gulch has become boring. With the exception of the last few days, it has become an echo echo echo echo echo chamber."

That is not true. It is misrepresentation.

ALONGSIDE NIGHT is a cool book as well assert Brown's book on living free in an unfree world. Government has taken and has been given more attention than it deserves. There are just more important things in our lives and government people can't be everywhere at all times even tho they try to be

Maybe so term2; I kind of think of freedom as the right to disappear. That seems to be more and more difficult to accomplish.

The world seems to degenerating into a 1984 scenario after all. Flying below the radar seems to be the best way to go as our society degenerates

my laughing is not at you, but at the closed-mind
view of life which says that no one who wears white
after labor day (or whatever that fashion thing is) can
be an objectivist. . there is value in honoring the
good people who express their philosophies in different
terms from you. . my wife, for example, uses the
phraseology of religion to advise people not to hurt
one another without cause. . Rand did the same thing
in different terms. . you can wear white at any time
and do good -- which is the proof of any philosophy. -- j
.

To try is to fail. Doing is success.

Ooookeyyy.

Well, that's certainly well said.

Yes, Txs.

the person above is k. and she asks what the heck are you talking about?

Indeed.

Indeed.

ewv; You're very correct in that reading and even liking AS or the trilogy of movies does not provide by itself sufficient understanding or comprehension of what or how powerful Objectivism for individual life is. And for myself, the import of Objectivism was and is living and evaluating the rest of reality including others, as it is, rather than the ought to and could bes that we're inundated with from not only every day society, institutions, government, friends, and families, but even our innermost demons. AR helped me gain the confidence to continue on against that tide of argument and persuasion attempts and to be able to express and act in my self interest.

I've been asked way too many times, 'How could you believe that', only to have to answer that 'I don't',.

It''s tiring, but it's outright disheartening sometimes to constantly run into it here. All one can do is recognize the reality one lives and strives in and continue on stating 'I don't believe'.

Rand something like she only owed an intellectual debt Aristotle. This is not true. Unfortunately, I think she found many people who had great ideas in one area but were nonsense in another area, so she did not want to associate to closely with them. Newton and Galileo being two examples. But they were central to the advancement of epistemology even if that was not their main focus.

Doesn't sound very concerned about individual liberty to me.

she was inconsistent. Bacon? Galileo? Newton? DARWIN?

prof, you and I both know this is not about word selection :)

Sounds like that well known mystic, Master Yoda!

You are correct in saying that you rarely refer to anyone as an Objectivist, but you do, as johnpe1 stated, routinely point out those who are not Objectivists. I do not claim to be an Objectivist, and never will. Nonetheless, I find it to be closer to my own self-derived philosophy than any philosophy that others can read about, and consequently I have respect for Ms. Rand.

With all due respect, there is an Objectivist Party, and it does have a platform.

http://www.objectivistparty.us/6401.h...

Thank you for reminding me about what I already knew about what Ms. Rand stood for.

I was quite simply pointing out that statement 4 on the above web site for the Objectivist Party has been the subject of considerable argument in Galt's Gulch Online over the past year, and in that point, I was completely accurate.

It only seems hard to live a rational life, until you actually do it. People often say, I'll give it a try or I'm trying. I had a mentor who had an eastern European accent and I often remember his simple exhortation, "Don't try -- Do!"

Please clarify. I have been more than patient with your constant character assassination over the past couple of years. I even thumbed up your responses to blarman regarding atheism not being a religion tonight.

For what it's worth trump did a very collectivist thing today, as you predicted.. He came out with the government and against Apple when the govt ordered Apple to remove the encryption on iPhones. I have to admit I might withdraw my support for him because of this

Government control is the result and the cause. Bad philosophy produces the schools, and the schools in turn produce bad philosophy. It is a negative feedback loop.

True, in the dark ages they were able to break free of the dogmas of Christianity. But that was under a system of classical education, in which the educated were still encouraged to learn Greek and Latin, and study the works of antiquity. They nowhere approached the comprehensive nihilism and wholesale intellectual destruction of modern pedagogy.