Who or what is worth saving?
RimCountry, Zenphamy, Robbie, and a couple of others have been posting a lot of comments about the Article V convention option.
The primary point of disagreement that we have is over what is worth saving.
Are the United States and some of its individuals worth saving? The United States was certainly worth saving until recent years. In my mind, probably about 2007 or the first half of 2008 was the last time it was worth saving. After the TARP bailout, I would argue that the US is no longer worth saving. Certain individuals are worth saving, such as Rearden or Dagny within AS. Most are not. Eddie Willers is an important character in this respect. He was very good as a chief of staff for Dagny, but didn't have the ability to think independently. He was not sought out by those in Atlantis as worth saving. I would not have objected to Eddie Willers being permitted in the Gulch.
The question regarding what is worth saving is a fundamental difference between objectivists and Christians. Christians believe that all individuals are worth saving and evangelize accordingly.
As for whether the United States is worth saving, I suppose that depends on what the alternatives are. If we start a nanosociety founded on objectivist principles, then that would almost certainly change the answer to that question for many of us.
Many of us are torn between the last remnant of the United States, arguably the only society founded on principles that would not be seriously objectionable to objectivists, versus leaving and starting from scratch.
Are looters worth saving? Are moochers worth saving? To objectivists, these last two questions should be rhetorical. It certainly is not a rhetorical question for Christians. Jesus, for instance, had a tax collector as one of his apostles.
Is anyone who voted for Obama worth saving? Unless that person makes the argument that he/she was trying to hasten the end of the looter/moocher era, that question should also be rhetorical. Is anyone who intentionally blanks out so that he/she can further a political agenda worth saving? Would Ayn Rand have viewed intentional blankouts as unforgivable sins? Can such a person ever be "redeemed" if he/she grows into an understanding of objectivist principles? I am reminded of Winston Churchill's line about how if you are 20 and not liberal, you have no heart, but if you are 40 and not conservative, you have no brain.
The primary point of disagreement that we have is over what is worth saving.
Are the United States and some of its individuals worth saving? The United States was certainly worth saving until recent years. In my mind, probably about 2007 or the first half of 2008 was the last time it was worth saving. After the TARP bailout, I would argue that the US is no longer worth saving. Certain individuals are worth saving, such as Rearden or Dagny within AS. Most are not. Eddie Willers is an important character in this respect. He was very good as a chief of staff for Dagny, but didn't have the ability to think independently. He was not sought out by those in Atlantis as worth saving. I would not have objected to Eddie Willers being permitted in the Gulch.
The question regarding what is worth saving is a fundamental difference between objectivists and Christians. Christians believe that all individuals are worth saving and evangelize accordingly.
As for whether the United States is worth saving, I suppose that depends on what the alternatives are. If we start a nanosociety founded on objectivist principles, then that would almost certainly change the answer to that question for many of us.
Many of us are torn between the last remnant of the United States, arguably the only society founded on principles that would not be seriously objectionable to objectivists, versus leaving and starting from scratch.
Are looters worth saving? Are moochers worth saving? To objectivists, these last two questions should be rhetorical. It certainly is not a rhetorical question for Christians. Jesus, for instance, had a tax collector as one of his apostles.
Is anyone who voted for Obama worth saving? Unless that person makes the argument that he/she was trying to hasten the end of the looter/moocher era, that question should also be rhetorical. Is anyone who intentionally blanks out so that he/she can further a political agenda worth saving? Would Ayn Rand have viewed intentional blankouts as unforgivable sins? Can such a person ever be "redeemed" if he/she grows into an understanding of objectivist principles? I am reminded of Winston Churchill's line about how if you are 20 and not liberal, you have no heart, but if you are 40 and not conservative, you have no brain.
FIT is kind of odd, but in a lot of good ways. A private university originally founded to educate people for the space industry, which until recently was all government.
I can hardly imagine a "wronger" statement. I will just state the way I perceive the realities around this. I think that the evidence is all around. (I am trying to cut down my verbosity.)
Liberals deny the economic freedom (taxation and regulation - killing competition in exchange for campaign contributions). Liberals aggressively brainwash: political correctness is their invention, they call irresponsibility freedom and encourage removal of any ethical standards in the name of freedom, no matter the price.
Conservatives let you keep more of what you earn and would like to see "everybody" be a small business owner. Conservatives like traditional ethical standards, occasionally too much. But, they are sticklers for the Constitution and know that human nature has not changed an iota from Dante (c 1265 - 1321 AD), or Pericles (c 495 429 BC) or even Ramses III (r 1186 - 1155 BC) and with that neither did the fundamental ethics.
http://crystalbridges.org/about/
of course this museum is the work of the Walmart fortune. 10 minutes away our vintage Airstream was nestled in the sticks on a pristine lake with few around. The internet is a great equalizer in gaining knowledge and opportunity
I'm re-reading it myself. Sparta is the only place, real or fictional, that I think I'd be willing to die defending (other than the historical U.S.A.)
""Now," he went on. drawing on his cigar, "out here, you've got problems from the bottom up, instead. Y'all understand, you've got an unusual rulin' class here. A full third of the population, and visible. Then the CD sends you Earth's barbarians. And what do you do? You give them a chance. You give them no excuses. None. You make it plain, their failures are their own fault, and you rub it in by making the rewards of success visible and believable."
(Oh to live in such a society! It's only in recent years I discovered that most Americans live in denial about their own failures; they prefer the false shame of victimhood to the real shame of failure...)
"Their target isn't really your armed forces, it's your society as a whole. They give you nothing to attack, while you have to guard everything. You can't call out the Brotherhoods en masse for long; too much shuts down. And many of them are scattered on farms and ranches miles from anywhere when they're not under arms. There's a military saying —"
"Frederick the Great," Owensford supplied, "Who defends everything, defends nothing. Quite true."
"The rebels are underestimatin' the solidarity of your Brotherhoods, also how mad they're getting." A bleak smile. "Ruthless people don't understand how mean good folks can get when their codes are violated.""
...
""She shouldn't be alone," Lysander said. "We failed her. I failed. Her and the whole planet, I can't protect them and —"
"Nonsense," the Queen said. "You can't be every-where at once.""
If Obama would say this kind of thing once... just ONCE, his popularity numbers would reverse. Hell, even I might hate him just a tiny bit less. But you'll never hear that sort of thing out of Obama or Clinton or any of them. They're the Helots, not the Spartans.
...
""Didn't you hear the King?" he said, turning on her. Their bedroom was plain enough; there was a hologram of a serious-looking young man in Royal Army uniform. Another of a younger man; that one had the simple starburst of the Order of Thermopylae laid across it. "I'm going to help stop the rebels, the Marines, get the bastards who hurt Julio —"
"Then he took in the hunting clothes on her stout body, the shotgun firmly clutched in her hands.
"Not without me, you aren't, Thomas McTiernan," she said. "And don't say it. All the young, strong, fit ones are off with the Army, like Mike —" they both glanced toward the picture of their son in uniform "— and we're what's left."
He stared at her in silence for a moment, then snorted. "Startin' to remember why I married you, Maria," he said."
...
"On Burke Avenue, on scores of others like it, the Battle of Sparta City had begun."
We are just sophisticated enough that our science fair contestants succeed. Two of the students I have helped advise have advanced to the international science fair. One high school husband and wife teacher team that sends me students occasionally produces the high school chemistry science fair winners almost every year. Their students are Ivy League-quality every year. We have a really tiny art museum. Sorry, we're not that great there. However, we do have the only zoo in America with kayaking.
We do have a place where the atheists meet, too.
I enjoyed Fowlerville, MI the one day I spent at a lake there back in the early 1990s. With regard to guns, hunting season in MI was pretty common for most people while I was in grad school in Ann Arbor. I didn't hunt.
Leftist-code word usage. Demonstrates that no one need take you seriously anymore.
What a load of dingo's kidneys.
It's the left that is obsessed with controlling your mind. It's not *conservatives* who've changed the entire value system of the nation in the past half-century. It's not conservatives who give bovine birth every time you say certain words or express certain ideas.
"We just passed Memorial Day and several people here paid honor to the fallen military. In the city you can question that; in the village, you dare not. "
What village of which you speak? All villages, really? That's like saying all Frenchmen are cowards or all Germans are Nazis, or all urbanites are small-minded bigots.
I like villages better than urban centers for the same reason wolves don't huddle in herds.
Pretty clear you've never been to Oklahoma City.
I recently had published an article about John Leonard Riddel. His diaries and other similar rare archives are here at the University of Texas Libraries. Up above is a comment about snobbery. I grew up in Cleveland. The Cleveland Museum of Art spoiled me. I think that Austin's Blanton Museum is about on par with Toledo or Indianapolis. But at least they have art museums.
As a science fair judge, I have seen bright kids with midrange projects because coming from small towns, they had no mentors among their teachers. You can get that anywhere - people are people. One local girl emailed all of her math and science teachers for help in statistics for her project and got no replies. So, she emailed some professors at UT who hooked her up with some doctoral candidates. But, like the teachers who rebuffed her, the enthusiastic helpers were here in the city.
Everything is a matter of trade-offs, marginal utilities, and preference curves. We all make choices.
Cannot find the audio-book now, maybe I heard it wrong or Churchill got it wrong. The coins may have come from the central kingdom of Mercia, the famous King Offa dinars, (see MM's point). So in England at the time there were coins in use that were originally dinars with the iconic Islamic inscription, they were overstamped with the name Offa and a cross.
For further confusion-
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/bmh/BMH-AQ-...
This dichotomy applies to the Urban/Rural problem. As khalling said: "... cities are liberal/progressive drivers ... there are lots of high level looters where there is big government." But the villages (suburbs) are where you encounter the small-time thugs of the mind whose New King James Bible - the same one that Saint Paul read - tells them what they need to know. We just passed Memorial Day and several people here paid honor to the fallen military. In the city you can question that; in the village, you dare not.
I suggest that if you like the villages more than you like the cities, you have only chosen one evil over another. We all make choices.
Allow me to suggest - as I will to khalling below - that you have only acculturated yourself to the dictators in your locale. Do they know that you are an atheist? (Just for instance...) In the city, you get pluralism and necessary toleration. In the village, privacy does not exist, so conformity (apparent conformity by silence) has salience.
Leonidas and Thermopylae is one of my favorite stories. There are still Americans who are willing. There are not nearly so many anymore. Sparta was worth saving. America back then was worth saving. Traditional American values back then were worth saving.
No insult was meant or taken. One of my former business partners was born in Poland just before WWII. He invented a device similar to the Mr. Fusion from the Back to the Future movies. His stories about being behind the Iron Curtain convinced me that he was worthy of the title of John Galt.
Regarding saving America, I felt like you my entire life until the TARP bailout in 2008. Now it feels like Khrushchev was right. Remember when we rapped with his shoe and told us that "We will bury you." His Communism has now buried us. I just don't know whether there is enough of America left to make it worth saving. Most days I think there is enough left. I live in an area worth saving. As I see it, there are parts of this country that seek to control me and everyone in this forum that are not worth saving.
I guess we need to define more accurately some of the terms we are using. I imagine that one can tutor prospects before deciding to invite them, a la D'Anconia with Rearden. But, as one cannot "learn" others, only teach them, one has to "evangelize", as you say and if I understand what you mean, in the hopes that the learners' free will and reason would induce them to adopt the values and qualify, as judged by the tutor et al., for the invitation.
As to saving America, I am one of those that would do anything to save it from socialist tyranny. Please, let me explain. At age 5, my family and the country fell to Hitler led Germans. Four years later Stalin led Russians took over and installed Tito and his henchmen (with not insignificant help from Churchill and Roosevelt). Some 17 years later, after college graduation and military service, I was able to go to Italy on a 6 month scholarship and refused to return, after Yugoslav authorities refused to extend my passport. After 4 years in Italy, I came to this country as a GE "import". Soon afterwards, Russians invaded Czechoslovakia, and I was stunned and deeply hurt that not a single gun was fired at the invaders. I convinced myself that America was my last stand against the tyrants. I felt confident that, if their tanks showed up on my street, I would certainly not be alone firing on them from a window. Now I tell people that I would rather die rifle in hand than live in socialism. I am almost 79 years old and all my responsibilities are taken care of. I hope that before America succumbs, there will be a rebellion and that I will not be alone. I hope that someone will earn the immortal memory analogous to the one Leonidas earned at Thermopylae. I think that there are still American willing and capable to emulate those on Omaha Beach almost exactly 70 years ago.
Sorry that I do not know how to make this shorter. I think that you need to know "where I am coming from". It is because I feel strongly responsible for the message received. It is not an insult to your intelligence, please.
Although not a strict Objectivist, he's a died in the wool Libertarian/free-market thinker heavily influenced by Von Mises, and Rothbard in the 60's. His is an interesting and entertaining approach to the problems of a repressive government. Key players in his novel are two absolutist libertarian splinter groups from the diaspora of the Earth, one dedicated to a Western philosophical, non-violent approach and the second, an Eastern philosophical and active defense group. He's the originator of Kyfho, an anagram word that reached common usage in several circles in the 70's and 80's.
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