"That creates a dichotomy of sorts, since a mission to encourage the spread of Objectivist principles to others doesn't sound exactly Objectivist, i.e., doing something to benefit others."

Respectfully suggest a re-thinking of that. BT

Thanks, Seer. while I was aware of Rand's use of those as different methods of evil, I hadn't thought of it in relation to mm's essay.

A really good article. I especially loved this in the article:

For many Objectivists, as distinct from mere “fans of Ayn Rand,” the unworkable solution is to withdraw from those who disagree with you. So, it is ironic that the philosophers of the Ayn Rand Institute who do not speak to the philosophers of the Atlas Society probably buy their gasoline from Muslims and get their cars fixed by Christians and find great bargains at big box stores owned by Democrats all the while running Windows software on their computers.

As a person who spends a lot of time in South America and loves both Chile and its wine (not to mention Pisco), if Objectivists did business only with Objectivists they would starve to death and deserve it. So long as a person is not forcing you to buy from his/her/its/both/neither (you see, I can be politically correct) business, and you are not required to interact with the seller of stuff you want to buy, why the hell do you give a damn what the seller believes? Let him/her/it/both/neither believe the moon is made of green cheese and worship the man in the moon. Such does not affect you. Buy the stuff you want and move on.

No, please explain what you mean.

I wonder if you've actually read what many here posit regarding religion. The word "religion" is regularly used as an all-inclusive boogeyman - an overly-broad strawman argument - because it can be used to mean just about anything. That's why it's absurd. What conversations need to stick to are individual principles instead.

Galt's Gulch exists in plain view today....go to any RV camp site... over 1 million RVs will descend on a little town (pop. 3,000) in Arizona for the last half of January...the world's largest RV tent show (football field wide by 3 football fields long)...
it is representative of millions who have dropped out of the economy and gone off the grid...raising children and home-schooling them...working part-time to avoid the trap of home ownership and being trapped in the craziness of today's society...

When I read 'Atlas Shrugged', I never saw Galt's Gulch as a isolated grouping of Objectivists. I saw it as a fallout shelter for the inevitable collapse that was coming. While there were permanent residents, most gulchers were still living outside in reality, just not in the capacity of their former lives. They all took jobs that supported themselves, but nothing more. They weren't going to enable the society that was a vampire to their efforts, sucking the life blood of their property to benifit those who believe their wants are more important. They were withdrawing their consent to be slaves to other's whims.

I just read the title and I already take issue. I don't think "gulchers" are political conservatives at all! I personally am not as I do not believe it is up to the government to make laws against morals that do not infringe on anyone else's rights. Most conservatives want laws against consenting adults participating in prostitution, smoking pot, etc, etc, etc. Most Objectivists don't want gov't meddling in their personal affairs.

As I understood Atlas Shrugged, the Gulch was not so much an intent to become isolated from the rest of humanity, but rather a kind of lifeboat to restore things in the right way after the inevitable collapse. The mistake the against Gulching writer makes is to assume the Gulch was like a commune, as a permanent haven to escape from a world one does not want to accept. The Gulchers fully expected to return to human society and restore it on a more dependable Objectivist basis. That creates a dichotomy of sorts, since a mission to encourage the spread of Objectivist principles to others doesn't sound exactly Objectivist, i.e., doing something to benefit others.

Very interesting article. Although it would be nice to live in a large enough independent society where the inhabitants were 100% consistent Objectivists, this would be exceedingly hard to maintain such a thing over time.

Back to the real world, I deal with non objectivists all the time, although I severely limit my dealings with socialists. Most people, as Nathanial Branden discussed, have unresolved conflicts which limit their "rationality" in some areas. As long as they are rational and respect my human rights and offer some benefit to my life, I deal with them. However, I dont completely trust them, as their irrational tendencies could suddenly spring up and cause me harm.

An example, I used to watch Shark Tank, and observed Mark Cuban extolling the virtues of entrepreneurship. But then he supported Hillary Cliinton (he could have just abstained if he hated Trump), who is about as far as you can get from a supporter of entrepreneurship. I wrote to Shark Tank producers and told them I would never watch their program until they got rid of Mark Cuban. They ignored me of course, as they are just looking for ratings and money, not intellectual consistency.

But, I drew the line there. He supported someone who was absolutely going to take away some of my freedoms and wealth. I say when that happens, its time for them to 'be dead to me", as mr Wonderful used to say on that program.

Jewish describes a racial heritage as well as a religion, but not always inclusive. The Jewish homeland is always Israel, but the individual Jew may or may not practice Judaism.

No one here wants to outlaw religion. You should get a Minus 1 for that, as it seems that you do not understand the basics. However, I see that you are very new here and if you only saw the movies but did not read any of the books, then your exposure has been limited and brief.

Ayn Rand said that she was a committed atheist, but not a militant atheist. For her, other people's religions (or lack of them) were personal choices.

That said, any correlations between any religion and the tenets of objective truth are secondary or accidental.

If you read Atlas Shrugged you will find the answers to all of those questions. It is all quite clear in Chapter I of Part 3, as Galt first shows the Gulch and its denizens to Dagny. You just do not get all of that in the movie. If you have the movie on disk and use the captioning, you can catch some of the reasoning.

Aside from the gas station and convenience store, I think of the Amana Cooperative and the Oneida Community. Ever since we were married, we have been members of a local food co-operative wherever we lived. We do not endorse all of the politics, but we do enjoy the fruits and vegetables.

To me, everything boils down to the difference between freedom and slavery. A degree of slavery is any restriction on absolute freedom. Nature and natural laws do not limit the freedom of any creatures therein but humans, using their brains, seek to insulate themselves from the survival of the fittest aspect of nature through organization and by division of labor and allow more time for pleasure instead of devoting 100% of their time to survival. The tradeoff is freedom. The fallacy is that we are distorting nature's law and it takes constant maintenance to the support structure that resists the natural state. The ratio of freedom to slavery is therefore in constant flux and we must constantly adapt. Going Galt is an automatic result in reaction to demand for more slavery and less freedom. Men retract into their own minds and create less because they have no desire to spend their efforts to produce what will be taken away.
I don’t think Rand thought the Gulch was a physical place, only the refuge for the mind in defiance of enslavement. I don’t think any of the events where mines, oil fields, steel mills and railroads were destroyed were physical acts as opposed to rot and damage caused, over time, my capable minds not bothering to control and maintain them. I don’t see Project X as being a physical device but a representation of the destructive process of enslaving others.
I think that any religious sect, political party or philosophy that does not comply with nature is moral. I think nature will prevail and will destroy all that stands in its’ way. We are only the most superior being, thus far. We have diverted the evolutionary process but in terms of time in the universe we are only a speck. Rand proposes that we release ourselves from all the shackles of slavery and direct ourselves according to reason, which is natural law.

You might be interested in California's Utopian Colonies by Robert V. Hine. California was hospitable in physical or social climate. None of them survived. Here's another story about an all-Black community in California that also collapsed after six years:
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/...

BTW: I registered as a Democrat and voted for Bernie Sanders. In the general election, I voted Green. I was just using my votes to keep the local Democrats honest.

First of all, the point of my essay was expressly that Objectivists who want to wall themselves off from their religious or political "enemies" will have to do without their valuable services and products.

Civilization - urban culture - brings people together without binding them together. It is not for fear of the government that Jews and Muslims do not shoot each other in New York City. One Saturday morning in 2011, my wife and I were in Cleveland Heights. Jews and Muslims were out on the street - on opposite sides of the street, admittedly - but no one was hurling rocks or insults. That is a consequence of tolerance, which is a consequence of capitalism, which too many in the Middle East have not learned or have forgotten.

(For a time and place when Muslims, Jews, and Christians got along well enough to do business, see Making Big Money in 1600: the Life and Times of Isma'il Taqiyya here
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20... )

Secondarily, on the subject of religion, it is true that Ayn Rand had a few cogent and non-aggressive things to say about religion. Some of them were parodied into Christmas cards in 2015, but I found them insightful, and posted a couple of links. (See http://rebirthofreason.com/Spirit/Sig... ) Rand acknowledged that Christianity stands out as being first about the individual. See her letter to one "Reverend Dudley" sold on eBay here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI....

That being as it may, the fact remains that religion is identified by revelation and faith, whereas philosophy was born of reason and evidence. Moreover, while you can find many good elements in times and places when this or that religion was dominant, those were exceptions born of contradictions that allowed some freedoms. On the other hand, philosophy was invented at the same time as geometry, coined money, democratic government, the hoplite style of fighting (as opposed to the mass of bodies) which was part of mercenary warfare (versus conscription), and the ascendency of commerce over agriculture as the primary source of wealth.

Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism explains why that was necessarily true, not just accidentally so. It is no accident that America succeeded because of our broad cultural commitment to the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment which made capitalism (and therefore social tolerance) possible.