I'm too old to be a useful slave.

I envision me, an old man, taking my stand right home (can no longer trek thru the woods), against the Rulers who may show up to intrude. I don't expect to win, but "c'est la vie", its my time to go.
The Great Global Collapse seems to be the only thing to put the Rulership out of biz.

If we are to ignore governments until they go away, I'm sure I'll be forced use all the guns and ammo I collected for a reason tempoorarily placed on hold with the defeat of The Evil Hag.
The AR-15 looking 9mm carbine (I call it The Evil Hag) that my son built for his dear old Dad is really just a defensive weapon with the maximum effective rang of a football field. Who do you call without government? 911? Hell no!
You call out with a loud voice, "Lock n' load! Defense! Defense! Defense!"

rather too late, yes, but in the end...
Governments-all appear to be purposed largely for making wars. Would we have all those sacrifices of men and resources without them?

I recall Hitler being ignored unil it was way too late.

Sorry, but "voting" holds no answers. We need to ignore our Rulers until they disappear into their swamp. Trump will be no help with that!

The one thing I'll agree with you is that all past administrations have made a colossal mess in the middle east. They should gone to the history books and examine the partitioning of the Turkish Empire after WW1. Those Leaders should have read about the history of region also. Shows how uneducated those public servants (the deep state) really are.

This is a discussion forum for those interested in Ayn Rand's ideas. No, you do not tell others here to "go their own way" and to not comment on what you publicly post because you don't care what others think. Your snotty "I'm done knock yourself out" dismissals refusing to discuss ideas as "telling you what to do" are worse than rude.

I read and comment on other people's articles. As for rude, I'm not the one telling you what you should or should not be paying attention to, nor what your philosophical stances should be. For the last time, you go your way and I wish you the best, and if you want to further tell me the way I should go, I will ignore you.

Are you here for anything other than promoting your blog? I take the time to post serious comments but I don't "knock myself out". You are very rude.

I'm done. Knock yourself out.

The changes that impact us are imposed by one "detail" at a time. If someone doesn't care about that, then watching it all through the haze from an airplane where all he sees is one big forest fire won't make any difference either.

If you think we're all doomed to an inevitable national train wreck and nothing you can say or do will stop it, and the policy changes implementing it make no difference anyway, then why write about it at all?

Whatever happens with the course of the culture and the resulting politics -- which are both headed in the wrong direction -- the end result, the form it takes, and the time to get there are not determined, nor is everyone impacted equally along the way. Whether or not anyone thinks he can make a difference to the end result at some unknown time in the future, we and at least some following generations have lives to live, and government actions and other mobs make a difference to that. Even Europe today is better than reverting to the Dark Ages.

Ayn Rand near the end of her life was less than optimistic about the trend of the nation, too, and said she was glad she was old enough to not have to see what she feared was coming. But she understood the intellectual requirements for reform and never stopped advocating the right ideas, knowing that people have free will and the power to choose the outcome if they understand, adopt and follow the right principles. Her articles were usually critical of current events, but she didn't just report them from a distance with despair; she always had new insights relating new developments with sufficient essential details to the logic of contrasting philosophical premises. She did what she could to explain it, always fighting for her values, knowing that "anyone who fights for the future lives in it today" -- and knowing that the magnificent possibilities for mankind are too great to surrender to the void of evil without a fight for what is good.

She knew that the right concepts and principles are required for a rational society, and rejected the notion that if there is a "collapse" then people will suddenly see the light and miraculously do the right thing without the knowledge of what is right. That includes "enclaves" which would not last for long in a panic of overwhelming savagery of mobs and competing dictators along with the loss of most technology and sophisticated production possible only in civilization. She rejected the hopelessly anti-intellectual scheme of letting society collapse as a means to restoring civilization, let alone a strategy of a revolution or trying to accelerate a collapse in a fit of suicidal nihilism.

It is possible to both advocate for the right ideas and to make a difference in policy changes to buy time through the proper methods (which are not strolling through the forest and scanning the internet, then pontificating about it). Ayn Rand had the unusual intellectual power and knowledge for necessary philosophic advocacy; she did not put her efforts into temporary political battles which may make a difference but which cannot by themselves indefinitely hold out against the trend of statism and collectivism without a broad, fundamental intellectual reform; and she chose her priorities accordingly.

She also knew that it was still "too early" for a broad-based political reform through the likes of party politics without the necessary intellectual base, and not only didn't waste her time on that but urged her supporters not to squander their efforts on such fantasies as a new "Objectivist political party" or "Objectivist candidate for president", let alone the eclectic mish-mash in the fringe Libertarian Party or religious conservative politics. Her motto was to choose your battles carefully; she never thought it rational to 'float above it all', watching the decline after which it would be expected in fantasy to live in an alternate "enclave" reality to escape the disaster in this one (like the goal of the Christian era of the Dark and Middle Ages living for salvation in another world).

Thanks.

excellent analysis once again Bob...almost home again...will get to your prior essays

You ask a fair question. I think we're heading towards a train wreck, a gargantuan collapse, and nothing I can do or say will stop it. I comment accordingly; whether anyone pays attention is beyond my control and thus, beyond my concern. If we're heading towards an inevitable train wreck, why pay attention to the details of proposed legislation that may or may not be passed and will make no real difference anyway? Who has the time?

Perhaps the best explanation of what I see myself doing is on the Welcome page of SLL:

"How do you see the forest for the trees? The first step is to quit walking through the forest. You can spend twenty-four hours a day reading periodicals and scanning the internet. You would know the latest of everything and you might begin to discern the stories behind the stories. However, you’d be wasting your most important and limited possession–your time–and reinventing the wheel. It makes a lot more sense to get in an airplane with competent pilots and instead fly over the forest."

Some people appreciate this vantage point, some don't. My readership and the number of sites who post my material has steadily grown. I've written 3 novels and they all still sell, though not as much as I'd like. I think after the collapse it may be possible to build defensible enclaves based on liberty and individual rights. I would devote a great deal of time and attention to helping build such an enclave, and would be quite concerned with its details and policies. To do so with present arrangements seems to me, I reiterate, like a waste of time. You see things differently. By all means do what you think is best.

If you don't care what people think then why are you here? Just to promote your own blog, with no concern for the impact of public policy on people's lives in reality or what anyone thinks of it? It is not a mere "detail"; those who are not nihilists have to live under it. I had assumed you did care, but you demean it as not your "concern" with a dismissive "better things to do" attitude. Those who write informative commentary, even if not political activists, generally are concerned with the "details", i.e., the fact of what is going on, and do want to make a difference for what they think is right, not just observe national failure from an alleged distance.

I didn't demean learning the details of law of public policy for those so inclined. However, I've got better things to do. You go your way; I'll go mine. Why should you care one bit whether I do or do not study public policy, or do or do not want have an impact on it? I don't care at all what you do.

Public policy is not "details". They are progressively increasing controls over everything we do. You may "like to wait and see" more of that, but if you can't be "concerned" about it then don't complain in armchair philosophizing while demeanng effective action as beneath your consideration as mere "details".

I don't want to have an impact on changes to law and public policy, and have more important things to concern myself with than those details.

Belt and Road Initiatve.

You don't have to be accepted as "offering" people something before moving to where they are, only respect their rights.

"Chain migration" is an entitlement to bypass laws governing who should not be allowed into the country, granting a privileged status with an excuse based on increasingly remote family ties as a version of racism and ethnicity as an end in itself, the opposite of the individualism this country is based on and which is required to survive.

If you want to have an impact on changes to law and public policy it's best to do it by first reading and understanding what is being proposed, not waiting until it has "emerged" with unstoppable or harder to stop political momentum or already passed.

I can understand retaliating if we are attacked, or even if an ally (e.g., Israel) is attacked, but this should be only if there is a physical attack, not just a verbal threat. We should build up our military here, and make ourselves strong.
I am sorry; maybe I missed something, but I
do not know what BRI stands for.

Maintaining an expensive global empire as you describe is part of the bipartisan consensus, so politicians do not debate it. At least we have a robust and lively debate on whether the president committed any faux pas consoling the dead soldiers' families.

All I can say is that NIGER must be in africa populated by black people. They are probably muslim also, but I really dont know that

There is no price that those who seek and use power will not demand from those they enslave. With fiat money all money is debt with interest automatically disallowing its elimination. What should be done about the rest of the world that does not want or understand liberty and living objectively and hate those that do? Find a method for living outside of their influence. You are not going to convince most of the world otherwise. If there were a nation living by these standards I would move to it immediately. Estienne observed (500 years ago) that perhaps the only way to live outside of a tyranny is to live unobserved, this is becoming nearly impossible with tracking devices and communication with super computers involving every transaction and communication with computer programs that can watch for the infidels of collective living.
Soldiers have always been dupes (I was one once) of the state and their behavior and actions once exemplified by the state are difficult to refute as actions that destroy the liberty of humankind. No one would like to admit that what they have done has had terrible and immoral consequences. As long as soldiers are willing to obey commands no matter what they are no different than any other slave who waits for his master to become moral so that he can have permission to act morally. The slave masters have always understood that in order to have an army that will protect them then the army must not think, all the way to the lowest level of participants. When the leader points to a place and says kill they must obey, if they like their paycheck, the respect of the other soldiers and the applause of the taxpayers back home who tell them they are wonderful and supply them with the tools for their trade.
If a state could function to recognize the sovereignty of the individual and protect him and never devolve into a communist democracy that America has then a state would be a good thing. It hasn't worked yet and Estienne pointed out it may be this way until the race dies out.