Ayn Rand’s bedrock political principles are that governments are instituted to protect individual rights, and that no person or government has the right to initiate force. Declining to confer citizenship, which is not an individual right, does not violate these principles. Show me one instance in which I endorsed “multiculturalism”. And far from being “a-philosophical”, my arguments are grounded in Objectivist philosophy. If you are going to label my views, please show some actual examples of why you think my views fit those labels.

Your hyperbole of "atrocious abuse, mob action and horribly tribalist mental stagnation" .Shows your temperament. We are social animals. We have evolved to depend on our tribes, literally, for our safety and survival. As Jane Howard, biographer of anthropologist Margaret Mead, put it “Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” We may not be aware at the conscious level of the influence tribalism has on us, but then, most of human cognition happens below the radar of consciousness, and is driven not so much by the goal of getting good grades or winning Nobel Prizes as it is, first, to survive. Small wonder that this ultimate imperative dominates so much of how we behave, how we think and act, and how we treat each other. And it’s hardly surprising that the more unsettled and uncertain we feel and the less we feel we have control over how things are going - feelings that make us feel threatened - the more we circle the wagons and fiercely fight for tribal success, looking to the tribe to keep us safe.

Procedures for attaining citizenship are already in law. This does not make their most favorable outcome a “civil right.” The Swiss townspeople did not “ignore” the procedures, they implemented them. And it is not in the spirit of Objectivism to morally condemn a group of people because they “might” violate someone’s rights in the future, based on the fact that a different group of people did so in the past.

Thank you.

I admire your perseverance.
Have a great day!

If citizenship has value, then by what right, or ethics, or values, or by what part of a
Francisco speech should it be denied? (by an Objectivist)

I posted earlier to say that I find that type of person really annoying just as the locals did,
but that hardly qualifies for denying something presumably important such as citizenship.

If the state allows driving only with a driving license, then by what philosophy
are annoying people denied that license, even if they otherwise qualify, and
even if a majority vote has given the state that right?
I reckon, under an Objectivist constitution, passing a driving test could be a requirement
for a driving license, but, a rule on not-being annoying could not have effect.

There’s nothing to “confront”. Obviously most of these Swiss townspeople are not individualists. The same is true of most people in the world and most Americans. However, lumping them all in a category you call “tribalists” oversimplifies the issue. About 30% of the Swiss townspeople supported the woman. Those that refused to support her did not attempt to deport her or prevent her from speaking. There was no violation of her actual rights, only the refusal to grant her a legal status to which she was not automatically entitled.

I don't equivocate, I reject your entirely arbitrary definitions, unsubstantiated assertions, and personal mischaracterizations of me.

I hold that nations verily are associations and have given numerous examples to underpin those assertions - none of which you have refuted. States are associations. Communities and towns are associations. Show me what definition of "association" does not conform to any of the examples listed above. Are not towns incorporated with bylaws and rules of conduct? Yes. Can someone who violates those rules of conduct be ostracized and even evicted? Yes. And the same applies to States and Nations. Citizenship in a nation is an example of a specifically recognized and important form of membership in an association.

Get your definitions in order and re-examine your premises - if you have the personal integrity to do so. Put away the malice and envy and meaningless attacks on those who differ in opinion with you.

"Your premise that a nation is and should be regarded as an "association" controlling its members is as false now as the other times you repeated it."

Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth, eh Goebbels? I also love the insinuation you add in there

If you had given one shred of proof to support your statement (repetition doesn't count), you might have a leg to stand on. But you don't. All you can do is rant and try to introduce red herrings and ad hominem and misrepresent my statements.

You claim appeal to authority from Rand yet you can't cite a single thing she said that supports your position. I cite a prime example from right out of Atlas Shrugged and you claim that somehow I'm misinterpreting it. No, I wasn't. Dagny was told point blank by Galt that she couldn't stay until she was willing to recite the Oath and mean it. She couldn't at that time and admitted it. That's culture and commitment to association enforced by the hero of the book: John Galt himself. Dagny was at least honest enough to admit that she wasn't ready to be a member of the community - to accept the values and standards that came with the Gulch. Why didn't Galt just throw open the doors of the valley to anyone and everyone? Again, because he wanted only like-minded people. He wanted a community with a specific culture and homogeneous set of values. And you want to tell me that's not an association? Only a person who divorced himself from reality would claim any such.

That desire to build up communities of their own was what prompted so many groups to leave Old Europe and travel to the New World. Take the American Revolution - was that not a revolt against the culture of the monarchy and the foundation of a new nation built on individual rights - a specific culture? Yes, it was. Why do you think the Founding Fathers ensconced Association as one of the prime Rights of Citizens of the United States? It was because they, too, wanted to build and preserve not just a community, but a nation with a core set of values including hard work, individuality, respect for law, respect for conscience, and the freedom to associate with those of like mind.

Here's a news flash: if you can't cite Rand to support your ideas, you know less of her than you think. If you can't support your ideas with anything more than repeated assertions of your own opinions and diatribes full of false statements, innuendo, and personal attacks on others (ad hominem), it's because it's an idea with no logical foundation or support! It's a losing argument - just like this one.

And I never said Islam is a beautiful religion. Quite the contrary, I find it abhorrent and deviant, denying human rights and antithetical to Constitutional government. Your attribution to me of things I have never said is just more of your personal crusade - or should I say jihad - with all the dishonesty and vitriol that comes from a person enslaved to hatred. Again, flagged and sent to the Admin.

I have addressed what you consider to be the “central fact” several times. I have given reasons why I don’t consider the Swiss townspeople’s actions to be “oppression”, a violation of her rights. It is likely that some of the townspeople have a “tribalist” mentality and some don’t. The 30% vote in the woman’s favor appears to support this view. The mentality of the townspeople and the question of whether they violated the woman’s actual rights are two separate issues. Both issues are relevant to your “central point”.

That is a concrete-bound evasion of the tribalist premise and it's full meaning. Its consequences do not stop at "citizenship", as the conservative anti-immigration agenda already illustrates, leaping to embrace the "traditionalist" tribalism as a "model" to control people. If a clique acting on the primacy of "annoyance" over someone speaking out as a challenge its "traditions" will "vote" to oppress someone applying for citizenship then it will sooner or later invoke the same false fundamental premise to oppress anyone for anything to the extent they can get away with it.

Philosophical premises matter. A-philosophical libertarians see only neighbors who didn't get that far. Don't be concrete bound. You know better than that. During the 1930s people were already treated worse than denial of citizenship. Ayn Rand would have been killed for expressing her views in Soviet Russia and would not have fared much better here if people could be legally oppressed for being "annoying" with views that challenged the prevailing "tradition" of a pack of subjectivist collectivists.

Procedures for attaining citizenship are already in law as a civil right. You want them to be violated by arbitrarily ignoring them "for any reason or no reason".

No. It is has been explained to you many times. But no explanation is ever enough for the endless pattern of ever expanding, superficial, wandering rationalizations and sophistry evading the central fact that is staring you in the face but which you will not directly address: a clique oppressing someone under law by the standard that her speaking out contrary to "tradition" "annoys" them. The rationalizations are not "Objectivist argument".

You continue to evade the moral evaluation of the tribalism in their motive and action. The oppression due to a clique being "annoyed" by someone speaking out contrary to its "traditions" is the central point. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

That Swiss law allowed them to do it is not self-justifying and is no justification for the drive to make it a "model" here. A-philosophical libertarian multiculturalism and endless rationalizations are irrelevant, and not an "Objectivist argument" for something that is fundamentally contradictory to Ayn Rand's principles.

The central topic is the fact that a small town voted to deny a woman national citizenship because they were "annoyed" at her for speaking contrary to their "tradition". That is the fundamental philosophical issue and the theme of the article and this thread.

The headline of the article is "Swiss town denies passport to Dutch vegan because she is ‘too annoying’". The headline of this thread is "Swiss town denies women citizenship because She is Annoying". That is what we are discussing, except for you who will not address the motives and actions described and which obviously contradict individualism.

The number of people voting is not relevant to what they did and why. It is another tangent to avoid confronting the contradiction between the tribal mentality and individualism.

No, the logical consequence would have been delay or denial of citizenship, nothing more. The Swiss woman's neighbors made no attempt to deport her. Your assertion that citizenship is a civil right does not make it so.

My post above is a series of clearly stated logical statements in support of my point of view. Show me any place where it attempts to “rationalize tribalism”. And show me where it contains any equivocations, non sequiturs and floating abstractions.

The mentality of the so-called “tribalists” is no more the central topic of the article than the issue of whether citizenship is a right. The article covers many topics besides the one you prefer to call “central”. The Swiss government’s overturning of the local vote proves nothing except that it disagreed with their decision. Both the vote and its reversal were legitimate implementations of Swiss law.

What “central topic”? The article is descriptive and lays out the situation without drawing any moral conclusions whatsoever. Whether citizenship is a right is just as “central” a topic as the alleged “tribalism” of the voters. And by the way, the vote was 144 to 62, hardly indicative of a tight-knit group of “tribalists” marching in lockstep.

The fact that the Swiss tribalists are morally wrong, along with conservatives who want to impose it as a "model" for this country, are not irrelevant. The central point of the article staring everyone in the face contradicts Objectivism whether or not you are ever able to figure out how to conceptualize where it goes wrong in various tangential excursions. Nothing else is required, but all of the relevant principles have already been explained to you. You are rationalizing as you evade the central topic.

Ayn Rand recognized that attaining citizenship by a permanent resident who supports the country is entirely proper as a matter of principle under laws properly relating the people to the government as part of the legal structure of the nation. She did it on principle because she loved the country and wanted to fully participate, as she had a right to do, not out of pragmatism. The right to immigrate and become a citizen under objective standards is not "stretching" individual rights. The procedures for becoming a citizen are a civil right properly formulated in law in support of the rights of the individual. Under the tribalist premise illustrated by the Swiss case, the logical consequences for Ayn Rand would have been not only being barred from citizenship but returned to the Gulag.

This repetition of a rambling sequence of non sequiturs, equivocations and floating abstractions trying to rationalize the tribalism looks like something out of the Medieval Scholastics trying to deduce the number of angels on the head of a pin. All of it has already been refuted. It is not an "Objectivist argument". Calling such an excursion "A is A" as an Objectivist slogan is a parody of logical thought, as it is often exploited by those attacking Ayn Rand for a supposedly meaningless "A is A".

This has nothing to do with justices deciding a legal case. Please stay on the topic. The clique's arbitrary rejection of the woman's application for citizenship based on their demands for "tradition" is a denial of her rights and the rights of the individual on principle, which they superseded by tribalist dictates punishing freedom of speech. That was confirmed legally when the Swiss government overturned the tribalists' "vote".

There are no group rights. Individualism does not endorse multiculturalism and neither do I. Your latest excursion claiming otherwise makes no sense. You grasp for yet another rationalization in yet another diversion pretending to be logical refutation while we are supposed to ignore the central point of the tribalist mentality in that Swiss town. You dodge and wander with misconstruals, misrepresentations, strained analogies and rationalizations around the edges as you evade the obvious contradiction in the central topic.

This case has nothing to do with Sharia law or ISIS. The existence of legal standards rejecting those who seek to overthrow the government does not imply tribalism or conservatives' collectivism following the Swiss incident as a "model" for their anti-individualist anti-immigration policy.

Your premise that a nation is and should be regarded as an "association" controlling its members is as false now as the other times you repeated it. You are a collectivist. The Swiss woman was not "applying for membership" in a club; she is a legal long-time permanent resident who wants to be recognized as having the same rights as other permanent residents.

Anyone can criticize or denounce tribalism anywhere. The principles are not "irrelevant" and neither are the thoughts of individuals not in the tribe who reject it. Your claim that they are irrelevant reveals you as an anti-intellectual tribalist yourself.

Not being an "outsider", as Blarman falsely accused her, does not mean "collectivist".

The clique who tried to oppress her are tribalists because they employed as a standard their "annoyance" that she dared to speak out in opposition to their "traditions". That is not "bs"; it is what they said as reported internationally in the mob-bites-dog news articles. Following that article it has also been embraced by conservatives seeking to duplicate it as a "model" for us.

Trying to explain away their actions and motives as the target "not being an asset" is not what they said, but even that conservative slogan would be indefensible, as Ayn Rand explained when she emphatically supported the right of immigration against a conservative protectionism argument.

People immigrate in pursuit of personal values for their own lives. No one immigrates or becomes a citizen to "be an asset" to a group, which requirement is collectivism. Individuals who are productive (and otherwise honest, etc.) become an asset to others as a consequence, but that is not their purpose nor a standard superseding the rights and goals of the individual. An individual who is not considered an "asset" is still legitimate as long as he is not a burden on those unwilling to support him. That the Swiss who oppressed the woman were already citizens does not justify their tribalist mentality and does not justify the equally anti-immigration agenda of conservatives in this country. Being a citizen does not imply arbitrary power over others.

Of course traditions can be good or bad. The good is defended for what makes it good and the bad rejected accordingly. Nothing is good because it is tradition and no good can be defended because it is a tradition. You can accept or reject any one you please at your holidays; the nation and other people's rights are not a private dining table celebration to dictate to.