"“Ayn quests for her ideal rational hero. Anti-communist (was born in Russia) and doe

[GILMORE104]

I highly recommend it Sydney, it's one of my favorite books, better than Atlas Shrugged in my opinion. It's 750 pages though so be prepared to take some time to read it.

[Sydneyfan]

I didn't make the Aristole connection, but that's a moot point really, since Rand seems to have made it already.
I just really struggle with a philsophy that says " if you want help, help yourself". This is just not possible for everyone in the world. Some people are born into the most dire circumstances. Some people are born with inherent disablities, some people are born the wrong colour or religion for whichever governemnt is currently in power. They can try all they like, but the simple fact is that their chances of success are limited by the regime and morality of the day.

[ferris wheel junkie]

yes, you're right about aristotle. he's just not my favourite

i'm only skimming wikipedia. she certainly is interesting. i agree with some of this stuff, but strongly disagree with other bits.

weird that she thought homosexuality immoral, but good that she thought the government has no business making laws about it.
but also that she thought racism immoral, and yet didn't think there should be laws against it.
she apparently opposed the government spending money on charity, but not individuals (though she didn't see charity as virtuous either way)

[ferris wheel junkie]

Originally Posted by Sydneyfan

I didn't make the Aristole connection, but that's a moot point really, since Rand seems to have made it already.
I just really struggle with a philsophy that says " if you want help, help yourself". This is just not possible for everyone in the world. Some people are born into the most dire circumstances. Some people are born with inherent disablities, some people are born the wrong colour or religion for whichever governemnt is currently in power. They can try all they like, but the simple fact is that their chances of success are limited by the regime and morality of the day.

i agree with this too, "if you want help, help yourself" works for me personally, but sometimes i have to have the courage to not be too proud to ask for help, because sometimes i need it. but it doesn't help for a lot of people, like as you pointed out, people with health problems, children (i haven't seen them mentioned yet, but a large part of the population of the world are children... duh), disabilities, people born in poverty stricken countries, people who can't get an education because they have to work from childhood to support their families so they don't starve... etc etc etc....

[ferris wheel junkie]

also bizarre - ryan doesn't seem to me to be that into being rational.

[GILMORE104]

America is getting to the point where arguments like "someone is born the wrong color" doesn't fly anymore. We have potentially the first black President, potentially the first latino VP, we have black people in very high ranking positions in the government, business, etc etc... We have to sometime get beyond our petty differences due to differences in genetics. (You never hear about Clarence Thomas, Michael Steele, Condaleeza Rice, Colin Powell, etc etc.. as being great black Americans. Mostly here, they're painted as sell outs.)

The most amazing people I actually see here in America are those who fled from East European countries after the fall of the Soviet Union. Talk about coming from nothing. To them, having a bathroom with running water was a luxury. To that end, these people are the hardest workers we have in our country (harder working than a lot of citizens.) It should be clear though that these people are not corporate executives, or even managers of their own businesses. They are the people who go out, work hard every single day, never complain, never ask for help, and don't make a million dollars in life, but they are living free. They earn every penny they get and it's a great feeling. (sorry for the rant).

I also completely agree with her that government should not be in the business of giving charity. The Government is the biggest waster of spending in the world. There is no profit motive, no demand and no competition. Private companies will use their charity money much more effectively than a government 10 out of 10 times. If you want to solve a lot of problems in the world, look to private companies.

[ferris wheel junkie]

ok, but america is not the world.
i don't really see why, on a very basic level, rights and ideas should be different for americans.

and where do you draw the line when you talk about the government spending money on charity? hospitals? international aid? what about when the people in louisiana were suffering?

[Sydneyfan]

I firmly believe that a society that does not support its weakest links is a society in trouble. Maybe not today, or next week, but eventually.

[GILMORE104]

I'm not sure I follow your first point? Why are rights and ideas different for Americans? They always have been. I'm not sure how else to answer that?

Most hospitals in America are privately owned. For instance, St. Mary's Hospital in my hometown is owned by a private company called "Bon Secours". The only real instance of Socialized, government regulated health care in America are military health care facilities and free clinics (neither of which are very good.)

When the people in Louisiana were suffering? They were largely suffering due to the Government aid that was given. The Ice trucks, water trucks, etc etc... were all government subsidized and they was actually a very large controversy over how much money was wasted on them and how a lot their product was never delivered (No profit motive to get it there.) If it was a private company delivering a product it makes out of its own pocket, you never would have had an issue.

[GILMORE104]

Sydney: I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I will speak for my views personally (I like to think I represent near a majority of Americans.)

I do not consider people the "weakest links" by virtue of the color of their skin, socioeconomic situation. I consider people the weakest link in their work. If you're paid to do a job, and you do not do it, you're the weakest link, I don't care if you're black, white, purple green, fat, tall, skinny, short, 9 toes, 7 hands etc etc...

[ferris wheel junkie]

well... clearly the whole world is in trouble, we're slowly and selfishly killing our earth.
the admiration for mankind's "progress" is disturbing.
new york is pretty and pretty amazing, but it's got nothing on one single sunset.


i found this on the internets:

To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life.
By Michael S. Berliner

Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog, or the logging of rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism.

The fundamental goal of environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Environmentalism's goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness, and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where "nature" is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion.

In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, environmentalists have made "development" an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear power--and every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce, and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the "rights" of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the "rights" of trees. No instance of the progress that brought man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those "protecting" the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence.

Nature, they insist, has "intrinsic value," to be revered for its own sake, irrespective of any benefit to man. As a consequence, man is to be prohibited from using nature for his own ends. Since nature supposedly has value and goodness in itself, any human action that changes the environment is necessarily immoral. Of course, environmentalists invoke the doctrine of intrinsic value not against wolves that eat sheep or beavers that gnaw trees; they invoke it only against man, only when man wants something.

The ideal world of environmentalism is not twenty-first-century Western civilization; it is the Garden of Eden, a world with no human intervention in nature, a world without innovation or change, a world without effort, a world where survival is somehow guaranteed, a world where man has mystically merged with the "environment." Had the environmentalist mentality prevailed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation that consistent environmentalists would cheer--at least those few who might have managed to survive without the life-saving benefits of modern science and technology.

The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is fundamentally anti-man. Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by "environment" one means the surroundings of man--the external material conditions of human life. Intrusion is a requirement of human nature. But in the environmentalists' paean to "Nature," human nature is omitted. For environmentalism, the "natural" world is a world without man. Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds, and bacteria somehow do.

They don't mean it? Heed the words of the consistent environmentalists. "The ending of the human epoch on Earth," writes philosopher Paul Taylor in Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, "would most likely be greeted with a hearty 'Good riddance!'" In a glowing review of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature, biologist David M. Graber writes (Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1989): "Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet .... Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." Such is the naked essence of environmentalism: it mourns the death of one whale or tree but actually welcomes the death of billions of people. A more malevolent, man-hating philosophy is unimaginable.

The guiding principle of environmentalism is self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of longer lives, healthier lives, more prosperous lives, more enjoyable lives, i.e., the sacrifice of human lives. But an individual is not born in servitude. He has a moral right to live his own life for his own sake. He has no duty to sacrifice it to the needs of others and certainly not to the "needs" of the nonhuman.

To save mankind from environmentalism, what's needed is not the appeasing, compromising approach of those who urge a "balance" between the needs of man and the "needs" of the environment. To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life. To save mankind requires the return to a philosophy of reason and individualism, a philosophy that makes life on earth possible.

Dr. Michael S.Berliner is a member of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

obviously rand didn't have the problems we face, but her philosophy doesn't allow for them.

having said that, the more i read, i do hold a kind of fascinated admiration for her. i just don't agree.

[ferris wheel junkie]

Originally Posted by GILMORE104

I'm not sure I follow your first point? Why are rights and ideas different for Americans? They always have been. I'm not sure how else to answer that?

Most hospitals in America are privately owned. For instance, St. Mary's Hospital in my hometown is owned by a private company called "Bon Secours". The only real instance of Socialized, government regulated health care in America are military health care facilities and free clinics (neither of which are very good.)

When the people in Louisiana were suffering? They were largely suffering due to the Government aid that was given. The Ice trucks, water trucks, etc etc... were all government subsidized and they was actually a very large controversy over how much money was wasted on them and how a lot their product was never delivered (No profit motive to get it there.) If it was a private company delivering a product it makes out of its own pocket, you never would have had an issue.

so the goverment gave incompetent aid when it came and too late. "profit motive" was the problem for the people who suffered?

i was talking about the world, and you answered about america only. i just found that interesting. when i think about philosophies, i usually apply them to everyone.

[GILMORE104]

I wish Mr. Berliner could claim that argument as his own, but I've been hearing that for awhile now.

the founder of Green Peace is actually the biggest opponent to the environmentalist movement because it's been hijacked by people with a political agenda. Not really a new point, been made since the 1980's.

I have a hard time buying the whole global warming argument as it is. I'm sitting here in Virginia in 40 degree weather. We're coming out of the worst winter in almost 9 years now and 2007 was one of the coolest years on record. Do not forget that the same scientists claiming global warming claimed global cooling 25 years ago with the exact same information.

[burgerqueen]

Originally Posted by Sydneyfan

He does seem to have amazingly diverse taste in women.

I think he just likes women in general, I don't get the impression he has a "type."

[GILMORE104]

What are you talking about? You asked about Louisiana, so I responded about Louisiana? What's wrong with my philosophy? I gave you the reason why the supplies needed didn't get there and the way it could be solved in the future?

You asked about hospitals, I cited a hospital my family and I use? I was merely stating there that the Government doesn't subsidize hospitals here.

Did I miss something?

[ferris wheel junkie]

well... we had to change our habits to help close the ozone hole. so we did. the hole is still there, but it's not as big a problem now.

now we have a different problem. your point about the weather being fucked could be a symptom of the problem. "global warming" involves the whole world, not just your backyard. if the weather changes in one place it affects other places, temperatures might be higher in some places and lower in others, but our ice caps are melting.

[ferris wheel junkie]

Originally Posted by GILMORE104

What are you talking about? You asked about Louisiana, so I responded about Louisiana? What's wrong with my philosophy? I gave you the reason why the supplies needed didn't get there and the way it could be solved in the future?

You asked about hospitals, I cited a hospital my family and I use? I was merely stating there that the Government doesn't subsidize hospitals here.

Did I miss something?

no, maybe i wasn't clear. i was using an example from america, but the rest of what i said i intended to apply to the world.

anyway, i appreciate you taking the time to read and respond, this is really interesting. thanks

[GILMORE104]

Oh no, I find this really interesting. It's always fun seeing different opinions than my own. We could go a lot of directions with this debate (we ultimately have Ryan to thank for us even having this discussion).

I guess what I'm trying to emphasize is a mentality that a lot of people have (thanks in large part to Ayn Rand.) I honestly believe that I can do things better and more efficiently than someone else can do for me.

Do I personally believe that the government should have no role in our lives? No, of course not. But I feel that it does need to be a limited role.

[Sydneyfan]

Originally Posted by GILMORE104

Sydney: I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I will speak for my views personally (I like to think I represent near a majority of Americans.)

I do not consider people the "weakest links" by virtue of the color of their skin, socioeconomic situation. I consider people the weakest link in their work. If you're paid to do a job, and you do not do it, you're the weakest link, I don't care if you're black, white, purple green, fat, tall, skinny, short, 9 toes, 7 hands etc etc...

I understand that, but my point remains that the world is not an equal place. Any philosophy that basically says " work hard and you will be rewarded" has some inherent problems. Hard work is not always enough. Economic rationalism, globalisation and the fundamental fact that every human being is different and has different abilities and weaknesses have seen to that.
So should we ignore other people who are destitute, or who are unemployed, or who for whatever reason, can't feed their kids? Maybe they didn't "help themselves" but I believe that a just society would see the need to help them anyhow.