My definition is not peculiar. The other posters in IMHO “Math Thread” are probably unaware of this thread and yet they echo what I said.
By all means, please take your 34-years of teaching wisdom over to that thread and tell the posters who were not successful in math that they actually learned-then-UNLEARNED math. I’m sure they’ll love your insult and thank you profusely for correcting them.
Oh wait – you can’t do that that because it’s IMHO instead of the Pit.
Also, it’s bizarre you take this so personally since I’ve already explained that you (teachers) are not primarily to blame for this failing.
Why is that necessary? If government organized education did everything you describe education as doing, Rand would still call it immoral because the government is robbing Peter to educate Paul’s children. It is immoral according to Rand regardless of how effective the education is.
I mean to say that if that was ALL it was, Rand’s position is significantly broader than that (I will live for no other and I will not ask any other to live for me). I recognize that Rand has a thing about communism because the communists took away her dad’s money and she went from being daddy’s little princess to a refugee.
Seriously… this whole thread is about atlas shrugged and I have read the book. I don’t need to read everything ever written by Rand to have a valid opinion about her. That’s like saying I can’t have an opinion about God unless I am a priest.
Nope, not necessary. I have read Atlas Shrugged and I have enough to form an opinion. There is nothing that you have said that makes me think that I am “misunderstanding” her. I have asked you about public education and military service and the answers speak for themselves. There is nothing I have heard that makes me think that Rand’s ideals are rocket science. They just aren’t complicated enough that reading a 1000 page book was insufficient (in fact I think you could probably boil down all the ideas into about 25 pages if you really tried).
thats mostly because you can’t. If A=A then why are you defining education so differently from us that it is too much trouble to define? Do the rest of us all say education and mean something else?
Yeah, right, people could form communes to educate their own children. I’m sure that would work swell in communities that don’t have any resources. Yeah I guess the most diligent parents (and children) would find some way to educate their children but that sounds like you would be perfectly OK with a largely illiterate population if these folks could not find a way to “trade” for their education.
No, I think Rand is probably agnostic on whether or not children get educated, she just doesn’t think that people should be forced to pay for the education of others. It doesn’t matter if the education is super effective or not, Rand doesn’t believe that the government should force you to pay money to pay for the education of someone else’s kids.
It doesn’t really matter to Rand if the education is effective or not. What mattered to Rand was that people were being forced to pay for the education of others. It could be vouchers and charter schools and Rand would still call it immoral because you are robbing peter to pay for the education of Paul’s children.
Well, when we discuss Christianity, do we only discuss what Jesus said and thought or do we also discuss how people have used and applied those principles? Because I think that it adds a lot of context to her ideas when you see how people are applying them.
OK so tell me when military service would be moral and when it would be immoral according to Rand. Because as far as I can tell, if that military service is entered out of a sense of duty and service to country then it is immoral because you are subjugating your own interests for the interests of others. If you are joining the military because they are paying a large bonus for people who have your skill set, then that would be moral, you are being a trader (although you are being paid with tax dollars that were coercively taken from some people who didn’t really want to fund a military, maybe that makes military service and government employment immoral).
Hrmm OK, let me rephrase. Paying your taxes is not immoral because, as you say, you will end up in jail if you don’t. But aren’t taxes generally immoral?
According to Rand’s philosophy as laid out in Atlas Shrugged, it is acceptable to use violence against those who would attempt to control you through violent means. The pirate Ragnar Danneskjöld, for example, went around blowing up Looter and Moocher ships and installations. And of course, they used violence to bust Galt out of prison.
I would expect that military service in Objectivopia would be voluntary and would mostly be a defensive force.
Yes but from the perspective of the individual soldier, is joining the military moral if they are joining the military out of a sense of duty or “for the greater good”? Doesn’t Rand refer to this sort of sacrifice as immoral?
Rand care nothing for what people need, she would consider this “living for others”. The fact that I need food or my kids need education does not make it any less immoral to FORCIBLY reallocate resources (e.g. taxes) to account for my hunger or my children’s ignorance.
Not if the OP asked us to explain Christ’s teachings. What gets in the way of doing that is people dumping on Christ because they disagree with him, or spouting nonsense because they don’t understand his teachings.
It would be moral if you were protecting a society you valued living in, and assuming you thought that military work was what you excelled in. It would not be moral if you were protecting a society you did NOT want to live it. It’s really not complicated.
“Taxes” aren’t human actions, so they can’t be moral or immoral. What is immoral, as I’ve said about 3 times already, is forcing people to pay taxes against their will. That’s what Rand thought, although you have to realize that even she knew you couldn’t just flip a switch and go from our current system to an ideal Objectivist system overnight. So, as long as you saw yourself working toward that goal, then taking intermediate was OK. It’s like anti-abortionists who agree to further limits on abortion, even if some abortions are still allowed, because (according to them) it’s step in the right direction.
Don’t confuse what the goal is (no taxes) with how you get there and what you have to do along the way.
Well, aren’t they all? Can anyone find a more abundant source of imaginative hypocrisy that the various and sundry justifications for military force? Hitler, you will recall, launched his invasion of Poland on the pretext of self-defense. Our own invasion of Iraq was “justified” on a similar basis. The military comic opera that was Grenada was offered as a means to prevent the installation of air bases that might accommodate Soviet long-range bombers, until we discovered the grave threat to our medical students.
Everybody claims their military force, and the use thereof, is defensive in nature. An Objectivist hypocrisy might use a slightly different form of window-dressing, but that’s about it. Whoever said “Well, we’re dong this because we are evil, greedy, and unconcerned about the deaths of innocents”?
Huh? Wha? Our Congresscritters are lizard people? They sure look human to me, though I must admit I oftimes have my doubts, but I believe that DNA testing would reveal them to be Homo Saps.
We’re talking about an abstract philosophy that has never been put into practice. To the extent that a real-life Objectivist society betrayed a basic tenet of that philosophy would simply be a repudiation of their actual belief in that tenet. It might also be an example of how Objectivism butts up against human nature.
But if someone asks: What is the purpose of a military in an Objectivist society, then the correct answer is: Defense. The fact that it might be the correct answer 99.9% of the time when discussing various philosophies does not alter the fact that it is correct.
Why is this immoral about this? We have a political system of representative democracy within the limits of a Constitution. Our tax laws were are are passed as part of that system of representative democracy. What is “immoral” about that?
Do you honestly think for even a minute that most folks would willingly and of there own free will pay taxes if they did not have to pay taxes? By making a statement like that, Rand and the anti-government crowd who follows her, are only setting the government up for failure and collapse … which come to think of it is probably the goal in the first place.
We’re discussing Objectivist philosophy. According to that philosophy, it is immoral to force people to pay taxes. Personally, I don’t view morality as something that can be objectively defined, so I take no position on whether it is moral or not.
Sorry if that was unclear, but I thought it was understood we were discussing Objectivism in this thread, not our own personal philosophies.
Well, I assumed that they would get paid for their service.
Here is what the Objectivists have to say on the subject.
“Ayn Rand opposed the military draft as a violation of individual rights. …A war that a country’s citizens do not volunteer to take part in is a war that deserves to be abandoned, and to coerce innocent people to risk or lose their lives is a profound violation of the purpose of government. A volunteer military, always and by all means.”
In general it doesn’t seem to be an area that has been deeply developed by Objectivists. But given the rest of their philosophy, I would imagine that one would willingly join the military if there was a rational reason to do so. For example if your home or way of life was threatened.
I don’t believe the philsophy is based on “only look out for number one”. But it is very much against being forced to give up life, liberty or property because the “greater good” demands it.
I hear you and I have been trying to stay away from the way most people who invoke Rand interpret her and sticking to what Rand actually seemed to say. The fact that her ideas are so easily adaptable to immoral attitudes of people who invoke her name does not make her ideas immoral so much as they make them amoral.
So if I value living for others then it is moral according to Rand seemed to think that the desire to live for others is all the result of a con by the mystics of religion and socialism?
I guess the reason you had to say it three times is because I tried to rtead your statement in a way that would make sense instead of reading it to say that taxes are OK but only so long as they are voluntary. If its voluntary, I don’t think you can call it a tax, donation seems to be a more appropriate word. Perhaps you are suggesting that government should be run on donations.
I am fine with the idea of incrementally achieving your goals but I just want to be clear. The ultimate goal is no taxes right? All the really necessary government services will be provided for by donations from citizens who value those services or the marketplace will otherwise provide them. Folks who think that a police force is necessary will band together and form groups to fund a polic force or a private concern will go around collecting money from communities to protect them, folks who value public education would band together to fund education (but in some form other than the totally screwed up form of education thate have now which obviously doesn’t work because we teacher’s unions instead of vouchers).
HOWEVER, forcing the folks in the rich neighborhoods to pay for the police force in the poor neighborhoods or forcing folks with kids in private school to subsidize public schools is immoral even if paying those taxes is moral because it is in your best interest to stay out of jail.
As a side note I don’t know if Rand’s ideas opposed unions (even the teacher’s union) nearly as much as some people seem to think.
If any one person has a set of rights, then if follows that two people have twice as many, and a thousand, a thousand fold. What is the objective, rational basis to deny that?
Well I agree that it isn’t always look out for number one and the philosophy inserts the word “value” to allow enough wiggle room so that Objectivism isn’t really objective. But even with the subjectivity of “values”, one of the “commandments” seems to be “living for others makes you a sap and asking others to live for you makes you a leech” In explaining this basic idea, she trashes all concepts of societal duties imposed on people by religion or notions of socialism. She says that a government would be immoral to take from your abundance to feed your starving neighbor unless you agreed to feed your starving neighbor out of a sense of rational self interest. I got the impression that feeding your starving neighbor out of a sense of altruistic charity would be an immoral abdication of your will to the mystics of religion and socialism.
Your welcome. Some people on this thread have said that just reading John Galt’s speech is not enough but if you are not in the mood to read the complete works of Ayn Rand then it is about as good a place to start as any.
I read that sentence several times, and I can’t understand it. Especially as you were responding to what I said about Objectivism and the military. Are you equating joining the military with “living for others”? If so, then that’s not correct. We like call it “service”, but it’s really just a job. And Objectivists wouldn’t call it service for precisely that reason. Objectivists would tell you that calling it “service” and elevating “service” as some lofty goal is a con job.
So if I value living for others then is it moral to do so, if I value sacrificing myself for absolute strangers then is it moral to do so? Rand seemed to think that the desire to live for others (altruism) is all the result of a con by the mystics of religion and socialism? That it would be immoral for me to sacrifice myself for others.
Sure the military gets paid to do what they do but for a lot of officers I know it is hard to come to the conclusion that military service was in their rational self interest if you do not place some value on duty and service. The personal rewards for military service are simply not that high compared to what they would get in the civilian sector. I would go so far as to say that for a lot of them wouldn’t be in the military even if it paid twice as much if it weren’t for their sense of duty and service.
I don’t mean to deify them but they do place some value on service to others.
Perhaps the problem is that people quote Rand in absolute terms (A=A, dontchagetit stupid?) and then respond to criticism by suggesting that I don’t understand the nuance of her philosophy. I think her philosophy is extremely simple to understand and that it has been applied exactly according to its terms by some of the most loathesome people in our society.
