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Now it's just conservative.
They are not the same.
Objectivism is a philosophy. Political decisions can only rest on epistemology and metaphysics which define morality and ethics. Those discussions go nowhere here. Offering concepts that depend on enumeration does not attract the replies that you can get by condemning HIllary Clinton's personal finances.
That doesn't undo any of what you said. This all shows there is very little representation of Objectism in the world of politics.
For one thing, conservatism is a political movement and Objectivism is a philosophy. Politics is a study within philosophy; and Objectivism has political theories based on observations. But, as Rand, often said, politics cannot succeed in a vacuum. See the present discussion on Huckabee and the 17th Amendment. So many people here think that some one central political reform will fix the system. They think that Donald Trump - an Ayn Rand villain - can "drain the swamp."
On a deeper level, of course, conservatism today is still much like the movement of the 1950s and 60s: me-too traditionalism, based on religion.
And, what they absorbed from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged seems largely to be the millennarianism, the Goetterdaemmerung. Reason editor Virginia Postrel warned about it (left and right) in The Future and Its Enemies. Nonetheless, on that note, we do have futurists here who write about genetics, space travel, life extension, and robotics. So, all is not lost.
And that is their own fatal conceit. The Founding Fathers were very clear that their political system was based on several key principles, of which adherence to natural rights, individualism and personal responsibility, liberty of religion and the press, and an honest press (to keep the public informed) were keys. Our leaders are merely a reflection of our nation's People. Their choices to elect many of the criminals we have in office are reflective of the abandonment of the key principles that made our society great.
Even so, growing up in Cleveland in the 1950s through 70s, The Plain Dealer was the pro-business Republican paper, and the Cleveland Press supported the unions and the Democrats. And it played out in Chicago and New York and Boston and St. Louis, LA and SF... But we knew that and we subscribed to the paper that told us what we wanted to read, just as people today choose Huffington Post or Breitbart, CNN or Fox.
I've been thinking about this. I learned what may be a facile story in grade school that goes the US has a Constitution and "checks and balances" so the system is not dependent electing good people. It's similar to how I think a good business should not be dependent on key personnel. Rather it should be a scaleable system that you can drop good people into and make it work.
Your view blows away the grade-school story I learned. You're saying no system can be so good it can survive bad leadership. That seems true. Now we're in a difficult situation. Once gov't spending is a third of the economy, how do you find unicorn politicians who can communicate to the people the need to dial back gov't, cut through the partisan attacks, actually execute a reduction, and stay in office at least long enough to do it? By partisan attacks I mean a variation of "this is a trick to make a group you belong to uncomfortable, and we need someone to stand up to them and get them back.". That's empty calories vs eating your vegetables. I think we'll limp along until some time or place is favorable to more freedom and they go from being a remote place to a major superpower as the US did, while US goes the way of the British empire.
If it were only a matter of poor leadership, it might survive. More accurately, it is leadership which desires - and has to a large degree succeeded - to change the rules themselves. They have co-opted the media so that it is ridiculously partisan. They have altered the rules - or ignored them - with regards to budgeting - a Constitutionally-mandated requirement of Congress. They have installed a bureaucratic State and then delegated to it powers specifically reserved to the Legislative Branch. The powers of the President have been both expanded and contracted and no one has bothered to challenge the Constitutionality of these actions. Most disturbingly, however, is the fact that the People have been complicit - either through duplicity and misdirection on the part of the Press - or by ignorance both individual and systemic (as a result of our educational system).
I really don't think short of a major revolution (culturally I hope rather than violently) that things are going to return to sound principles. Between the massive corruption in the bureaucracies and our massive debt and entitlement programs, we are a bomb primed for implosion at any time.
It kills me to see Trump openly praised and defended in these halls.
Newbees might well beleive he is embraced by Objectivism.
That thought horrifies me.
How many good people have turned away?
How many of those opposed feel vindicated?
And how many chose to stay that I'd rather just keep moving?!
But...they are Not racist, communist, marxist nor Union supporters...scratching my head cause what other reason is there to be a demoncrap.
That was a funny statement..."I don't have to know all that".
While reading Homo Deus, the author states: We study history to be free of it. The dem's blame everyone today for what they did yesterday...they are enslaved by their own history.
For a similar profession of faith in ignorance, there was a blurb on the conservative "Politi-Chicks" about how common core forces kids to learn useless information about the Etruscans. The writer clearly had no idea what an inauguration is.
The true nature and history of that party is shameful...everyone should know that...of course today...the status, the progressives are the same on either side.
I fancy being anti-politics.
Calling Khalling...Where are you?
I have a modified from an AR15 frame 9mm carbine with two 30-round clips that I call "The Evil Hag" because I thought that criminal would be elected.
While watching Mr. Trump in West Virginia, last night following the media shit-storm over impaneling a grand jury, I thought that perhaps the beltway crowd might be dangerously overplaying their hand. I escaped from West Virginia almost 60 years ago but I know and understand the people that live there. I have also seen many people just like them in my travels across the country. It might be misleading that many of these people vote Democrat out of tradition and habit without knowing very much about politics at all. Most Republicans talk over the heads of these people and lose them by default. Trump talks "under" we educated, eastern, politically involved elitists but straight at the audience he had last night. I refer to these people as "squirrel hunters" and they are quite different from suburban and urban Americans. They mostly want to be left alone to go quietly about their lives and they don't make a lot of noise. What we have to realize is that these are the people who fought the British, the Germans and the Japanese. They kicked their asses and if mobilized can kick ours too.
The people that think they can remove Trump because he is "unfit" are playing with fire and are so sure that they and they alone know who is "fit" that they can't see it. I don't see Trump as being a Democrat or a Republican but as the embodiment of a public that is outraged with the overreach of government and the blatant incompetence of everything it tries to do. Even a "good" function of government is doomed to failure because it has to be implemented by people that qualify not for their competence but for their patronage.
However, Hillary was dishonest, she approved weapons fuel sale which brought milloins to the Clintons, whcih seems like treason. She promised to reign in free speech discussions on the Internet, censor is more the word. Obama was not the man the media sold to the voters. He had all Muslim advisors, he bowed to Muslim leaders, he never tired of being a race-baiting community organizer, yet the press never said it was "un-presidential", as they should have.The FBI never properly checked out Obama's past illegal dealings, his connections to domestic terrorists, to communists to Islam. It was the first time people elected a man who did not use his real name, used the name of his non-father to get black votes. He admitted his cocaine background, almost proudly. What president started his first speech referring to voters as "them" and "us", and never stopped being divisive? He was not even the first black president, as he was half white, and half, we are not sure, since he had no valid birth certificate. What was NORMAL about those 8 years?
Trump's Monkey House is just more chaotic (at this stage of the game) than others however what is transpiring there is not new. Understanding the extent of power is always the toughest part of the learning curve and this one is no exception.
On the upside however, by entering with a clean slate and the desire to fulfill one's campaign promises (that is refreshing isn't it?) the chaos will be magnified. However, with the appropriate organizational expertise, the negatives can be overcome (and they probably will to a large extent in Trump's case).
It is natural that a person who was not (and I guess is still not) a Trump supporter would have this take however (and I say this because I too was not a Trump supporter) I believe it has clouded his view of the realities other than what the Mainstream Media is pushing. That is Madison Avenue at its best. the "Pravda-ization" of the media is amplifying what is really going on and providing ample fodder for the writers viewpoint.
I say, Trump is our president whether or not we liked that outcome, therefore he (as all presidents have) should be given the benefit of the doubt at least until the next election.
For what its worth!
Trump is a childish, over-reacting clown, making it almost impossible to defend the conservative positions. He is likely to do for the left, just what Bush did...ensure they are elected next in a massive retaliation.
"Alas, the substance of the report is way more mundane. Trump has said in one interview—and nowhere else, to my knowledge—that he is a fan of Rand’s novel The Fountainhead. All of the other reports about “fellow Objectivists” are similar: they’re stories about Trump nominees at some point in the past reading, praising, and recommending Rand’s novels." - The Federalist, Dec. 14, '16: http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/14/i...
Donald Trump Is An Ayn Rand Villain The Federalist, April 12, 2016: http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/12/d...
"Anthemgate" and the internal arguments are less interesting, even to those who do understand the philosophy of Objectivism. I did not know that David Harriman left the ARI for the Atlas Society. I did have my own criticisms of his book, The Logical Leap (https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2...) even though, over all, I did find the book informative, even compelling in its presentation of a new interpretation of induction. On that note, I am now reading How the Martians Discovered Algebra by Roger E. Bissell, another objectivist, who draws heavily on Harriman's theory of induction.