Objectivist Round Up #172

This weeks Objectivist Round Up is punched and filed over at 3 Ring Binder.

Check it out!

Objectivist Round Up #171.

This weeks Objectivist Round Up is at Reepicheep's Coracle. Check it out!

Hope? Nope.

Though I would hope that Op/Ed's like this would become more and more prevalent in the face of the petty tyranny governments today are subjecting citizens to, I'm pessimistically certain that they will not.

Only By Permission #9

"A right is the sanction of independent action.
Only a slave acts on permission."
Ayn Rand

Where soap bubbles breaking on the skin of a police officer constitutes assault.



There is a legal right in this country to demonstrate, it's nothing less than a hallmark of a modern liberal democracy. I personally disagree with the reason for the G20 demonstrations I believe that most of the people doing so are on par with loony conspiracy theorists. The right to peaceful protest aside, I absolutely believe that anyone destroying property or actually and physically assaulting a police officer (or anyone else) in the course of any demonstration ought to be thrown in jail. Full stop.

But... assault by soap bubble?

And now there is this... The Officer in question has launched lawsuits aimed at people who commented on the YouTube video for defamation of his character, something he ought to realize he did all on his own with his ridiculous overreaction.

Let's Forget.

With the news that the Afghanistan Government is in secret talks with the Taliban to end almost 10 years of war it seems like it is time to find out what went wrong.

Could it be (as I’m sure some are going to claim) that our failure in Afghanistan is the karmic result of the “fact” that our presence there was not predicated on any reason, moral right or principle at all?

Let’s examine that idea.

Let us disregard for a moment the reason we went there in the first place, forget that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 ever occurred, that almost three thousand innocents died, certainly that is no reason to go to war.

Forget that once we found ourselves in that medieval throwback of a nation, that we tried to give them the benefit of every advancement in social theory from the time of the Protestant Reformation to The Women’s Rights movement. On what principle do we call for a separation of church and state? What ideal underscores the equality of men and women? Surely there is none at all, and this sort of trifling issue could never be worth the blood that has been shed.

Let’s overlook that once committed to the task, that we wanted Afghanistan to evolve from the politics of the feudal state to a modern liberal democratic republic. Surely there is nothing they need to learn from us. Look at the ideas forwarded by the Magna Carta, The Declaration of Independence, Charters and Bills of Rights, certainly none of this is worth fighting for!

Yes, let’s ignore all this and examine for a moment the possibility that our failure is some sort of mystical retribution for the arrogance of assuming that our culture, or the rights we enjoy, or our form of government or our secular laws were ever worthy of protection or of being spread.

Objectivist Round Up #169

The Objectivist Round Up is over at Sacred Ego.

I am sure you will enjoy it.
I think it's going to be great.
I will go and check it out!

Only by permission #8

"A right is the sanction of independent action.
Only a slave acts on permission."
Ayn Rand

Where stopping a criminal becomes a criminal act.

Objectivist Round Up

The 168th Round Up is up over at Rational Jenn

Utilize your faculties and take a look!

A Tale of Two Moralities

A Judge in Ontario recently struck down the laws concerning keeping a Bawdy house, and communication for the purpose of prostitution. Predictably the religious and other moral busy-bodies have come out in opposition to the ruling and are promising an appeal.

With the voices raised in "moral" opposition to the ruling calling for the reinstatement of the old laws, this article is calling for us to leave morality out of the prostitution debate... and that is wrong.

Prostitution is a degrading, dangerous and often demeaning profession. I can’t for the life of me think of one single reason why any person who has the least bit of intelligence, self respect or personal integrity would want to be a prostitute. In my opinion, the person who seeks sex for hire is a lonely, miserable creature seeking to ameliorate some personal psychological defect, and the person supplying it is most likely equally as damaged.

But that moral judgment on the physical and psychological act of prostitution is an issue separate from the meta-ethical assessment of prostitution as a profession. By meta-ethical in this instance I mean how we support or defend our ethical judgments.

Ayn Rand said “Morality ends where a gun begins”. Not only does this mean that one can not be commanded to act “morally” (as one would in normal circumstances) when confronted with the choice of life or death through force but also, and more importantly, that the initiation of force is itself immoral.

For me the question of meta-ethics rests on one thing the initiation of force (or fraud). It is the initiation of force against a human being that is immoral. So meta-ethically speaking something which does not initiate force is not immoral. Since prostitution, (the exchange of money for sex) as defined does not involve the initiation of force it is not immoral meta-ethically, and for this reason morality must remain a part of our current debate about prostitution.

While anyone and everyone has the right to pronounce moral judgments on the nature of the world’s oldest profession these are personal judgments only, and can not be ripped out of our minds to be used as an ideal which we then impose upon all people. This is true no matter how many (or few) of us may believe in that ideal.

The only meta-ethical reason for the prohibition of prostitution or any other act is the initiation of force against another human being. As defined, prostitution is a contractual agreement and is fundamentally no different than the purchase of any other tradesman’s labour and skill.

What we need with regard to this issue (and morality in general) is not to forget about it, but to discover it, and to differentiate between its personal and meta-ethical applications in our lives and in our governance.

Only By Permission #7

"A right is the sanction of independent action.
Only a slave acts on permission."
Ayn Rand

Where you have freedom of speech, as long as you say things we want to hear.

Only by Permision #6

"A right is the sanction of independent action.
Only a slave acts on permission."
Ayn Rand

Where appreciation of industrial design leads to "Your papers please."

Two Wolves and a Sheep

In parliament this week a long overdue bid to scrap Canada's long gun registry failed. This failure highlights the flaws in rational thinking on the part of Canadians just as much as the inherent abuses possible in a democratic system.

The greatest threat and failure of Democracy is the ability of 51% to vote away the rights of the other 49%. J.S. Mill and other heavy thinkers called this the tyranny of the majority. With the final vote on the registry tallied at 153 to 151, 50.3% of parliamentarians have indeed managed to dominate the other 49.7%.

The vote also shows the duplicity of politicians and the undue power political parties have in our system. MP's like NDP Peter Stoffer (Sackville-Eastern Shore) who promised to oppose the registry in accordance with his constituents wishes but who devolved into a partisan jellyfish at the threat of party disapproval. Then there are the countless Liberal MP's who were under orders from their leader Michael Ignatieff to vote the party line. It is hard to know how many of them voted in favour of their party and against their constituents but Ignatieff's praise of party unity ought to send a cold shiver down the spine of anyone who is interested in the preservation of political freedom and liberty in this country.

This isn't only a political failure though, it's a failure in critical thinking on the part of a lot of people.

Cast a critical eye at the original article. The inclusion of Elaine Lumley's story about her son Aidan's death is designed to pull at the heartstrings, but look at the facts. Aidan Lumley was shot and killed by an unknown assailant using a pistol in downtown Montreal. Pistols in this country have been restricted and registered weapons since 1935. This registry is for long guns only, the kinds of guns found predominately in the hands of law abiding farmers and hunters.

The Governments own statistics demonstrate just how wasteful this program has been. In 2009 all the murders committed in Canada in that year accounted for just 0.025% of crimes committed, and of that number only 1/3 were committed with a firearm. Due to the statistical information it is impossible to know how many were from long guns as opposed to pistols but I am willing to bet it was less than 1/3 of that total, so a little quick math has the homicide rate by long gun approximately at 0.0027 % of all crime in this country.

Even with the statistics above showing the almost infinitesimal percentage of crime committed with long guns the most salient point is that no crime has ever been prevented by demanding that the weapon used be registered. What do people think, that a criminal will say to himself... "Well I was going to kill the guy, but then I realized that my gun was registered so I thought I'd better not..." ridiculous!

Although rather tongue in cheek, this is something one should think of too...

Objectivist Round Up

Kelly has the 167th Objectivist Round Up under way at Reepicheep's Coracle. Are you a man or a mouse... Check it out!

Objectivist Round Up

The 166th Round Up is live over at Erosophia, and it is dead sexy!

Check it out!

Tolerance

This article led to a conversation about tolerance. The person I was talking to claimed that she would "hate to have to tell my children I lost my job/car/house because I had no tolerance for another's belief and burned their holy book."

Tolerance is an anti-concept. It is designed to imply that something (like religion, social norms or traditions) just because of their nature, are deserving of a free ride, literally of being tolerated... Tolerance is defined as "to allow the ...existence, presence, practice, or act of without prohibition or hindrance" or "to endure without repugnance; put up with"

Now that concept might be applicable to a boisterous child running slightly amok in the kitchen but do you think we really ought to tolerate an ideology that demands homosexuals to be hanged, women to be stoned to death for the crime of being rapped, where it is written that a man can take a child as his bride, where it demands the death of every single living person who doesn't believe what is written in some megalomaniac's piece of delirious, misogynistic hateful homophobic fiction?

Is this really what we want to tolerate?

No.

Only by Permission #5

"A right is the sanction of independent action.
Only a slave acts on permission."
Ayn Rand

Where the scientific method is observable, empirical, measurable and political.

NB - This is a direct result of abdicating scientific research to government. As anyone with half a clue realizes, if you can control the money you can control the message, the information, and ultimately (for a while) the truth.

Funding for science is not a proper role for a liberal western government precisely because supporting or censoring ideas is an indicator of demagoguery not freedom.

Only by Permission #4

"A right is the sanction of independent action.
Only a slave acts on permission."
Ayn Rand

Where the only business permitted is business as usual.

Objectivist Round Up

Jenn has the 165th edition of the round up over at Rational Jenn.

It would be silly to not take a look!

Only By Permission #3

"A right is the sanction of independent action.
Only a slave acts on permission."
Ayn Rand

Where watching what your kids eat is something the state does for you...

NOTE TO FILE

The United States has long been one of, if not the freest country in the world.

Now I'm not measuring or basing that opinion on some UN inspired leftist notion of equality of outcomes or so called social equity. No my yardstick is much simpler, it is ones right to life, liberty and property. You know, real individual rights, not the wet dreams of some social engineer or cloistered communist academic.

But I can't help but notice that the Americans - largely unaided by their current government - are leading the charge toward the ultimate inversion. From Home Owners Associations restricting everything from the colour of doors to flag flying with fascist zeal, to the passing of plebiscites restricting this or that based on the campaigns of vocal minorities, Americans are legislating themselves (and their neighbours) into servitude with startling precision and regularity.

Am I completely mistaken in thinking that the American "live and let live" attitude has been replaced by "Do as I do...or else."?

Guest Blogging

My first ever guest blogger post "The Atheist Conclusion" is up over at Atheist Evolution. Check it out.

Thanks again Jay for the opportunity.