 Objectivism is not a way of putting your life on autopilot. In the face of such matters as taste, temperament, talent, and level of intelligence a formula for an inflexible, infallable morality is impossible. One can only be as moral as ability allows, and should be judged on those isssues that matter most. [Moral p]erfection is an impossible goal.
Robert Davison
An Answer to Robert Bidinotto on Moral Perfection
Not even Gandhi was against the concept of Superior Violence.
Fred Bartlett
Violence is the Last Resort of the Incompetent
If you're not the lead dog, the view never changes.
Wikipedia (Anonymous Editor)
My father, George Kanaan (submitted by Traci Kanaan)
There once was a local standup routine in a West Coast pub (of all places) and in attendance was this small group of German tourists. After the show the comedian came down to the bar and the Germans wanted to buy him a drink. One of the visitors asks him, "You really have a great routine going, how come we don't have anyone as funny as you back home?". The Coaster set down his beer and says, "Because you killed them all."
Rick Giles
Where is Sarah House
Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating. ...For Hamas the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians.
Charles Krauthammer
A Real Cease-Fire Needed in Gaza
Drivers with road rage are like monkeys in cages that go berserk when the lab technician walks by their cage with a piece of food.
Edward D. Thompson
Pet Peeves
Hamas had to rub salt in the wounds by staging a grotesque victory parade worthy of a barbarian emperor, in which they publicly taunted Israel and the parents of Gilad Shalit. It was the sort of show that is outlawed by international law, that hasn't been practiced since the Middle Ages, but it attracted hardly a murmur of international condemnation. The Palestinians had their gladiator show. The admission price was yet to be paid.
Ami Isseroff
Thanks to Teresa
I think there are two kinds of incompetent people. Those that treat violence as a first resort, and those that treat it as a last resort. The former are thugs. The latter are cowards.
Joseph Rowlands
Gulching and Shrugging
Today, large parts of the modern world have abandoned reason as well as religion. If you were to look among academics for an intellectual defense of reason, you wouldn’t find many players on the field. I’m aware of a handful of philosophers who work in the Objectivist and Aristotelian tradition of Ayn Rand. There are Catholic philosophers. That’s it. The rest of academia is either actively hostile to the idea of reason itself, or has retreated to the safety of narrow, technical knowledge.
Jennifer Roback Morse
Jennifer Roback Morse in NRO on reason and Benedict XVI
All the campaign talk of the Great Depression, a Vietnam-like war, and our shredded Constitution will now thankfully subside as the Obama administration assumes office and solves problems with conciliation, dialogue, and multilateral wisdom, rather than shrillness, unilateralism, preemption, and my-way-or-the-highway dogmatism. We will hear that, by historical levels, unemployment is still not that bad, that GDP growth is not historically all that low, and that deficits, inflation, interest rates, and housing starts are all within manageable parameters. "Depression" will transmogrify into "recession" which in turn by July will be a "downturn" and by year next an "upswing" on its way to boom times.
Victor Davis Hanson
Life at New Animal Farm Won't Be All That Bad
Indeed, almost supernaturally crises will be solved with the departure of the hated Bush: no more flooding streets from cracked water mains that were a result of a President's neglect of infrastructure, and no more spontaneous crashes of Mississippi River bridges due to diversions of critical federal aid from cash-strapped states to Iraq. And when the temperatures rise or drop, the wind howls, the clouds burst forth or go away, the snow melts or piles up, it will be, well, nature that caused the havoc, not the current occupant of the White House who failed to sign Kyoto.
Victor Davis Hanson
Life at New Animal Farm Won't Be All That Bad
Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman's magazine or something?
Caroline Kennedy
to NYT "reporters" asking puff-piece questions
"If there were no losses, there would be no premiums."
Thomas Caldecott Chubb
Chubb & Son (1957)
The wonder of Rand's thought is that it coheres. It self corrects. It is the only real and unapologetic attempt at systematization since Marxism, and the most noble since that of the Greeks. Rand's original theory of concept formation and her brilliant identification of the stolen concept stand around her system like a fence; keeping in the productive fruit of her and her spiritual predecessors, and expelling weeds from the garden of thought.
Ted Keer
What is Objectivism Defined As?
Zimbabwe is Mine.
Robert Mugabe
BBC News
If you're very very rich, you can buy your Senate seat by spending as much of your money as you want. Meanwhile, your poor plebeian opponent is running around groveling for the small contributions allowed by law. . . . Having given this additional leg up to the rich, we should resist packing our legislatures with yet more privileged parachutists, the well-born. True, the Brits did it that way for centuries, but with characteristic honesty. They established a house of Parliament exclusively for highborn twits and ensconced them there for life. There they chatter away in supreme irrelevance deep into their dotage. Problem is that the U.S. Senate retains House of Commons powers even as it develops a House of Lords membership.
Charles Krauthammer
Camelot is Not a State
On a recent afternoon, while riding a rickety bus down Vali Asr Avenue, Tehran's main thoroughfare, I overheard two women discussing the grim state of Iranian politics. One of them had reached a rather desperate conclusion. "Let the Americans come," she said loudly. "Let them sort things out for us once and for all." Everyone in the women's section of the bus absorbed this casually, and her friend nodded in assent.
Azadeh Moaveni
Stars and Stripes in their Eyes
He doesn't need to become more knowledgable, he needs to become more wise.
Edward D. Thompson
How Much Rationality?
If one views ethics as a life compass, as I do, then what does it mean to guide one's life "perfectly"? Is the goal of a sailor to "perfectly" follow a compass heading in a perfectly straight line -- or is it to get to his destination, learning and adjusting as he goes, using his knowledge and skills to the best of his ability?
Robert James Bidinotto
The Passion of Barbara Branden
A single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel, while an Israeli counter-strike can only cause partial damage to the Islamic world.
Hashemi Rafsanjani
quoted in NRO
Obama the centrist? I'm not so sure. Obama was quite serious when he said he was going to change the world. And now he has a national crisis, a personal mandate, a pliant Congress, a desperate public -- and, at his disposal, the greatest pot of money in galactic history.
Charles Krauthammer
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/12/obamas_plan_to_transform_ameri.html
When I was on the bus with [McCain], I asked him a lot of questions about the bailout because most Americans did not want that to happen....I asked him some pretty direct questions. Some of the answers you guys are gonna receive -- they appalled me, absolutely. I was angry. In fact, I wanted to get off the bus after I talked to him.
Joe The Plumber
Fox News
There should not be such a thing as a big government Republican.
Jeb Bush
Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard
If you can figure out how to tame the hormones of young adults with rhetoric let me know and we'll see if we translate your magical persuasive techniques to get people to vote for free-enterprise candidates.
Steve Wolfer
When I First Became a Criminal
There is still too much Rand in Objectivism. That is why there are the "orthodox" and the "liberal" Objectivists or whatever you call them. Because of the "cult of personality" or "persona" Objectivism cannot become an independent philosophy. Oscar Wilde made a remark about literature which I think is comparable to this. "Dans la literature il faut toujours tuer son pere." (In literature one must always kill one's father.) Objectivists need to kill Rand in order for the philosophy to live, otherwise it will stagnate.
Anthony Teets
Objectivism as an Intuitive System
The rare strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross obvious thing is to miss it. Chaos is dull; because in chaos a train might go anywhere -- to Baker Street or Bagdad. But man is a magician and his whole magic is in this that he does say 'Victoria,' and lo! it is Victoria.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Man who was Thursday
Why are we bailing out Citibank? Why are 300 million Americans having to pay for Citibank's mistakes? The way the system is supposed to work [is this]: People fail. And then the competent people take over the assets from the failed people, and then you start again with a new stronger base. What we're doing this time is ... taking the assets from the competent people, giving them to the incompetent people, and saying, "OK, now you can compete with the competent people." So everybody's weakened: The whole nation is weakened, the whole economy is weakened. That's not the way it's supposed to work.
Jim Rogers
Quoted by John Stossel
Ignorance Reigns Supreme
Walter Williams
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/12/03/ignorance_reigns_supreme
Indeed, jealousy is the great unacknowledged strategic factor of our time.
Ralph Peters
Devils in Mumbai
The new Detroit, churning out Schumermobiles, will make the steel mills of the Soviet Union look the model of efficiency.
Charles Krauthammer
RCP my punctuation, brought to my attention by Steve Wolfer
We have gone from a market economy to a political economy
Irwin Stelzer
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/11/the_washington_stock_market.html
There is only one genuine protection for the public: the discipline of profit and loss. Nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of bankruptcy.
John Stossel
http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/081128-stossel-reregulation.php
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
Pablo Picasso
They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq .... Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore.
Bent Nail
Comment by a Marketwatch reader
A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, He has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
All Things Considered
It is still hard to believe but, if Hillary Clinton's "confidantes" are to be trusted, Barack Obama is about to appoint her secretary of state and she is about to accept. This appointment represents the capstone of betrayal of Obama's promise to be the "change we can believe in." ...Apart from the breathtaking cynicism of the appointment lies the total lack of foreign-policy experience in the new partnership. Neither Clinton nor Obama has spent five minutes conducting any aspect of foreign policy in the past. Neither has ever negotiated anything or dealt with diplomatic issues. It is the blonde leading the blind.
Dick Morris
"Obama Nation" (Emphasis Added)
THIEVES respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fullness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people's.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Man who was Thursday
Don't worry, I don't have low self-esteem. It's a mistake. I have low esteem for everyone else.
Daria Morgendorffer
Esteemsters, the first episode of the MTV animated series Daria, 1997
EVERYTHING is military in the sense that everything depends upon obedience. There is no perfectly epicurean corner; there is no perfectly irresponsible place. Everywhere men have made the way for us with sweat and submission. We may fling ourselves into a hammock in a fit of divine carelessness. But we are glad that the net-maker did not make the net in a fit of divine carelessness. We may jump upon a child's rocking-horse for a joke. But we are glad that the carpenter did not leave the legs of it unglued for a joke.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Heretics
A power of the individuals who compose legislatures, to fish up wealth from the People, by nets of their own weaving ... will corrupt legislative, executive, and judicial public servants.
John Adams
http://www.nhreagannetwork.com/
...we've become a nation of thieves...
Walter Williams
http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/wwilliams/2008/wew_11191.shtml#
Fortune favors the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/louispaste159478.html
Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?
Henry II
Wikipedia
We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.
Barack H. Obama
http://rebirthofreason.com/Spirit/Videos/109.shtml
So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, its that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.
Barack H. Obama
http://www.obama2008.eu/
The anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany was the first public anti-smoking campaign in modern history.
Wikipedia (Anonymous Editor)
Wikipedia portal headline, Featured Article, 11/13/2008
That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist.
Paul Broun, Rep (R)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CONGRESSMAN_OBAMA_MARXIST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-11-10-18-38-54
It is not the abundance of money but the abundance of other products in general that facilitates sales... Money performs no more than the role of a conduit in this double exchange. When the exchanges have been completed, it will be found that one has paid for products with products.
Jean-Baptiste Say
Wikipedia on Say's Law
Good evening, ladies and gentleman. Welcome to the show. In the interest of safety, please take a moment to identify the nearest marked exit. But in case of an actual emergency, please remain setaed and await the Federal Bailout.
George Will
loosely, quoting from the show "Irony Abounds"
Convincing yourself doesn't win an argument.
Robert Half
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