I know you posted this two years ago, but I hope you'll reply:
Though I have met some "minarchists" who I found quite sexy and interesting to talk to (neither of which perceptions being mutually exclusive) I'm a socialist (for the time being), so I can't answer for your intended audience (sorry).
I was wondering if you intended these nicely-worded and concise questions to be "gotcha"-type questions, or sincere inquiry to their though processes?
When it all comes "down to it" (whatever "it" might be), I think we should all agree with Rand that reason should trump ideology. She believed herself nearly infalible in terms of her ability to reason, though her background would indicate she was most likely influenced in her philosophy by emotional trauma from the suffering she and her family encountered in the brutal Soviet regime.
For me, the world is a place in which billions of nearly identical, reasonably intelligent beings of tremendous potential (both as individuals and as a species) share a small, resource-finite planet. So that we can reach our individual potential as well as our potential as a species, we should attempt to settle on a system of economics and government that allows for the maximum amount of individual freedom while preserving, especially for those who are not as reasonably intelligent as some, the right to their own means of survival and happiness, despite the attempts by those whose greed has run amok to own EVEREYTHING and thus become what they typically claim to be their own worst nightmare, an undisputed state (in the form of an emperor) who owns every molecule on Earth, including our food and DNA. Unrestricted capitalism is WORSE than total communism because under communism (in theory) we at least all have a vote. I cannot advocate capitalism precisely because it allows the potential for all power and authority to be ceded to a person who acquires that power only for their own purposes, and not for the good of humankind. I cannot advocate communism precisely because it does intentionally limit individual freedom from day one, making all impetus for action the well-being of the state. A socialist, democratic welfare state that affords everyone what they NEED (access to food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and education) and requires only that they demonstrate an effort to contribute to the well-being of society in some reasonable fashion, ACCORDING TO THEIR ABILITY only limits the freedom of a small number of people who want to rule over us like cattle, which is likely to happen soon if current trends continue.
Our current puppet-show political theater over the debt ceiling is an example of how extremely wealthy people are playing with us like toys. Enough statements have been made by Republican politicians and super-rich oligarchs in the U.S. to indict them for treson, but this will never happen. Several leading senators and members of congress on the right have proclaimed their sole intention in government at this time to be assuring that Obama is a "one-term president". They have done everything but call for an assassin to rush the job ( in a few instances "in jest" they have come close to that as well). Obama, for his part, has done little but capitulate and cow-tow to everything the Republicans have demanded, and even a few things they have not. He calls this "compromise", but since it has occurred prior to any official negotiations many times, it is not compromise, it is surrender.
All of our politicians are owned by corporate and monied interests. The inbred, Budweiser-swilling NASCAR footsoldier fanatics of the "Tea Party" (ironically named, since few of them have any knowledge, understanding, or appreciation for history) are only too ready to affix themselves to the yoke of their corporate masters, long ago having merged the symbol of America (the Stars and Stripes) in their minds with the corporate logos of Pepsi and Coke, Kellogs and Post, Disney and Hanna-Babera. They think freedom is the material success that the wartime expansion of WWII and American corporate expansion during the marshall Plan brought us. They have no idea what real sacrifice is. They have no understanding of what this nation was founded for. They will learn, however, when the last of the megacorporations gobbles up its last victim and the whole world is run by the board of directors, unelected, elitist, wealthy pigs, who will remind us all of why we supposedly got rid of monarchs in 1776. Conservatives have mutated into some kind of reptilian-brained devolution that believes that greed for endles cash flow is the noblest virtue, justifying any form of debauchery and excess, excusing even mass murder and child slavery.
The most absurd and obscene thing about he current crop of pseudo-conservatives is how many of them still claim to be Christian, yet in the same breath claim to be Objectivists, even though Ayn Rand would vomit if she thought Christians would claim philosophical kinship with her because she knew what Christianity was. It ain't got nothin' to do with conservatives these days.
Love is like breathing. You have to take some in and let it out to live.
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