[NMC EXP]

When we say that we hold individual rights to be inalienable, we must mean just that. Inalienable means that which we may not take away, suspend, infringe, restrict or violate-not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever.

Time for honest self appraisal folks...are you an Individualist or are you a Collectivist?

[Misterioso]

Let the kvetching begin.

[frankiep]

The Constitution of the United States of America is not a document that limits the rights of man but a document that limits the power of society over man.

This statement needs to to be taught to every single American citizen. I would change it slighty though. The Constitution does not say what you can do, it says what the government cannot do.

[true_blue_texican]

a Randi ping for later

[The Mayor]

Collectivism holds that man has no rights; that his work, his body and his personality belong to the group; that the group can do with him as it pleases, in any manner it pleases, for the sake of whatever it decides to be its own welfare. Therefore, each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group.

This sounds just like the political parties, especially in New York. Thank you but I will be an individual.

[MamaTexan]

Of the Simplicity of Criminal Laws in different Governments
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments:
in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS Book VI By Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu

[-YYZ-]

Good read. But it raises an obvious question: What is the source of these "inalienable rights"? Why is it "wrong" for one man to enslave another? Or kill him? Or take his belongings? Rand was an atheist, was she not? So they don't originate from God in her worldview (or mine, FWIW). History would suggest suggest that such a concept of individualism is not the natural order, most of it having consisted of assorted monarchies, serfdoms, dictatorships, etc. In fact, has any nation ever existed where these ideas were fully realized? Is such a state always doomed to fall over into one sort of collectivism or another? Am I just a terminal pessimist? ;)

[Dumb_Ox]

Why we're letting a traumatized refugee from Communist Russia tell us what America is all about, I don't know.

Barry Shain's The Myth of American Individualism is a good historical debunking of Randian wishful thinking. Most of her thought is refuted by experience, wisdom, and humility.

[JasonC]

"All you will agree on is the slaughter. And that is all you will achieve."

It is a good line. Sometimes oversimplification is useful.

[ßuddaßudd]

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