[sitetest]

Dear Anamensis,

How do you judge. Is the criterion sort of a mutualized Golden Rule?

sitetest

[Anamensis]

No, I wouldn't use that as my guide. If you really want to know, I think Ayn Rand said it best, and she said it in quite a few different ways and formats. I can try to synopsize but I'm not so hardcore Objectivist that I can rattle the stuff off as if it were my liturgy.

We start with the rights that a man needs in order to live a full life. We would start, then, with the right to live for oneself, to seek what pleasures or profits we want without physically harming or threatening others. When I say "right" of course I mean that no government should make a law infringing upon this, and a man should be allowed to protect himself against individuals or gangs attempting to infringe upon this. Rights are something that only other humans can understand or respect, so we don't say we have the "right to live" because we don't have the right not to be hit by lightening, eaten up by cancer, or attacked by lions. I'll stop here to see if there's anything I've said so far that you want to take up.