Welcome, "Rational" Nation!

If you've been reading our comment section, you've probably noticed that we have a new troll hanging around: the ironically-named Rational Nation. And I think we should all welcome new readers, even dissenting voices who might not have a particularly firm grasp on reality - maybe a dose of logic and kindness could bring him into the light. (Not likely, but, you now, keep a good thought...)

But anyone who knows me (a statistically insignificant number of people) will tell you that I'll give anybody a chance to make ignorant statements, if only because I'm more than happy to find new targets to point and laugh at.

After all, as I pointed out before:

You're just like all the other Birchers loving on Ron Paul. You're always out there looking for somebody to hate - the next Great Satan. Because if you can focus everybody's eyes on the bad guy over there, you can rob them blind over here.

Communists, Muslims - you don't care. And you don't mind if great evil is committed in the name of Good - as long as it matches your personal definition of "good," anyway.

It's actually sad, watching petty, insecure people make claim to a knowledge of "the Big Picture." You pretend to be rational and logical, but ignore truths when they're right in front of you.

Here, for example, you even used this link to bolster your claim that "6% of Muslims are extremist," while ignoring one important fact: you got it completely ass-backwards.

The statistic cited there only said that 6% of extremists are Muslim. The other 94% aren't, and the threat of Muslim terrorists is being overblown.

Go read it again. You were faced with the truth, and you either ignored it, lied about it, or just got it completely wrong. Just like you do with almost every other subject.

Like I said, your name must be meant ironically, right?

And of course, RatNat is a devout worshiper at the altar of Ayn Rand, who was a stunningly bad writer. I think Gore Vidal said it best, though.

This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self interest, and to pull it off she must at times indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the ‘freedom is slavery’ sort. What interests me most about her is not the absurdity of her ‘philosophy,’ but the size of her audience (in my campaign for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked about). She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the ‘welfare’ state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you’re dumb or incompetent that’s your lookout.
[...]
Though Miss Rand’s grasp of logic is uncertain, she does realize that to make even a modicum of sense she must change all the terms. Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life a right action is consideration for the welfare of others. In the one case, through a state which was to wither away, in the other through the private exercise of the moral sense. Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all.

Ayn Rand’s "philosophy" is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous...

So, you're welcome to hang out, just don't muck up the carpet.

Fantasy Islands

There have been a number of great social experiments since the founding of the United States of America as a secular republic whose legitimacy arose from the consent of the governed rather than the approval of some leader presuming to speak for God. It's too soon to know if it's been entirely successful.

If the Ayn Rand style social experiment envisioned by young venture capitalist Peter Thiel ever gets off the ground, or more accurately if it floats, since it's to be conducted on an artificial island, we may get a more definitive answer in a much shorter period of time, or so I suspect. Thiel, the fellow who helped found Paypal and Facebook, would like to construct a series of floating city-states in the Pacific where the 'principles' of Ms. Rand would be tested. They would somehow be established along "strict libertarian lines with a minimalist government free from the regulation, laws, and moral suasion of any landlocked country" says Details Magazine.

How a technology-intensive creation such as a floating city could be built without rules puzzles me since the builders and owners would in essence be the government and a government responsible only to its investors like Thiel and Patri Friedman, ultra-Libertarian grandson of economist Milton Friedman and the brains behind the idea. What sounds Libertarian on the drawing board may be corporatocracy at sea -- or perhaps just a bunch of little boys whose adulthood has been stunted by their massive wealth, playing Peter Pan. I have to wonder which one is Wendy.

And of course, the islanders wouldn't be randomly selected from the teeming masses real America is composed of, if I'm guessing correctly, so perhaps the Island of Randtopian Objectivist Dreams wouldn't have to deal with the real world's most intractable problems nor would any lessons learned about the value of living without the burden of altruistic responsibility be worth the effort. Think of a Petri dish with a Plague bacteria culture. One might never know the dangers it presents since the vectors that spread it aren't present as it sits there peacefully digesting its agar.

Our country has long been home to many social experiments, some of which have withered away either by banning reproduction or lack of further interest by the participants. Some have gradually turned from the founding principles and melted into the larger American pot. Some are alive and growing, even if slowly changing. But a few thousand rich and aggressive millionaires on an oil rig without "government intrusion" forcing them to treat others in the way they'd like to be treated might be an interesting experiment, but what would the results actually mean in terms of conducting that kind of experiment outside the Petri dish: in a nation of 300,000,000 rich, poor, healthy, sick, young, old smart, stupid, people with varying degrees of neurosis? Would the experiment mean anything at all if everyone there were so wealthy that the normal concerns and normal needs of normal people never manifest themselves?

Beats me, but this is an experiment proposed by young billionaires full of enthusiasm and self-esteem or should I say, overweening egotism. The real problems of real life are far away from their experience and all too easy to associate with other people and dismiss as the "bad choices" lesser people make. Far too easy to move away from to a fantasy island where disease, suffering, old age and bad luck fear to tread and the good times always roll like those long Pacific swells.