How An Objectivist Sees the World Today

President Obama made a major mistake today in declaring that he's going to eliminate production of the F 22 Fighter Plane. They say the whole project only costs 1.2 Billion dollars and in today's multi-trillion dollar economy, this is peanuts. But losing the project will cost a lot of jobs. If this is what President Obama is referring to in saying he'll "find the money to make up the deficet somewhere" he's really blowing smoke. The elimination of this defense project may be penny-wise but pound foolish. Some people have talked about how "We should pay ten dollars a gallon for gasoline or pay a whole lot more for coal in order to reflect the true costs of these things to society in terms of wars fought and health costs." This is a variation of the saying "If I just had some bread I could make myself a ham sandwich, if I had some ham". Shelling out more in energy sirtaxes isn't going to cut any of thse other mythical costs that Thom Hartman is afraid of. Some would point to Europe as a place of a higher standard of living. About twenty years ago I watched a VHS tape of a movie called "The Tennant". This was a movie about an American living in France, and the thing that stuck out to me was in his apartment there was no bathroom. All the apartments on that floor shared a comon bathroom and it would be comon for guests invited over to his place to take a whiz in the sink when they needed to relieve themselves. This is not how Americans in the 21st. Century should live. It's certainly nothing to strive floor not to mention all the other hidious noises the plumbing made. When our family moved to a house in Anaheim many long years ago one thing that struck me is that it was a smaller back yard than I was used to. The houses around us were so close they appeared to be learing at us. You could look right accross and see the other people in their kitchen. Finally we agreed with our back neighbors to put up another tier of the fence, which solved the problem. But now you see luxury places way way out in south Orange County and they have back yards much smaller. In some cases you get little more than an alley way for a back yard, and you're lucky to get a barbecue in there. It is just not realistic to think that America is going to turn into another Europe. We aren't wired that way. One caller said "If European standards are so high how come people there fear to have children because having them is so expensive?" That's a good question. Thom Hartman says "Well, we shouldn't be having so many children anyhow". Some people say "We will never have ecological coal". Is that like dehydrated water or something? "Here's some phosephates and mineral salts and iron oxides- - and lets not forget the key ingrediant- - a jigger of chlorox". We Americans have never been defeatests. We'll figure out this problem just like we've figured out every other energy problem like the shortage of of whale blubber in the 18580s that people use for oil lamps, ect. It's government's job to encourage change and innovation, not to mandate it. There is something still to be said about the marvelous appropriation properties of market forces. In many ways President Obama is just like any other chief executive we've had. He "reviews the troops in battle" in Iraq just as any other preceding President would. People in Europe just don't like Americans and it has little to do with who is in power. People in that part of the world don't bathe regularly but I don't think we're going to emulate that. People in China used to be known for riding bicycles to work but no more. They have some new weird car on the Today show everyone wants us to start buying for its "economy", but we don't. Some people want to mandate home gardens in your front yard. Johnny Wendel once decried "grass" as a status of the priveledged money genery. I say "Praise the Lord, we're all rich!" He thinks we all should return to being farmers But a lot of city councils don't look too kindly on that. You can't even paint your house the color you want let alone start growing crops, assuming you even have any land to work with because the powers that be are already trying to cram us all closser and closser together. When I was a kid I took literally the expression 'New Frontiers" meaning that our next Manifest Destiny was to colonize space.

Thom Hartman had a guest or two on his show today who was really full of it. Most people believe, if you're a real red blooded American, that we are in fact becoming not only a wealthier people in the overall scheme of things and that growth is inevitable, but also that we are gradually becomming a more moral and just people. After all, we elected a Black President, didn't we? Some others see such things as technological and ethical growth as inevitably a cyclical thing. I would suppose such people believe in Astrology. The Hindus see the world in terms of 26,000 year cycles where the Universe breathes out and expands and then inevitably will contract and we will finally go back to one little nub and then The Big Bang will start all over again. This 26,000 figure is the same figure as the complete cycle of the precession of the equinoxes. Babylonians used to worship the bull god Maricoch, because Taurus the Bull was the constelation the sun used to be in on the first day of spring. In the book "Visions", which I've referred to before they map out all of the break-throughs we'll be making in the next century. To people who say "The 20th. Century was a bloody century" then I say, "We aren't in the Twentieth Century any more, so get with the program". One thing I would loathe if I were a classic conservative, and that would be newspapers. Ghandi put the acts of British troops in India on trial, and the world became enlightened. Newspapers helped fuel the civil rights struggle in this country. And that teenage girl who was lashed in Pakistan now has those acts shown over the world's media putting the Talliban to shame. That there are no protests in the Islamic world that aren't orchestrated by the government- - this is a good thing.

According to a book on Cults that I own, there are four basic types of people. There are Thinkers, and Doers, and Feelers, and Believers. I consider myself a thinker but I believe that right actions naturally proceed from right thought. Thom Hartman is a feeler. He will appeal to people's emotions when he lays down his ideal vision of "The Way Things Ought To Be". I call myself an Objectivist rather than a Realist, because that polarity exists between a "Realist" and an "Idealist". Both terms have become tainted- - particularly realism. When carried to it's logical extream realism jetizens all moral precepts in the name of pragmetism. Such a person might sell out his own grandmother. Edger G. Robinson might be considered a "Realists" in his role in "The Ten Commandments". He knows freedom is a lost cause so "makes the best of it". The other extreme however, I also shun. Those people who are "Believers" believe what they do in the face of any and all rational argument, and pride themselves on their intransigence in the light of superior reasoning minds. These people, and Born Again Christians are among them, have the addage, "If it isn't Perfect it isn't God's will because God only does things which are Perfect. If there are any flaws, I don't want it". These people, in other words, make the Good the enemy of the perfect. This is a position you won't hear me espousing. I believe we should always fight for the Good. The people of Jesus's day who lived in Palistine were by and large - Good People - but Jesus didn't fight for them. Just as I believe today the vast majority of Americns are Good - -and were I president I would fight in their interests. Some may say to me "But don't you believe Liberal Christianity is better than Conservative Christianity?" Don't be shocked by my response but the answer is a resounding NO ! I've seen the sort of mealy- mouth fuzzy-minded things liberals write. Conservatives as a lot are far more lucid and rational. The reason why I was a Christian was I read "Evidence that demands a verdict" and at the time I believed in it. I believed Christianity was REAL. I believed in its Reality above it's "Mysticism", that is so touted by Thom Hartman. I never even read the authors he talks about. I'm a real Archie Bunker on the subject. I believe if I've never heard of it then there must be something wrong with you rather than me. (OK I'm being cheeky now) But you get the point. The thing that bothers me about Jesus of KFI is less his fundamentalist moralit beliefs- - his proclivity to strain out gnats and swallow cammels. But my biggest offence taken at Jesus is his notion that you just have to Believe because in the end there really is nothing else. Jesus Christ and Thom Hartman are a lot closser, I suspect, in this sense than either would like to admit. I have never been big on "Tripping out" on Religion. Chuck Smith says he's never met a man who read the Bible and was fit to morally judge it. OK. Well that mechanic with the device that boosts your gas milage from fifty to a hundred percent- - he apparently never had a dissatisfied customer. If you're a Believer it's almost a psychological impossability for object evidence to ever be presented that you are wrong, but instead you have to turn and go into attack mode and throw invectives at them.

I wrote another paragraph on the theory of relativity but I'm going to spare you that one because it dawned on me that before I reach any of the conclusions reached in that paragraph I first have to answer four questions, that I am unable to answer. How about you? The first is "If two rocket ships are approaching each other and one is going 2/3 the speed of light relative to the other's measurements. Now here's a question. Where is "zero movement"? Where is the absolute stationary point? The question becomes relavent A. because - -if the speed of light is Absolute- - the question is "Absolute as measured from what stationary point? The next question to ask is "Assuming both are traveling the same speed tword some stationary point- - and therefore Time is being slowed down equally in both ships- - -if this is so can they see each other as BOTH "going slower". In other words "Comparrison" gets chucked out the window because BOTH are slowed down? If neither sees the other as slower and each sees the other as streeking 2/3 the speed of light tword them, how can this be? Now consider another point. According to Einsteins writings elsewhere, there IS no point in the Universe that can truely be called "Stationary". So either ship should be able to claim that IT is stationary. And whether the other one has dialated time and distance is dependant on a fact Einstein himself called "Irrelivent". OK another question. We said the Hindus saw the Universe as expanding and that at some point it would contract again. It used to be that scientists said there was "Just enough momentum to keep the expansion going on forever". Today they are saying differently. "Not only is there never ending expansion but the RATE of Expansion is Accelerating! In fact they say portions of the Universe are Already expanding FASTER than the Speed of Light. They say this is possible because Space ITSELF is Expanding. This to me suggest space is not empty but filled with some substance- - dare we say Ether? Back to the Past! Finally I have one more question. According to the Wickipedia the ratio between normal time-space and distorted time-space is the ratio of (12/13) divided by 4/3. In other words there is just over a one-third "Time-warp factor" for you StarTrek fans. You're about in Time-warp 1.35 or so. Here is my point. (Yeah, I'm "setting you up for the kill) If the ammount Mercury's light bent by the son a 1.3 warp factor, or less. That is- - is light from Mercury warped more - - or less- - than a 1.35 factor. If you say "Less, much less" this raises a pet issue of mine I've talked about before. And that if (quoting Einstein again) "gravity and speed acceleration have identical effects". If it is accelerat-ING matter that causes "warp" effects, then what of material in a total state of inertia just drifting in space? Mightn't such an object have no "Time-warp effects" at all? To put in simpler terms- - is it Moving Things that cause time-space warp or is it Accelerating Things? These are Just QUESTIONS. I'm not proposing any answers. I'm just saying in order to go one step further with any of this stuff you FIRST have to answer these axiomatic questions.