My latest in PJ Media:
After coming under withering criticism from their far-left, open-borders base, Old Joe Biden’s handlers announced Friday that next month, they will increase the number of “refugees” that the United States will take in. Some of that criticism came from the Catholic Church, of which Old Joe claims to be a devout adherent, and which has a vested interest in making sure the “refugee” flow stays high.
Just before Biden’s handlers announced that the refugee cap would be increased, Bishop Mario Dorsonville, head of the U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, complained: “The number of refugees who will be welcomed this year is far short of what we can do as a country and is not an adequate response to the immense resettlement need.”
The bishops harshly criticized Donald Trump for reducing the number of “refugees” who were admitted to the U.S. After all, it’s a Christian duty to welcome the stranger, and for the bishops, that means that the United States has a moral obligation to admit any and all people who want to come, regardless of any risk that may be involved.
Business Insider, however, revealed that the bishops’ interest in this may not be entirely moral and principled when it pointed out that “the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services is one of nine nonprofit organizations that partner with the US government to meet the needs of refugees who arrive in the country. Those seeking protection from war and repression deserve compassion and assistance, it teaches, citing the ‘mercy of Christ, who himself was a [sic] immigrant and child of refugees.’”
It is highly profitable to partner with the U.S. government. Behind their high-minded rhetoric, the U.S. Catholic bishops have 534 million reasons to call for more “refugees” and disregard the safety and security of the American people. LifeSite News reported in 2017: “In the Fiscal Year 2016, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) received more than $91 million in government funding for refugee resettlement.” The USCCB received $79,590,512 in 2014 for the same purpose. LifeSite News concludes: “Over the past nine years, the USCCB has received a total of $534,788,660 in taxpayer dollars for refugee resettlement programs.”
There is more. Read the rest here.
mike says
this Bishops need new blood
Infidel says
But they won’t get it from muslims the way they might from Hispanics. What do they think – that muslims will convert? It’ll be a snowball’s chance in hellfire
Rob Porter says
mike – new blood won’t help unless it has brains, morals and the not so common sense. Increasingly the R.C. Church has little do with Christianity. Talk about stupid!
Fred Kafer says
What a gobble-d-gook reply! Rob Porter is correct!
Brenrod says
All that massive increase in collection plate from Latin American Catholics. We pay taxes to increase their business profits.
Wellington says
Didn’t used to be, but I have now become rather sick of the Roman Catholic Church. True faith my ass.
revereridesagain says
As Robert points out, the Catholic Church has been making a bundle off the “refugee resettlement” scam for decades. I’m from Boston and the Church does not exactly have a sterling reputation around here since they caught over 80 priests using little boys as sex toys. Never mind “what we can do as a country”, it’s what the Church can do for its coffers that’s important to them.
THX 1138 says
“It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.” – Ayn Rand
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
Agree.
That being said, there’s still a lot of wonderful local Catholic parish priests.
But as soon as you move up the RCC hierarchy, the rot begins – and gets worse and worse the further up you go…
Clifford Fodor says
Until you get to the pope.
Eleanor says
The Churches are becoming very Woke, Wellington – especially the RC and now the CofE seems to be following suit.
Infidel says
So in other words, the main Catholic and Protestant churches. Dunno about Lutheran in Germany and Nordic countries. That leaves the Eastern Orthodox church, and the largest one – the Russian – sees the Protestant and Catholic churches preying on their turf
So which Christian denominations, as a whole, recognize the slandering that islam does of Christianity in general?
somehistory says
biden is Catholic. Some have noted that he is a poor example, or his **faith** is not real, and he’s in danger of being scolded, or something.
The “biships” seem to be on the same page with this creep and fake Christian. I made a typo…but as I agree with Christ, I’m leaving it, as I don’t believe men should be called “bishops.” (Matthew 23:8)
He’s allowing as many in as possible, all who appear at the border…but that isn’t fast enough for these members of the clergy.
Not a Christian among them.
Mauricio says
The word “bishop” comes from the greek “episkopos”, which is mentioned seven times in the New Testament. It’s not exactly the same as “Rabbi” or “master”, but means “guardian” or “overseer” (exactly the opposite of what this popeists are doing). https://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/kjv/episkopos.html
somehistory says
i know. But, I believe the words Jesus said about “all of you are brothers,” still applies. No one is above another or better than another.
Same goes for “Father” and “Reverend.” Jesus’ words are important to remember. We have One Father and One Master, One Teacher.
Men and women don’t need special titles to set them apart if they have the right attitude.
gravenimage says
U.S. Catholic Bishops Urge Biden’s Handlers to Bring In More ‘Refugees’
……………………
And how many of them will be ravening Muslims? Utter insanity.
THX 1138 says
“There is another consideration that the bishops are ignoring as well. What about one’s obligations to one’s own community, to try to preserve their freedom and the stability of one’s society? Could “refugee” intake be limited on that basis? That would be selfish, Mario Dorsonville would likely say.”
The operative word is “selfish”.
Altruism and sacrifice or selfishness and self-preservation, pick one or the other, they are antithetical, you can’t have both.
“It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master….
America’s inner contradiction was the altruist-collectivist ethics. Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism and with individual rights. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal….
From her start, America was torn by the clash of her political system with the altruist morality. Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, justice, progress and man’s happiness on earth—or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, brute force, stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces.” – Ayn Rand
Wellington says
“Capitalism and altruism are incompatible…..”
I think Ayn Rand was wrong here. Just as democracy must be infused with a proper moral ethic or it becomes a sham version of itself, so is it the case with capitalism. One can be a successful businessman and also do many good deeds.
While I look favorably upon a significant amount of what Rand averred, she did tend to an elitism which disallowed her to see the efficacy of Jeffersonian liberalism. Well, can’t get everything correct.
THX 1138 says
“No mind is better than the precision of its concepts.” – Ayn Rand
Wellington, you seriously underestimate and profoundly misunderstand Ayn Rand. Her moral code of “Rational Selfishness” is historical, revolutionary, and requires and involves a paradigm-shift. When Ayn Rand speaks of altruism she is using the concept in its precise definition and meaning as defined and formulated by its originator the Kantian philosopher Auguste Comte. When Ayn Rand uses the concept of “selfishness” she is using the concept with the OBJECTIVE and RATIONAL definition and formulation she originated.
“Just as democracy must be infused with a proper moral ethic…”, exactly true Wellington, but altruism is not a proper moral ethic, it is an EVIL ethic which leads to collectivism, socialism, and totalitarianism. Secondly, the USA is not supposed to be a democracy, but a Constitutional Republic. Democracy (majority rule) and capitalism and the Rights of Man are incompatible and antithetical.
“The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind….
To redeem both man and morality, it is the concept of “selfishness” that one has to redeem….
Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egoist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self….
The moral purpose of a man’s life is the achievement of his own happiness. This does not mean that he is indifferent to all men, that human life is of no value to him and that he has no reason to help others in an emergency. But it does mean that he does not subordinate his life to the welfare of others, that he does not sacrifice himself to their needs, that the relief of their suffering is not his primary concern, that any help he gives is an exception, not a rule, an act of generosity, not of moral duty, that it is marginal and incidental—as disasters are marginal and incidental in the course of human existence—and that values, not disasters, are the goal, the first concern and the motive power of his life.” – Ayn Rand
“Is Altruism Really a Virtue?” – Gary Galles
https://mises.org/wire/altruism-really-virtue
Wellington says
THX 1138:
Thanks for your reply. I don’t misunderstand Ayn Rand, rather I disagree with her. I reject her definitions of selfishness and altruism at least to some extent. Oh, she argues her points well but that doesn’t mean she’s correct.
As for America, it is both a democracy and a republic. Amazing to me how many people get this wrong. It is a democratic republic, though it is a representative democracy and not a pure democracy like that of ancient Athens.
I do agree that a person should not subordinate their own life to others. This is going too far except in exigent circumstances, for instance in war where the action of a self-sacrificing hero may save countless lives.
Ayn Rand so very often saw matters in black and white terms when she should have realized that often times in life we function in shades of grey. I respect her but it doesn’t add up to my always agreeing with her.
THX 1138 says
Objectively and rationally speaking charity is at best a minor virtue to the major moral virtue of production. And when practiced irrationally charity can become a reprehensible, destructive, evil.
Why is charity at best a minor virtue? Because charity depends on the major virtue of PRODUCTIVITY. If a man does not produce enough bread for his own survival he cannot have enough extra bread to give someone else. Charity is completely dependent upon the great moral virtue which is the production of wealth, i.e., capitalism.
Charity is not intrinsically good, it can be irrational, thoughtless, selfless, and therefore immoral. For example, Chance the Rapper donated $1 million to the Chicago Public School System “Sewer” a few years ago. $1 million dollars down the drain of a corrupt bureaucracy, into the pockets of thieves. But Chance, like almost everyone, thinks that helping others is ipso facto, always an intrinsic virtue, it is NOT. Throwing money at problems is destructive and even evil. Giving money to an alcoholic or a drug addict is charity, but are you actually being kind and caring?
“There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into one “package-deal”: (1) What are values? (2) Who should be the beneficiary of values? Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral guidance.
Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value—and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.” – Ayn Rand
THX 1138 says
“Mother Teresa didn’t produce much of anything. She just allows some of us to feel better about ourselves for applauding her. If we’re honest about it, her works spread guilt, not inspiration. Life is about more than the reduction of suffering and pain. It’s about growth, achievement and soaring to ever-new heights. That’s not Mother Teresa’s world. Yet it’s the world she and others like her count on to do what they do.
“My idea of a saint? Someone who produces. Producers don’t do what they do for our sake; they do it for themselves, for their own profit, and out of their own desire to be productive. And that’s just fine with me.
The world desperately needs more producers. Charity is perfectly fine. But don’t kid yourself that charity lifts millions out of poverty and disease. Only economic progress does that. And progress arises not from a Mother Teresa-like compulsion to sacrifice. It arises from the best within us: Our desire to live for our own sakes, most of all.” – Michael J Hurd
“Thank God We’re Not All Mother Teresa” – Micahel J. Hurd
https://drhurd.com/2016/09/05/thank-god-were-not-all-mother-teresa/
Wellington says
I can go along with production being more important than charity. No problem with that.
As for Mother Teresa, in a way she produced. She produced through her networks medicines, hospitals, schools, clothing, blankets, food, etc. to those so miserably off that they could have never provided such things for themselves. Here I see production and charity intermingled though more important would be doing all one can to raise a very poor person out of poverty completely, which in and of itself would be a very productive thing. Imagine making a horribly poor, uneducated person into a self-sufficient, educated and productive human being. What would Ayn Rand have said about this? Would this not be what could be called enlightened altruism?
Shades of grey again, THX 1138. And what is the alternative to what Mother Teresa did, just letting the miserably poor continue to suffer unbearably? What was Ayn Rand’s solution to the Untouchable class in India?
James Lincoln says
THX 1138,
The world needs both: the Mother Teresa types – as well as the producers of goods and services.
I don’t see it as an “either-or”…
truthout says
May I interject .There is a theory that is provable. Its better known as selfish altruism.
In essence, by looking out for yourself ,you end up helping others ,whether you choose to or even know it .Good example .You are very frugal and don’t waste electricity .You save on your own bills with the side effect of taking some of the unnecessary pressure off the grid If everyone does this which is beneficial to the individual it becomes very beneficial to others
THX 1138 says
To “truthout says”,
“May I interject .There is a theory that is provable. Its better known as selfish altruism.”
“Selfish altruism” is John Stuart Mills’ “Utilitarianism”. Utilitarianism is a contradiction in terms, it collapses into socialism.
“A weary agnostic on most of the fundamental issues of philosophy, Mill bases his defense of capitalism on the ethics of Utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism is a union of hedonism and Christianity. The first teaches man to love pleasure; the second, to love his neighbor. The union consists in teaching man to love his neighbor’s pleasure. To be exact, the Utilitarians teach that an action is moral if its result is to maximize pleasure among men in general. This theory holds that man’s duty is to serve—according to a purely quantitative standard of value. He is to serve not the well-being of the nation or of the economic class, but “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” regardless of who comprise it in any given issue. As to one’s own happiness, says Mill, the individual must be “disinterested” and “strictly impartial”; he must remember that he is only one unit out of the dozens, or millions, of men affected by his actions. “All honor to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life,” says Mill, “when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world . . . .”
Capitalism, Mill acknowledges, is not based on any desire for abnegation or renunciation; it is based on the desire for selfish profit. Nevertheless, he says, the capitalist system ensures that, most of the time, the actual result of individual profit-seeking is the happiness of society as a whole. Hence the individual should be left free of government regulation. He should be left free not as an absolute (there are no absolutes, says Mill), but under the present circumstances—not on the ground of inalienable rights (there are no such rights, Mill holds), but of social utility.
Under capitalism, concluded one American economist of the period with evident moral relief, “the Lord maketh the selfishness of man to work for the material welfare of his kind.” As one commentator observes, the essence of this argument is the claim that capitalism is justified by its ability to convert “man’s baseness” to “noble ends.” “Baseness” here means egoism; “nobility” means altruism. And the justification of individual freedom in terms of its contribution to the welfare of society means collectivism.
Mill (along with Smith, Say, and the rest of the classical economists) was trying to defend an individualist system by accepting the fundamental moral ideas of its opponents. It did not take Mill long to grasp this contradiction in some terms and amend his political views accordingly. He ended his life as a self-proclaimed “qualified socialist.” – Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff
“Mill rejected the concept of individual rights and replaced it with the notion that the “public good” is the sole justification of individual freedom. (Society, he argued, has the power to enslave or destroy its exceptional men, but it should permit them to be free, because it benefits from their efforts.) Among the many defaults of the conservatives in the past hundred years, the most shameful one, perhaps, is the fact that they accepted John Stuart Mill as a defender of capitalism….
[Mill’s] On Liberty is the most pernicious piece of collectivism ever adopted by suicidal defenders of liberty.” – Ayn Rand
THX 1138 says
“I reject her definitions of selfishness and altruism at least to some extent. Oh, she argues her points well but that doesn’t mean she’s correct.”
Wellington, Ms. Rand is NOT using her own, arbitrary, definition of altruism, she is using the definition given by its creator Auguste Comte. If you don’t like that definition Ayn Rand is not to blame. The word “altruism” was coined by Comte, and the definition given by Comte, who are you to tell Comte and Rand that’s not what altruism really is?! You’re the one who is arbitrarily redefining altruism to mean what you wish it to mean, in defiance of what Comte explicitly defined it to mean.
Ayn Rand’s definition of “Rational Selfishness” is not subjective, whimsical, or arbitrary, it is OBJECTIVE, it is based on the observation of existence and man’s relation to existence. It is based on the observation of man’s rational nature and the requirements for his survival and prosperity.
Rational selfishness is not about agreeing with Ayn Rand it is about observing reality, the reality of the objective requirements of man’s life. To disagree with the moral code of rational selfishness is to disagree with the reality of the objective, moral, requirements of man’s life; every man’s life.
“for instance in war where the action of a self-sacrificing hero may save countless lives.”
A man’s life is as valuable to him as yours is to you. Or countless others. Those others have no more right ask a man to sacrifice his life for them as he does to ask others to sacrifice their lives for him. Both are different sides of the same vicious moral code of altruism.
“If a man dies fighting for his own freedom [and the freedom of those he loves], it is not a sacrifice: he is not willing to live as a slave [or see his loved ones live as slaves]; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of man who’s willing. If a man refuses to sell his convictions, it is not a sacrifice, unless he is the sort of man who has no convictions….
It is important to differentiate between the rules of conduct in an emergency situation and the rules of conduct in the normal conditions of human existence. This does not mean a double standard of morality: the standard and the basic principles remain the same, but their application to either case requires precise definitions.
An emergency is an unchosen, unexpected event, limited in time, that creates conditions under which human survival is impossible—such as a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a shipwreck. In an emergency situation, men’s primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions (to reach dry land, to put out the fire, etc.).
By “normal” conditions I mean metaphysically normal, normal in the nature of things, and appropriate to human existence. Men can live on land, but not in water or in a raging fire. Since men are not omnipotent, it is metaphysically possible for unforeseeable disasters to strike them, in which case their only task is to return to those conditions under which their lives can continue. By its nature, an emergency situation is temporary; if it were to last, men would perish.
It is only in emergency situations that one should volunteer to help strangers, if it is in one’s power. For instance, a man who values human life and is caught in a shipwreck, should help to save his fellow passengers (though not at the expense of his own life). But this does not mean that after they all reach shore, he should devote his efforts to saving his fellow passengers from poverty, ignorance, neurosis or whatever other troubles they might have. Nor does it mean that he should spend his life sailing the seven seas in search of shipwreck victims to save . . . .
The principle that one should help men in an emergency cannot be extended to regard all human suffering as an emergency and to turn the misfortune of some into a first mortgage on the lives of others.” – Ayn Rand
Wellington says
I have a right, TLX 1138, to assert that Comte’s and Rand’s definition of altruism is somewhat off base even if Comte coined the term.
As for objectivity, I would argue that man is not capable of absolute objectivity in any domain, even science, since “things” change. As an example, Newtonian physics was considered completely objective for years until, as examples, Einstein and the uncertainty principle came along.
And I don’t agree that it is only in emergency situations that one should volunteer to help strangers. Helping an old lady to cross a street is not an emergency situation but it is still the right thing to do. I think I have easily defeated this argument of yours by this example.
I don’t mean to be difficult and I appreciate many of your contentions but I do think you have to be careful that you don’t make a substitute religion out of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, which I largely respect though the Jeffersonian in me does believe she was a bit of a snob. I have more faith in the common man and in common sense than she did.
Keys says
THX and Wellington – thanks for your interesting exchanges on virtue, Ayn Rand, etc.
THX, you say above: “Objectively and rationally speaking charity is at best a minor virtue to the major moral virtue of production.”
So, if production is a virtue, China has really become a virtuous group of people since the Nixon era. Hitler’s Germany ramped up production so he could conquer and control Europe and build the Thousand Year Reich. The slave laborers he used produced much for his Reich, but how can their production be called virtuous ?
I could spend the rest of my life producing paper cranes – that’s not virtuous. I can not accept the idea that a productive man is a virtuous one. He could be, but not necessarily. I do not understand how production is a virtue at all, at least by traditional definitions.
Further, many handicapped people can not be as “productive” as Steven Hawking, and some are not productive at all. Does this mean they can not be virtuous because they are not productive ? Someone like Hitler and Stalin strove to exterminate these non-productive ones.
THX 1138 says
Wellington, you write, “I wonder if there is such a thing as semi-altruism? What about enlightened altruism as in tough love? Certainly some altruistic actions are done with more wisdom and with outcomes that are positive as opposed to ill thought out altruism which results in just more negatives. Shades of grey again I would suggest.
All altruisms are not created equal. How’s that for starters?”
The problem we have here is that you keep insisting that “altruism” is just another word for charity, kindness, generosity, benevolence, tough love, and respect for the rights of others. That’s NOT what altruism means, and in fact and practice altruism makes the former conditions impossible. Men who betray their selfish values cannot love or respect any values including valued persons who are selfishly important to them. Until you take the time and carefully examine, analyze, and understand that altruism is NOT synonymous with charity, kindness, respect, or love there’s no point in any further conversation about altruism versus rational selfishness.
“What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.
Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice—which means; self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction—which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.
Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime. The issue is whether you must keep buying your life, dime by dime, from any beggar who might choose to approach you. The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence. The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: “No.” Altruism says: “Yes.”…
Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one’s selfish interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that he does it as a “sacrifice” for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no difference to him, personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies.
Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to him. In the above example, his wife’s survival is of greater value to the husband than anything else that his money could buy, it is of greatest importance to his own happiness and, therefore, his action is not a sacrifice.
But suppose he let her die in order to spend his money on saving the lives of ten other women, none of whom meant anything to him—as the ethics of altruism would require. That would be a sacrifice. Here the difference between Objectivism and altruism can be seen most clearly: if sacrifice is the moral principle of action, then that husband should sacrifice his wife for the sake of ten other women. What distinguishes the wife from the ten others? Nothing but her value to the husband who has to make the choice—nothing but the fact that his happiness requires her survival.
The Objectivist ethics would tell him: your highest moral purpose is the achievement of your own happiness, your money is yours, use it to save your wife, that is your moral right and your rational, moral choice.” – Ayn Rand
THX 1138 says
To “Keys”,
“Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival.” – Ayn Rand
Production is a major and crucial virtue for man’s survival, happiness, and prosperity. But notice the far higher virtue and concept (reason) in the above quote on which production depends. As crucial as the virtue of production is to man’s survival, it is a derivative, secondary virtue. Production depends on rationality, on reason. For Objectivism RATIONALITY is the highest virtue on which all other virtues depend. Production not founded on reason but on the irrational is no longer production but destruction. You can make a rope to hang yourself with or make the rope for Hitler, Stalin, or China to hang you, but that no longer can be called production but destruction and death.
“Value” is that which one acts to gain and keep, “virtue” is the action by which one gains and keeps it….
Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality—not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.” – Ayn Rand
Can the productivity of slaves in a slave-pen be called virtuous? In one word, NO. Virtue and force are antipodes, morality ends where a gun begins. The Nazis and the communists may pay lip service to production but it is production with the goal of destruction, destruction of the individual and his mind. You cannot divorce the concept of production from its rational roots (what Ayn Rand correctly identified as the “fallacy of the stolen concept”), you cannot rip it out of its moral context, and still call it production. Production with the goal of destruction is destruction. Productiveness depends on reason, reason is an attribute of the mind, the mind is the attribute of the individual, reason, rationality, and production cannot be forced.
What have the slaves of communist China ever produced? Or the slaves of the Soviet Union? All the innovative discoveries, inventions, and technology they have and had were stolen, borrowed, begged, and imported from the free West, the USA most of all. Communist China is a parasite surviving on the innovations of the West, if China succeeds in conquering the West and the USA it destroys the host it survives on.
Economic stagnation, then collapse, and then the anarchy of civil war is what pure totalitarianism leads to. The communist, terrorist gangsters, of China are being saved from their well-deserved fate right now because they are parasitically living off the West and they have loosened their totalitarian stranglehold on their slaves — for now.
You could spend the rest of your life making paper cranes, yes you could, and so could someone who has lost their mind and is endlessly making paper cranes in an insane asylum. Like I said the virtue of production is derived from the higher virtue of reason and the dedication to reason we call rationality.
Non-productive people, handicapped or able bodied, are violating no one’s rights, life, limb, or property by being non-productive. They are not being evil, vicious, or immoral to other human beings simply because they are non-productive. They are simply not being productive by choice or involuntarily. No one has the right to initiate force against any human being for any reason whatsoever, that is the essential, political principle of Objectivism. The non-productive, who are violating no one’s rights, have the right be left in peace to live their lives as they rationally see fit.
“The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man—or group or society or government—has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. The ethical principle involved is simple and clear-cut: it is the difference between murder and self-defense. A holdup man seeks to gain a value, wealth, by killing his victim; the victim does not grow richer by killing a holdup man. The principle is: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force….
Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate—do you hear me? no man may start—the use of physical force against others.
To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival; to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man’s capacity to live.
Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason—as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no “right” to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind.
To force a man to drop his own mind and to accept your will as a substitute, with a gun in place of a syllogism, with terror in place of proof, and death as the final argument—is to attempt to exist in defiance of reality. Reality demands of man that he act for his own rational interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it. Reality threatens man with death if he does not act on his rational judgment; you threaten him with death if he does. You place him in a world where the price of his life is the surrender of all the virtues required by life—and death by a process of gradual destruction is all that you and your system will achieve, when death is made to be the ruling power, the winning argument in a society of men.
Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum: “Your money or your life,” or a politician who confronts a country with the ultimatum: “Your children’s education or your life,” the meaning of that ultimatum is: “Your mind or your life”—and neither is possible to man without the other.”
THX 1138 says
“I have a right, TLX 1138, to assert that Comte’s and Rand’s definition of altruism is somewhat off base even if Comte coined the term.”
If you choose to redefine altruism in defiance of Comte’s definition then you are choosing to be intellectually corrupt. You have the right to choose to re-define Comte’s word to mean what you wish it to mean but the original definition still stands. And it is the moral code itself that matters not the word that symbolizes it.
We can no longer engage in a conversation about altruism versus rational selfishness if you choose to evade and reject Comte’s and Rand’s definitions. If you choose the intellectual corruption of concepts we are essentially speaking different languages and speaking past each other with no hope at arriving at truth. This conversation cannot go on.
Wellington says
Hmmm. We do seem to be at an impasse.
I wonder if there is such a thing as semi-altruism? What about enlightened altruism as in tough love? Certainly some altruistic actions are done with more wisdom and with outcomes that are positive as opposed to ill thought out altruism which results in just more negatives. Shades of grey again I would suggest.
All altruisms are not created equal. How’s that for starters?
THX 1138 says
Wellington, I replied to you above. I’m used to Disqus which is easier for me to figure out how to reply than this system here at “Jihad Watch”.
JOEYN says
Really sad to see that the leadership of the Catholic church in the US supporting the Left’s evil agenda at the expense of the American people, for their own monetary benefit and worse still using scripture passages to justify their actions. Corruption of the highest order. By the way their boss the Pope seems to be no better.
CogitoErgoSum says
I’m wondering how many of these refugees are Catholics. Aren’t the countries of Central and South America over 80% Catholic? Mexico is about 85% Catholic. What are the Mexican Catholics doing to help the strangers in their midst – other then telling them to keep moving north? Do the bishops in Central and South America feel that they have failed these refugees who are leaving their homes to go to the U.S.? What are they doing to feed, house and cloth these people in their own countries so they do not want to leave their homes? Most of all, in what way are they bringing these people to Christ?
tgusa says
The catholic clergy creates refugees even in places where 80 plus percent of the people are catholic.
CogitoErgoSum says
Yes, it just seems very odd to me that these bishops are putting pressure on the government of a country that is not a majority Catholic country to accept Catholics from countries that are overwhelmingly Catholic. What are the bishops of those overwhelmingly Catholic countries doing to encourage the governments of those Catholic countries to treat their people better? Why are these mostly Catholic countries such bad places to live and why do they have such bad governments? The way I see things it reflects badly upon the Catholic Church. A Catholic should be better off in a country that is majority Catholic – but apparently not.
tgusa says
If you were the Pope Catholics would be doing better.
tgusa says
Not being catholic but Christian I have had my fill of the catholic clergy. They really don’t represent Christians. Who do they think they are? Shut up and house them at the Vatican.
gravenimage says
Catholics are indeed Christian. But this kind of insanity puts Christians and all other non-Muslims at risk.
tgusa says
I married a catholic but I told her upfront that I will have nothing to do with it. I guess she loved me more than the catholic clergy.
Viktor Smith (Ex-Christi@n) says
And we were told that ” You cannot serve God and Money”.
Glad that I left this religion.
Andrew Blackadder says
More and more, people are leaving the Church and returning to God… Lenny Bruce…
Infidel says
Decades ago, in school, there was a survey where one of the questions was on religion. The one that cracked me up was the response, ‘I follow my own religion’ ?
Michael Copeland says
Never considered or discussed are Refugee Relief and Refugee Assistance.
This is how refugee concerns were met in the past – help until refugees can return to rebuild their land.
Oh no. The only option on the table now is “Resettlement”. This is a code word for Plantation.
You are a bigot and a racist if you object.
OLD GUY says
Turn the other cheek, and get slapped again. Whats wrong with the Catholic and other churches stepping up and helping these refugees in their own countries? Could it be that it makes them look good to stand in front of the cameras and talk about bringing them here where we the tax payer pays the bill. If these church groups really want to help these people they should do it in the countries they are coming from. But that would mean these do gooders would have to foot the bill.
I’am all for helping people in need. But lets not forget some of these migrants are not coming here because they need help, they come to take advantage of our generosity or they are down right enemies who want to kill American citizens.
DAVID R MORRISON says
I am an islamaphobe ! I do not hate muslems ! I detest those moslims who scrupulously follow the evil koran as their ideoligical book of evil against every non-moslim ! These SOB’s were allies of hitler , and , after WW2 they slunk away like rats , just waiting to arise again ! Read the koran as if you were an open minded child ; then you , too will be as brainwashed as all the other koranic followers ! I weep for all mankind that these demons are able to wander at will , and spread their kind of drivel ! They are against civilization and must be stopped from migrating (or as written in the koran ,– INVADING !!!