Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!execu!sequoia!attdso!hriso!att!cbnews!lvc From: lvc@cbnews.ATT.COM (Lawrence V. Cipriani) Newsgroups: alt.individualism Subject: Re: What happened to the Objectivists? Message-ID: <13293@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 18 Jan 90 13:44:25 GMT References: <48178c77.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> Reply-To: lvc@cbnews.ATT.COM (Lawrence V. Cipriani) Distribution: usa Organization: Ideology Busters Inc. Lines: 28 In article <48178c77.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM (Peter Nelson) writes: + Alt.individualism used to have a lot of objectivists, people + who claimed that there was a rational way to derive ethical + values from an objective look at the world around us. In the + thread "objectivism as religion" I claimed that the ethical + values were *injected* into their system, not derived logically. The problem with Objectivism is it hasn't come up with a convincing case against ethical nihilism; for that matter, neither has Libertarianism. Most of them just don't realize it. Making light of Henry Hazlitt's comment in his book "The Foundations of Morality" ... "The first thing we do is kill the ethical nihilists!" + So, for that matter, do some Libertarians. When I made a crack + about there being no real-world social laboratory for libertarian + ideals ... If you want to see an example of a society where all or even many Libertarian/Objectivist ideals are practiced, even a small society of a few thousand, you can stop looking; it doesn't exist. However, we can find in the real world examples of what Libertarians and Objectivists seek, e.g., legalized , privatization of gov't services, more just or no regulations of industry, less onerous gun control, etc. I believe these examples provide ample evidence for the superiority of Libertarian and Objectivist means and ends and the inferiority of statist means and ends. -- Larry Cipriani, att!cbdkc1!larry or larry@cbdkc1.att.com