Rational Men Must be Tolerant of Others

There are at least three major reasons why a rational man must practice tolerance with other human beings. These are:

• Tolerance makes it possible to learn from the efforts of other people. Without tolerance, others are not encouraged to put as much effort into thinking, since the fruit of their labor is too often viewed as evil. It becomes less risky not to think about anything prohibited and if they have thought about it, they had best not share the thought. Without tolerance one lives in the Dark Ages in Europe or the Middle East of the present. Tolerance is essential if we do not all wish to enter the world and spend our lives reinventing the wheel. Tolerance is also the great tool that makes it possible for us to challenge our own ideas with those of others. This makes it easier for us to identify our own errors of thought and correct them. Tolerance makes it possible for a group of thinkers to tackle a tough problem and take advantage of each person's different experience, interests, and thinking abilities to understand the whole of it, when each individual could only contribute a part of that understanding. I will call this epistemological tolerance.

• Individuals are very complex and highly differentiated. We are different biochemically and structurally. We have different experiences. We think in different ways and have a history of myriad unique choices behind us. We have different values. These differences add immensely to the richness of our experience with other people. Similarly, they make each of us a unique experience to others. Some of the value represented by each individual is precisely found in the uniqueness of each of us. As gold is more valuable than iron because it is more rare, each individual has more value because each is unique. But, of course, not all of our differences from one another are valued by others. Some of those differences may be viewed with mistrust, some with disdain, and some with repulsion. When a rational man practices tolerance with respect to the properties and values of others, he does not sign on to vouch for the value of each property or the morality of all of their choices. This form of tolerance recognizes the fact of reality that people are individuals. It recognizes that there is commonly much that is sufficiently good in the differences we find in others that we will generally profit in our interactions with them. I will call this the tolerance of individuality.

• Throughout the history of man, the political entities that have controlled men around the world have established various balancings of dogma versus individual initiatives in thought. They have also frequently sought to direct what values a man may seek and achieve. They have often favored men of one race, ethnic group, religion, cast, tribe, clan, or profession over others. In Europe, the Hundred Year's War, largely between Catholics and Protestants, caused untold misery until finally Europe realized a more live and let live philosophy held benefits for civilization. In a capitalist republic, the government does not favor one person over another for these reasons. In fact, a capitalist republic finds value in the differences among its people, since the many differences in interests and abilities allow the society the advantages of many specializations and open the door to a wealth of trading among its citizens. It is also recognized that when one group suppresses another group or any individual, the fighting and the discord are distractions at best and very often fatal to the continuance of either the government or the entire society. This form of tolerance is political tolerance.

Each of these forms of tolerance are related to one another. They are each important to us as thinking individuals. Since Objectivists are thinking individuals, they should be foremost among those proclaiming toleration as a great benefit to each of us and to the societies in which we live. Objectivists are also a minority, who are not infrequently viewed as heretics. They are dependent upon others exercising the virtue of tolerance toward them. Taken together, the forms of tolerance allow us to develop and function fully as individuals. They allow us to trade ideas and values that raise the level of our civilization to much greater heights than is possible for a society or group of intolerant individuals.

Dogma and rigid social custom are the enemies of tolerance. Rational thought directed at understanding reality and the celebration of the productive individual are the product of toleration. Toleration allows us to experiment with ideas and test them out. It offers us a rich complexity of theories and choices, while aiding us in our efforts to evaluate those theories and choices. It allows each man to draw on the individual insights of others. It is a major virtue whenever two or more individuals live and work together.

There are dogmatic Objectivists (a contradiction in terms actually) who need very badly to understand these aspects of reality. Because reason is the individual's means of surviving and promoting his life, that which promotes reason is virtuous. Rationality is the most fundamental virtue. Tolerance is a major virtue because it recognizes that every other individual has the right of their own attempt to use reason, just as I have that right. Tolerance recognizes that it is the individual mind that must of its own volition choose to focus upon the creation of concepts and the use of principles to understand reality in all of its complexity. It is to be expected that individuals, even when highly committed to rational thought, will independently arrive at somewhat differing understandings of our complex existence. Tolerance recognizes individuality and allows us to take advantage of it to gain much greater insight of reality by evaluating the ideas generated by other creative and rational minds. What we gain in value makes us much more productive and much less primitive. We gain the advantage of living in a great civilization, provided we can also provide our society with a healthy respect for the rights of the individual. The concept of these rights and their exercise again requires us individually to be committed to tolerance.

Among Objectivists, David Kelley has been the most effective spokesman for the importance of toleration. He has been especially concerned with toleration as a means to increase our knowledge. He has also recognized the virtue of independence in each individual. I highly recommend his book The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism to anyone interested in how people can work together to greatly improve their understanding of any subject they may have a common interest in. While he especially addresses issues of Objectivism, there is a great deal to think about and use from this book even for a small group of collaborators in a laboratory or in a factory. It is really about being more productive in thought and action than it is possible for a single individual to be acting alone. As I read this book, I kept thinking that it was a marvelously organized and thought out explanation of many principles that I had found essential to the maximization of productive output in the many groups of scientific and engineering collaborators that I had had through the years.

In those groups, I had long worked hard to set such an atmosphere of tolerance in place. As this atmosphere grew, each such group became more productive. I tried to cultivate an atmosphere in which we maintained high standards for our output, but recognized that errors would be made as we sought solutions to the technical problems on which we worked, especially when we tried our hardest to be creative. Working together, we could makes leaps forward by taking advantage of our differing talents and help to correct each other's errors in a constructive way. In fact, we often learned from our errors. When we became comfortable that making an error was not likely to be viewed as evil or a sign of incompetence, ideas poured forth and our rate of solving difficult technical problems increased. It is surprising how often an idea with an error either contains a partial advance or somehow suggests the correct answer. Sometimes the wrong idea led to a test or experiment which proved it a dead end. Yet, that test provided us a clue to the right path to the answer to our problem. The idea that an error is evil is very wrongheaded. In fact, in certain contexts, making an error may actually be considered good. One does not make errors when not thinking. An error is made when one is thinking. Provided that one goes on to thoroughly evaluate the idea and test its validity rationally, the error is not evil and it may be the spur to the final correct identification of reality. In that context, it may be argued that the error served a good function. In that context, we can and should be less afraid of errors. They beat the alternative of stultification hands down.

The Individuality of a Thinking Human Being

Of course, every human being is very distinguishable from anyone else. But those who think deeply and over sustained periods of time, both understand many more things and make many more judgments and choices. This increases their complexity immensely over that which they would have simply as the product of genetic code or as a result of the interaction of their genetic code with their environment to produce a biochemical system of great complexity. Even this baseline biochemical complexity is huge compared to that of engineering materials whose complexity I discussed in a previous essay. The body itself is a composite material, not with 2 or 6 chemicals in the mix as in an engineering material, but with tens of thousands of chemicals in the mix. In itself, this is nothing to make light of. Nonetheless, it is the operation of our mind that raises the level of complexity and of individuality of each thinking person to mind-boggling heights. Those of us who think are convolutions of convolutions of ideas and emotions in which the complexity grows exponentially. The more you think, the larger the time constant. 

Before thinking more about the effects of thinking upon one's richness of properties, I do not want to make light of the differences that exist in our complex biochemistries. We come into the world with many differences. We generally look different. Babies immediately have different temperaments from one another. My first daughter was impatient and demanding from at least her 2nd day of life, while my second daughter was laid back and quiet from her 2nd day of life. Those character differences have not changed over the course of about 20 years. We know that some babies develop allergies to certain foods, while others do not. Some people may die from eating nuts or fish, while most of us are fine. Some people are cured by a medicine, while someone else is killed by it. Some people survive yellow fever, while others do not. Some people have the cycle cell anemia adaptation to malaria, while most do not. Some people have a great sense of smell, while others do not. Some people feel tickled easily, some do not. Some people learn best visually, some learn best aurally. Some people can cut through the complexity of much detail and see what is essential to solve a very complex problem. Others are faster than they are at solving relatively simple and well-formed problems, but they cannot solve the creative problems that require them to isolate the essentials from a complex situation. Of course, some people can leap 38 inches off the ground, while others cannot. Some are quick sprinters, some are better in marathons. Some people are incredibly flexible, while others are stiff. Some have great rhythm and others are beat-impaired. Some enjoy the complexity of a great symphony, while others enjoy a screamer with a strong beat in the foreground. Some are more the slave of pheromones than are others. There are those only attracted to the opposite sex, those attracted only to members of the same sex, and some who are attracted to members of both sexes. Some are pessimists and some are optimists.

Much of this differentiation is likely to be due to the wide ranging biochemical structures of each individual's body. While the music we like is also a function of our conscious choices, it may well be partially a function of our biochemistries as well. These biochemical differences are themselves important. By taking advantage of them, we can assemble teams of incredible athletes for football or swimming. We can figure that no matter how bad the epidemic, some part of the population will survive. Our differences may make one person better suited to be a soldier than another, one a better scientist, another a better farmer, another a better actor, et cetera. Of course, one may be better at any of these jobs with thought, but some require different temperaments than others, some quick thinking, and some deeper thinking with plenty of time. Some jobs are inherently aural, some inherently visual. Some suit a quiet person, some require someone very outgoing.

Our differences rooted in our distinct biochemistries better enable us to specialize. This is somewhat analogous to building a technological society upon specialized engineering materials. You cannot build cities simply upon a single low-carbon alloy steel. It takes many specialized alloys, as well as many glasses, ceramics, semiconductors, inorganic compounds, and polymers. Similarly, we can take tremendous advantage of our biochemical differences to increase the likelihood that we can find the right person for the sales job, the bank manager job, the ladies hairdresser, the pharmacist, the teacher, the street paver, and the telephone lineman. We should not forget that many of these differences may actually have been selected by the evolutionary process because it was useful to man that there be a great range of natural abilities, temperaments, outlooks, and sexualities.

As important as our biochemical differences may be, we add to these the tremendous differences in how we utilize such capability as each of our mind's holds. As we focus our attention upon identifying the nature of reality and from that investigation select our values, we more and more develop an individual nature. Some of this individuality comes from what aspects of reality we focus our effort upon. Some comes from how rigorously we critically evaluate what we think is true. The degree to which we can think independently is a key factor. Another is how well do we learn from what others have already learned. Everyone of us could spend his lifetime simply trying to reinvent the wheel or learning how to make flint weapons, if we did not learn from others. We also benefit from recognizing the advantages of trade for acquiring goods and services from those best able to provide them. We have to learn how to trade with others for their ideas, services, and goods, as well. This includes such complex issues as granting them the necessary freedom of conscience to develop their ideas and choose their values, so that we will have these available to us at a later time as potential trade items. 

To make this possible, we need to extend the same sense of tolerance to them that we will need them to extend to us. We live in a complex world which we will inevitably make mistakes in trying to understand. So will our fellow man. If we are too eager to evaluate these errors as evil, then we will act to stamp out the development of new ideas, which often must pick a path through errors to final enlightenment. Since the world is complex, the first person to understand something may have a hard time convincing everyone else that he does understand it. They may well react with intolerance for the heresy of the new idea, as they did when the idea that the earth was the center of the universe was challenged. They did this when bacteria were understood to cause many of the deaths previously attributed to the wise hand of God.

We also benefit in our own rich mental complexity when we are cognizant that the very individuality of man causes others to sometimes irritate us, but also makes their mental efforts complementary to ours and improves the chances that they may have some ideas we may never have. Tolerance recognizes individuality. Intolerance defies that fact of reality. Tolerance aids the interactive process of learning with and from others, while intolerance is the path to dogma and ignorance. To the extent that a man wants to maximize the richness of his mind through understanding as much as possible about our complex reality and the complexity of others and their interactions, he will value the trade of ideas with others. To the extent that he recognizes the futility of having to figure out everything without help, he will value the individuality of others. He will grant them the freedom of conscience to make their own choices and to evaluate ideas in their way, because he knows he will benefit from at least some of the ideas of others to the extent of many lifetimes of learning on his own.

Objectivists are likely to recognize this intellectual advantage given them by Ayn Rand, but they too often do not recognize that we have the advantage of many other life-enhancing ideas from many other people as well. They fail to note that if Americans did not have a very substantial commitment to tolerance, Ayn Rand's ideas would have been stamped out. She and all of her followers would have been hunted down and killed.

Yet, how commonly they call Objectivism a closed philosophical system, which accommodates only those who are virtual clones of Ayn Rand and cannot make manifest their own individuality. The individualist thinker is not tolerated by them, though Objectivism supposedly values the individual life as the source of all value and the individual as the holder of all value. Well, the individual is the source of all reasoning! The individual is also the source of all error, but retains the ability to correct each error and to proceed to a pretty accurate perception of reality. Just as Ayn Rand made great advances over the philosophy of Aristotle, someday, one hopes that someone else will greatly advance Ayn Rand's understanding of philosophy. We should be tolerant enough that such an advance is allowed to happen and that we can recognize it when it has happened.

The Complexity of Reality

The complexity of reality seems a strangely abstract subject for an essay. Why is that of interest to an Objectivist or indeed to anyone? Well, because reality consists of particular existents, or to be less formal, of particular things. Among these things are us and we are extraordinarily particular, or as we say of people, we are very distinguishable as individuals. Now, if we are in the habit of underestimating the complexity of materials, tables, and cows, are we not much more likely to underestimate the complexity of people and their interactions? It is common for people to do just this and Objectivists are sometimes among the most shameless in oversimplifying everything in our quest for tight, simple, logical arguments.

There is a real place for simplification, but we need to retain consciousness of how and why we have performed it in our thinking. As Ayn Rand astutely noted, concept formation depends upon a kind of simplification. It requires that we delete certain measurements of the attributes of things. A table is a table whether it has four legs or three. It may be 4 feet high or it may be 3 feet high. It may be 6 feet long or 12 feet long. Having the concept of a table is valuable to us. It allows us to say, "We need a table for our dining room." Having noted that, we can next consider the particular characteristics that this table should have. We want it to be high enough that we can sit comfortably in chairs around it and yet do not have to reach too high to gain access to our plates. The height of the table can be so chosen. We need to consider how many people should be able to eat at the table at one time. We need to be sure it will fit in the dining room. We had best think about whether it will fit through the doors, so we can put it there. So, as useful as the general concept of table is, we must in many cases put the dimensions of a particular table back into our thinking as we make use of the general concept of a table. As we do that and consider the materials from which it should be made and how they should be processed, we have an individual table again. Finally, as we use it, it will acquire its own set of particular scratches and stains. We live in a world of particular things.

Particular things can be incredibly complicated. Sometimes this seems inconvenient, but actually it is often very essential to our modern technological control of our human environment. Consider the tools that man had to develop in order to gain enough control over the world that his life became less desperate than that of being the prey of lions, tigers, bears, bacteria, and viruses. Without tools, he was subject to the extremes of heat and cold, to the loss of water, and to starvation. At first he had to work very hard to make wood, stone, and bone tools. This was not easy. Making sharp and durable edges from stones is very difficult and tedious work and actually took a lot of skill. Working with wood in all of its varieties was never easy either. But, the varieties in which each material came, did make many applications of these materials possible. But, let us move on to the age of metal use.

The four most common elements in the earth's crust are, starting with the most prevalent, oxygen, silicon, aluminum, and iron. Of these, iron was discovered about 2500 BC. But oxygen was discovered in 1774, silicon in 1824, and aluminum in 1825. For a long time after its discovery, aluminum was more expensive than gold, because it was so hard to unlock from its oxides and other mineral forms. There was no chance of an early Aluminum Age to preceed the Bronze Age. Aluminum was bound up in all kinds of rocks, schists, micas, and clays, but was never found as a vein of pure metal. Fortunately, copper and tin we also discovered in 5000 BC and 2100 BC, respectively. Copper and tin proved relatively easy to work with, so the Bronze Age preceeded the Iron Age. But, copper, tin, and iron are all very soft and of little use for structural purposes in their pure forms. To be useful, one has to have the right additives as in the case for iron and the right mixture of copper and tin in the case of bronze. In the modern era, we use a plethora of iron alloys. Most of these are useful for engineering purposes only when a host of processing conditions are carefully controlled. These alloys are rather complex and often have very individual characteristics that make them suited for the many different applications we have for them.

First, for our more sophisticated uses, we make pure iron, which involves a good deal of processing, which was largely accomplished in the 1800s, but has continued to be improved up to the present time. We now have cast irons such as gray iron, ductile iron, compacted graphite iron, malleable iron, and many alloy cast irons. We have a host of carbon and low-alloy steels as cast steels, hot-rolled steels, cold-finished steels, extruded steels, spring steels, forged steels, bearing steels, dual-phase steels, and ultrahigh-strength steels. There are hardenable steels. There are steels optimized for high temperature use, for neutron radiation resistance, for low-temperature properties, for maximum fatigue resistance, to resist embrittlement in various environments, and to have high toughness. There are wrought tool steels, powder metallurgy tool steels, maraging steels, ferrous powder metallurgy steels, austenitic manganese steels, wrought stainless steels, cast stainless steels, elevated temperature stainless steels, wrought and powder metallurgy superalloys, polycrystalline cast superalloys, and directionally solidified and single-crystal superalloys. All of these are based on iron as the primary ingredient. These hundreds of alloys have a host of individual properties based upon their elemental ingredients, the temperatures they were heated to, the rates at which they were cooled, the manner in which they were beaten, and the order and sequence of all these processes. Iron is alloyed with carbon, manganese, chromium, nickel, vanadium, molybdenum, cobalt, titanium, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, boron, copper, niobium, zirconium, tungsten, tantalum, aluminum, nitrogen, beryllium, lanthanum, yttrium, hafnium, and selenium to produce various properties.

Engineering metals are usually polycrystalline, with each crystallite called a grain and separated from other grains by a grain boundary. The crystallites consist mostly of very ordered planes of atoms stacked neatly with respect to one another. Iron has chemical phases with carbon called martinsite, austenite, and pearlite. Carbon can be distributed throughout the iron in clusters of graphite. The alloying elements may form various carbide chemical phases distributed in the alloy. The alloying elements may be found preferentially at the grain boundaries or at the metal surface. The size of the grains may be large or small. The grains may be elongated along one axis. The crystallites may have atomic vacancies, interstitial (extra, squeezed) atoms, dislocations (abrupt misalignments within crystallites), twin dislocations, and slip planes. There may also be various intermetallic phases in which the ratio of one element to another is locally precise, but different from areas around it. There is a wealth of possibilities. These materials have a level of complexity that provides us with a huge range of properties and hence of applications of each alloy. We are constantly discovering more useful alloys.

Now, this is just iron alloys. We have copper, nickel, aluminum, titanium, cobalt, tungsten and many other alloys. We also have semiconductor, glass, ceramic, polymer, mineral and inorganic compound, and composite materials. We have thousands of materials and thousands of ways to process them and tens of thousands of ways to use them in thousands of different environments. From the standpoint of an analytical laboratory owner, we investigate materials all the time that are not quite what they are supposed to be. Many errors are made in processing materials to manufacture them to the complex recipes required for each material. Sometimes, fraud and shortcuts were the cause and there are moral implications, but mostly these materials are made well by men operating in a rational environment and still some errors arise. Generally, suspect materials are sent to us for analysis by people who want to produce a good product and they want our help in identifying what is wrong with the material. This is the moral action of rational men. As we proceed in our laboratories to analyze the material we learn more and more about it. Along that path of investigation, however, it is not uncommon for us to have a wrong idea about the implications of our data with respect to the properties of the material. Afterall, materials can be very complex. We simply keep adding up the data from our measurements and observations and try to formulate an idea of the material composition and structure which is compatible with the data we have acquired. Sometimes, we consult with the customer, since he often knows a great deal about his own material and how they have attempted to process it. Faced with all of the complexity of materials and with a considerable complexity in the experimental techniques we use to make measurements and to observe these materials, we have a great deal to sort out and keep track of. We commonly call on multiple members of our staff with training and experience in different fields, with various materials, and with the analytical techniques to make sense of all of the results. In the end, it is amazing how often we figure out what the material is and identify the problem and its cause.

What a wonderful complexity. There is so much richness here that we can support an incredible technological society upon it. The individuality and distinguishability of our engineering materials supports our civilization and makes our lives more security and more likely to be happy. It gives us many opportunities and many choices.

So, if there is so much advantage in the individuality of materials, should we not suspect that there is at least as much advantage in a society of individual men and women? Could it not be that having people of different appearance, experience, athletic abilities, musical abilities, mixes of visual versus aural learning abilities, career interests, reading interests, acting abilities, math and science abilities, favorite sports, disease resistance, dreams, child-raising talents, philosophical beliefs, and sexualities is an advantage to all of the individuals in a society? I find it hard to believe that it would not be an advantage.

However, I constantly observe that many people are certain that anyone different than themselves is not so good as they are. In fact, if they have a different philosophical belief they are likely to be considered evil. By losing sight of the complexity of reality, we lose sight of the reason that people make errors. Even geniuses make errors without having any evil intent. It is also common to condemn those who have a different sexual expression. Apparently, the idea that they are different is unacceptable.

Such judgmental leaps are unfortunately not uncommon among Objectivists, just as they are not uncommon among people who identify themselves with less rational philosophies. Many people are sorely tempted to over-simplify reality and to define the good very tightly and narrowly. It makes thinking about topics easier. In fact, if we simplify enough, maybe we can reduce any complex situation into the equivalent of a situation Ayn Rand addressed and quote her to find the truth. Now we do not have to think for ourselves at all. How convenient. But, we may well have thrown context out the window. We may have made the error of not appreciating the complexity of the situation or person. A terrible consequence is that we lose sight of what makes us individuals and of all the value that comes from that individuality. We have lost the Individualism which is a cornerstone of Objectivism. We have lost much of the richness of experience that makes life so worth living.

On Who John Galt Is

I would like to make a comment about John Galt of Ayn Rand's great work, Atlas Shrugged, who is too often seen as less human and less appealing than he is, even by Objectivists.

He is a man who does not and cannot lose his focus. He also is a man we do not get a large amount of information on, since he is the mystery of Atlas Shrugged. Nonetheless, we are given some very vivid pictures of the man, his passionately held vision, his dedication to his friends and to the men of ability, his love of knowledge and its applications, his joy in living in Galt's Gulch, and his passion for Dagny.

No one easily comes by the means to invent a motor that can change man's life on earth in the manner that Galt's motor is supposed to do. John Galt studied physics with a passion and he pushed the frontiers of its theory for the purpose of making life better for all of mankind. When he discovered that mankind did not deserve his motor, he walked away from a fortune and fame before he ever got to experience them. This is an unmatched passion.

He then dedicates many years to the task of identifying the men of ability, watching and waiting until they are ready to understand why they must leave behind the businesses and reputations they worked most of their lives to attain. This long and hidden labor was not that of a philosopher simply knowing what was right. This unsung effort is a labor of love for what is right. His is a mighty conviction that he is freeing the world's heroes so that they might all have a chance to live life as it should be and have a chance to pursue their own happiness. He shares the loss over and over again that each of them has when they leave the world, but he also shares their joy as they learn again to find enjoyment in every moment in Galt's Gulch.

While he is watching, he spends his days working in a simple and dull job. This is very hard for a man of blazing intellect to do. At night and on weekends he works alone in his hidden, small laboratory. Without money and given the need for secrecy, how did he equip his lab? He must have had to scrounge, repair, and build everything he needed. The effort was Herculean and driven by his passion for knowledge and contriving a better world for man.

Most Objectivist women love Francisco. I can see why. I love him also. Strangely, I do not believe that I have ever heard an Objectivist man say that he loves Dagny. I love Dagny.
I can imagine John Galt watching her and Francisco suffer through many years of separation when Dagny feels betrayed and Francisco must not explain that he is not the traitor he appears to be. John Galt felt the pain of both of them. He loves Francisco and comes to love Dagny soon after the strike begins. He watches Dagny struggle heroically year after year to save her railroad. He sees her use every ounce of strength she has day after day and must terribly want to ease her burden and have her walk away. He sees her come to love Hank Rearden and all he can do is watch. He wants to hold her himself and he cannot. He keeps his focus and he does not rush her into an escape from her perceived responsibilities and passions. He waits until she is fully ready to understand and accept the need to leave the world of her railroad. He waits to allow Francisco to try to regain her love. When Dagny is ready and certain, only then does he claim her and her love.

There are other glimpses of the man. When he carries Dagny after her plane crash. This is an incredibly emotional scene. There is his joy in cooking. The care and effort he put into building his small house in Galt's Gulch. This is a man with a huge passion for life.

Why is John Galt hard for people to appreciate as a flesh and blood man? People overlook the passion required for great drive and focus. There is a prejudice against scientists, perhaps because a part of their passion is devoted fairly directly to reality rather than to other people. Scientists generate their passion from within in greater part, rather than as a shared emotion with others. But largely, people just wish to have spent more time with John Galt to include watching him relax more with other people. I wish I could have also.

I felt a powerful resentment every time I had to leave the company of Dagny, Francisco, or Hank to spend time with James Taggart or Wesley Mouch and the like. It was a plunge from bliss into hell every time. I was also frustrated that I did not get to spend a lot more time with John Galt, especially after his mission was complete and our heroes were clustered in Galt's Gulch. But alas, novels must end sometime.

John Galt is a brilliant physicist, a philosopher, a leader of heroes, the man who won the woman I love, and the most passionate character in Atlas Shrugged. He is very real to me.

The Invention of Gods

I have been reading Homer Smith's Man and His Gods (Little Brown & Co., Boston, 1952). I last read this book 20 years ago and I think I am finding it more interesting now even than I did then.

From fifty to twenty-five hundred years ago, it is easy to understand why many men invented gods to explain the world they lived in. They knew little about physics and the many things it could explain. They often did not even know the basics about validating what they did know about the world. Why did the sun rise each and every day? Why was it or the moon sometimes greatly dimmed? How could trees grow? How could man exist and think? Why was life so uncertain with fearful storms, floods, earthquakes, lightning and thunder, diseases, plagues of locusts, and strange tribes thundering out of nowhere in the East and killing, kidnapping, and plundering?

Not only did they not understand these phenomena, but was there any hope that some force could be induced to intervene to save you from the many uncertainties of life? Could the sacrifice of cattle and sheep bribe the gods to act on your behalf? If they were not enough, could you sacrifice a daughter or a son and get their favorable attention. Maybe simple praise was often enough, especially if you could devote all the members of your tribe to the praise of that one god, say as the Jews praised Yahweh. If your tribe did that, then could your god overcome the gods of the fierce tribes around yours? Was your god the better warrior? Would he fight for you if you discovered his law and kept it? The Jews long carried Yahweh into battle with them in the form of a stone in the Ark, which was awkward when once the Ark was captured.

Since the rigors of survival on earth were always great, could one hope for a better life in an afterlife? While many religions long held hope for an after-life, this hope seems to have developed rather late among the Jews and was never accepted by many of them. If one could, then did that afterlife have to earned by renouncing such pleasures and happiness as might occasionally be found in life on earth? Or could you devise an easier approach to everlasting life in which you simply proclaimed all men to be sinners, preferably from the instant of birth, and after a life of sinning be forgiven by a simple act of faith that the Messiah had come to earth to remove the consequences of man's sin and give him an unearned reward of everlasting life? Perhaps you could select an obscure moral teacher of 100 or more years ago and claim him to be the true Messiah, among hundreds of pretenders, and over the next several hundred years borrow ideas from many other older or competing religions to give your religion greater popular appeal.

To win their dedicated effort, you would give your priestly hierarchy ever more power over the people's thought, property, and lives. Could you eliminate the competing religions by killing their followers and tearing down their temples to a much greater extent they had done that to you when were a weaker sect? Yes. Could you establish a dogma encompassing an immortal man, Jesus, born of a virgin mother and yet escape the taunts of the Jews who claimed the one God, Yahweh, was now transformed into the three gods, Yahweh, the Logos or Holy Ghost who impregnated the Virgin Mary, and Christ? Could you explain evil without that evil being a part of God? Could you create a Devil or Satan to explain evil, without having still another god? Could you use Satan to scare the people into dependence upon the priestly class? Could you subjugate women by claiming that they especially were tools of Satan in tempting men? Could you make everyone more miserable by telling them that sex was evil and giving it up was a good way to improve one's chance for everlasting life? Could you use this misery to gain still more control over unhappy people and induce them to greater hopes for the next life?

Did Jesus actually teach any or most of these ideas? Over a few hundred years they evolved and were agreed upon for their efficacy in resolving, or at least eliminating, the many theological disputes that arose since so little was known about what Jesus had taught. The dogma of belief was also designed for the sake of moving power from secular authorities into the hands of the Church's authorities. In those first several hundred years, the dogma borrowed heavily from other religions to adapt their most popular ideas, so Christianity could compete better.

Could you plunge civilization into the Dark Ages by destroying the knowledge of the past? Destroy the great library of Alexandria, Egypt and the smattering of manuscripts elsewhere and the resulting ignorance would eliminate those pesky competing ideas. Even knowledge of mathematics and physics should be declared evil and the work of Satan, so no one could think that any explanation for anything was possible but that it was God's choice that it should be so. The resulting human misery was of no consequence, since only the after-life was important, unless of course, you were a pope or bishop with concubines, great wealth, and the power to control kings.

No matter how arcane the deviation from the accepted religious dogma might be, excommunicate or kill the heretic and stamp out any threatening idea before the entire edifice of Christian dogma crumbles. Should the many heretical Cartharist inhabitants of the rich and learned area of Albigensium, in southern France in 1209, after 200 years of increasing deviance, be tolerated? No, Pope Innocent III (oh, the irony of that name) launched a crusade against that richest area of Europe and over 20 years a million people were killed and their rich lands were taken by the church and the warriors. But who were heretics and who were true believers? Answer: Kill them all and God will sort them out. It makes sense. The good win everlasting life faster and the heretics still go to hell. But this was done by the Church, so we cannot call it mass murder. The scale of this murder, in proportion to the numbers of people in Europe then, was fully the equal of the mass murders of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.

Later, when Europe came into civil war for hundreds of years as Catholics fought Protestants and millions of people died, more from the sickness and starvation caused, than the fighting directly, the suffering continued. The Church also fought the re-awakening of learning in Europe and tried to prevent the Enlightenment. Eventually, reason sufficiently prevailed by demonstrating a remarkable ability to improve life on earth and the Church had to make some practical accommodations with this spurt of knowledge. Science and its rational use in industry, agriculture, and medicine allowed man to more and more rapidly increase his understanding of reality and gave him much better control over the conditions of his life. The Church has retreated somewhat and largely says that they retain the only knowledge of our spiritual needs. Christians rarely proclaim that the existence of God can be proven, but we must believe on faith, not upon the outcome of a rational examination of the reality we experience. They claim that only God can serve as a source of ethics and they can tell us what acts in life are ethical and which are not.

Well, given the history of the evolution of religion and that particularly of Christianity, this self-proclaimed knowledge of God's will and of ethics is mighty strange. The Church still preaches that self-sacrifice is good, that this world is evil, that man is by nature sinful and is stained by sin even at birth, and claims that an everlasting life, wished for by so many, can easily be won without too much effort at living a good life before death.

Ethics should be the knowledge we hold about what gives value to the individual, who is the only valuer of whose existence we have rational knowledge. We know that man's means of survival on earth is the use of his rational faculty. We know nothing about a life after death. Ethics should tell us how to act to realize our happiness in life, including how this can be done in harmony with the rational values and interests of others.

A proposed ethics which jetisons the values achievable on earth and in this life for a hypothetical after-life is a fool's choice. Of course, those who choose to make this choice should be allowed the exercise of their freedom of conscience to do so. They should not be free to use the political process, whether through democracy or dictatorial rule, to impose this insanity upon others or to use the morality derived from the trade of this life for a hypothetical after-life to restrain the free choice of others.

Among other ethical choices people make, the Christians (or Moslems or Jews or Hindus) should not be allowed to restrict the pleasure of sex between consenting adults to that limited realm their religions grimly tolerate to prevent too much rebellion from their own ranks. Religion should not be allowed to dictate the terms of the legal contract for a civil union between adults either. They may argue that the sanctity of marriage must be preserved. Of course, the sanctity of marriage comes from the values of those who marry. If those values are religious, then that will be the source of the sanctity. For others, the spiritual values providing sanctity to their marriage will come from their values, if they have them. In no case does the government legal contract convey sanctity. The government does not hold such spiritual power to grant. It only gives a legal contract. That contract should not be controlled by religious beliefs. Within their church, the religious will try to find that sanctity in their irrational beliefs. An Objectivist will find it within his or her rational value system. Yes, the passionately held values of an Objectivist are spiritual and gain power by being rational.

Freedom of Conscience

In this note I will develop the reasons why society and each of us as individuals should allow others the widest possible range of freedom of conscience. The burden of proof lies heavily upon us and society to provide the most rational of reasons for any use of force on our part directed at limiting another’s freedom of conscience and of their developing their subsequent values in their own life. Everyone has the right to develop and manage their own life. Everyone is inherently unique and individual, so it is inappropriate to think that we can evaluate their choices and values for them. We would not be willing to accept their unhappiness upon our lives should we make a mistake with theirs. Only each of us as an individual has the right to stake his life and happiness upon his choices of values and his choice of actions to attain and secure his values. Yet, maybe as a consequence of this lack of consequences for making the wrong choices for others, many people seem to relish using their time and effort to prescribe and force choices upon others through societal norms and beyond to making them a matter of law. Meanwhile, they leave their own personal affairs under-attended. Curiously, some of these people point at each other’s under-attended affairs and note them as proof that others are incapable of caring for themselves, so the busybodies, acting through government, must do it for them.

Of course, the affairs of others often seem simple to the casual observer. Yet, human interactions are extremely complex. Most of us appreciate this better in our own lives then when we assess the life choices of others. When each of us knows as much as we do about the complete fabric of our own life (to borrow a phrase from David Kelley), we cannot help but to see a huge complexity of activities and relationships. It is a never-ending intellectual and emotional challenge to handle it all. But this is what makes life so rich with value and interest. It also means that errors of choice are inevitable and not infrequent. The exercise of freedom of conscience allows each of us the means to discover, develop, and alter our lives until we achieve the conditions that make us happy. Each of us is necessarily experimenting with his own life. This gives others some opportunity to observe the results and to either follow or avoid those paths those paths of others that they believe may be right or wrong for them. This may be a lifesaver or it may at least make others more efficient in finding the right path for their lives. Their evaluation of our actions in living our life does not necessarily affirm or deny the choices we have made for ourselves, however. Our choices are good, bad, or neutral in the context of our very rich individual lives and largely based upon a long string of daily choices and our differing natures. What is right for me may or may not be right for you.

Now, you may be concerned that I am arguing for an ethics of moral relativism. I am not. Yet, I do not think we should confuse good and bad choices with moral principles. There are moral principles appropriate for a relatively solitary life in nature. These change somewhat for a man in a primitive society where the use of force is rampant with one tribe taking anything they can get from another by force. Again, the appropriate moral principles change for men living in a relatively free and civilized society. While our primary moral values are always based on the value of our own life and our need to use our ability to reason to maintain our life, the complete code of principles that we each have is very dependent upon our personal circumstance. A major component is determined by the kind of society in which we live. It is very important to understand that as individuals we are each so complex that we need still more moral principles to help us make the choices that apply only to our own personal pursuit of our own values. My detailed values differ from yours. My complete code of ethics starts with an Objectivist ethics, but it adds many, many principles that help me to cope with the complex choices in my own life. Some of these additional principles may be unique to me and probably are. Similarly, I expect that most thinking people will have some principles important to them that are not to me. If I try to prescribe what your choices should be in life, I may very well be at odds with some of your important moral principles. I would be messing with your freedom of conscience. You see, our freedom of conscience is as tied to our freedom of action and choice as our mind is tied to our body.

Each individual needs freedom of conscience for the following reasons:

• to formulate an idea - Simple ideas do not require that a society recognize freedom of conscience, but life and our world are complicated. Complex ideas or those standing on an understanding of complex issues of reality need to be developed by many thinkers who can make their ideas known to one another without fear of suffering violence (or excommunication, in some circumstances)
• to experiment with that idea and its consequences - Many ideas require that experiments be performed to test them and to illuminate the productive paths for further development. If an idea is important, whether it deals exclusively with physics or it involves the interaction of many human beings, experimentation must in many ways be used to test theory, or fallible man can and will go far astray over time.
• to evaluate the results - When an idea is put to use, it is essential that many minds are free to evaluate and compare their evaluations so that more effort may be put in those directions which are fruitful and less into those that are deadends.
• to redevelop the idea or abandon it as a failure - This is the result of evaluating the truth and consequences of ideas. Those that have problems may be corrected or must be abandoned.
• to improve upon an accepted idea - The idea that is evaluated as resting substantially upon a true perception of reality and has demonstrable good consequences, may often be improved upon by others with other viewpoints and experiences either now or in the future.
• to question an accepted idea - It is usually an unpopular role to be the one who questions the truth of a generally accepted idea. But generally accepted ideas are often wrong and have very harmful consequences. The one who questions the bad idea performs a very valuable service to everyone else. We should all be very willing to provide for the general right of freedom of conscience in order that we can enjoy the great benefit the questioner of the generally accepted idea provides us in helping us to see the rut we are in.

Our need to survive by using our minds makes it essential that we always err on the side of allowing others the maximum possible freedom of thought and choice. When we do this, we enrich our own lives. The result of giving others this freedom is a present in a civilized society and a future in which progress can be a constant expectation. In a free society, the consequences of others bad thoughts and subsequent acted choices fall primarily upon themselves and little upon us. Their good thoughts and subsequently acted choices often provide us critical help in understanding life and our world. This gift of understanding has always been the basis of human progress. It is why we no longer generally die before age 30. It is why we do not work hunting and farming from daylight to sundown. It is why we rarely need to worry that a marauding band of Vikings, Visigoths, or Turks will descend upon our home and carry away our wives and children. It is why we know about atoms, electrons, stars, silicon chips, magnetic tape and hard drives, structural steel, stressed concrete, jet engines, vaccines, constitutionally limited government, drugs to lower high blood pressure, x-rays, the novels of Ayn Rand, recorded music, combustion engines, long-life batteries, computers, and a host of other wonderful things. It is also why the world is full of interesting people, despite the fact that many people either choose or are forced to be uninteresting. Freedom of conscience, when allowed in a generous manner in a society, causes that society to flourish in ways we cannot image without standing back and actually observing it with wonder.

Objectivism and Me

What does Objectivism mean to me? What is my approach to it? What do I think about the movement and where it is going? How do we view Objectivism on the historical scale? What would it take to have it become the dominant philosophy of life in our society? I will answer these questions in this note.

Objectivism is the philosophy whose initial formulation was made by the American immigrant genius, Ayn Rand. She established the essential ideas of her philosophy while writing her great novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which praised human achievement and the value of the human mind. She showed why man should live for himself and that he could do so to the benefit of all rational men. She developed a metaphysics based on reality, substantially developed an epistemology (theory of knowledge) based on reason, largely developed an ethics based on self-interest, developed an explanation of why Capitalism was the proper expression of politics for rational men since it alone allowed men to trade values freely, and substantially developed a theory of art. Her work was monumental and stands among the greatest accomplishments in all of man’s history. Though I know of no primary thesis of Ayn Rand which is incorrect, the philosophy is not yet fully developed. There has been much for other philosophers and thinkers to do since she died and there remains much to do.

The application of Objectivism to our ever-changing and evolving circumstances is anything but trivial. Those few errors that I know Ayn Rand to have made were in this realm. She was not always wise on her judgments of individuals and she made errors in assessing the consequences of certain choices on political and economic issues. Usually, however, she was brilliant in her commentary on these complex issues. Her commentaries were almost always insightful and wonderful examples of how to apply the principles of Objectivism to making the complex choices we have to make as mortal humans with incredibly complex interactions with others.

In order to further the development of Objectivism as the reality-directed understanding of human life with reason as our only means of knowing reality and of furthering the value of human life, we must establish those conditions which allow and encourage the use of the mind. Every human mind is attached to a body in an inseparable manner. If we are to be actors who can purposely further our lives, then we must be free to express our rational thinking and to motivate it by controlling and managing our bodies. Political restrictions on the use of the mind and of our bodies do not serve us as individuals. They also do not serve us as aggregates of individuals, since every value to be achieved means nothing if it is not of value to an individual human being.

Human society offers us many values, if we are free to trade ideas, our labor, friendship and love, and all the other values of rational men. The civilized society is that society which allows this and banishes the initiated use of force from the realm of human relationships. It also establishes the principle that the consequences of individual errors of judgment will be visited primarily upon the one who errs and the benefits of reality-consistent judgment can be realized by the wise individual without someone taking them away by force. The fact that a civilized society does not deliver the consequences of some one person’s error or that of some group (however large) upon everyone any more than can be avoided, is extremely important in allowing individuals to think and act independently with the appreciation of everyone else. They stand to gain from the exploration of knowledge and the example of attempts to put that knowledge into execution to gain values. The thinker and the actor is freed of the fear of being forced to conform and of having his earned values expropriated by others. Individual by individual, this society is freed to innovate and evaluate new ideas and methodologies they would never have otherwise seen.

Politically, Ayn Rand called this civilized society Capitalism. In such a society, men can afford to be tolerant of one other. Since every other person is likely to create useful values and make these available to you in many cases in acts of trade, it is natural to view others in a benevolent manner. In a society in which some men may use force to coerce you to think as they do or at least only speak or write accepted ideas, may take the hours or the totality of your life, and may take your income and property, other men are a threat and benevolence must shrivel.

Our present society is a mixture of Capitalism and socialism. The socialist aspects take on a variety of forms, including Bismarckian, communist, and fascist forms. Our government is supposed to protect our rights to our freedom of conscience at least so far as to "make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." First, it does not always protect all of these rights, as widely evidenced on college campuses and in the limitations upon speech just prior to Presidential elections. Second, these important expressions of freedom of conscience do not go nearly as far as they should go. The remaining freedoms are covered by Amendment IX, but the government generally chooses to ignore this amendment. Furthermore, it is extremely common for government to take our income and our property. It is also common for it to require us to donate our time to its purposes without compensation. This both limits our freedom of conscience by removing the benefits to us for using our minds and by preventing us from realizing our life values through our actions. In the terms of our Declaration of Independence, we do not fully enjoy Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Historically, Objectivism has a strong relationship with Greek philosophy through Aristotle and with the Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke. While Aristotle made huge advances in understanding, for a long time his works were lost in Europe and never penetrated most of the world. The Dark and Medieval Ages took over in Europe. The Enlightenment relit the flame of knowledge and had its ultimate political expression in the limited constitutional government of the United States of America. Then the popularity of socialism (both communist and fascist versions) and the present post-modernist period partially robbed us of our belief in reality, the efficacy of reason, and the value of ourselves and of our abilities. Ayn Rand tried to further and re-energize the Enlightenment as she developed Objectivism in the face of a terrible intellectual front opposed to her. There is no historical guarantee that even the most rational and life-affirming philosophy will be accepted by the following generations who great thinkers have offered it to as a wonderful gift. Objectivism may disappear. Or, it may be re-discovered, as was Aristotle, with great effect in a few hundred years.

If the Objectivist philosophy is to become widely accepted, those who ascribe to it must be good examples in applying its principles to their own lives. We cannot be successful proponents of rational behavior if we do not value the attempts others make to be rational. Since everyone makes errors and everyone needs to perform the experiment of putting ideas to the test to see if they are consistent with a complex reality, we must practice toleration. Without it, we raise the stakes of creating any new idea or understanding so high that many will simply be afraid to make their great ideas known to us. Still fewer will be willing to put an idea to the test of reality either by applying the idea to pursue values or by inviting the evaluation of others. A movement without toleration is doomed to stultification. It will also be no fun and will soon be labeled a cult. Since such a group is given to "excommunications" it will also soon be without any of its more vigorous and persistent thinkers. To be successful in winning the hearts and minds of large numbers of people in a society, Objectivists need to act as Dr. David Kelley does and not as Dr. Leonard Peikoff does. The Objectivist Center represents the intellectual future of Objectivism, while the Ayn Rand Institute is an archival museum at best.

No broad-based inroad into controlling the political action of our country will be possible until the teachers in our schools understand and believe in Objectivism. This will be necessary at both the universities and the secondary schools. Clearly, this will be a long time in coming. It will never happen as long as the socialist Baby Boomers control the tenure system of the universities. It will never happen as long as the teacher’s labor unions control the government-run secondary school systems. It may never happen as long as government runs the schools. The political changes required to overcome these barriers to a wide-spread acceptance of the rational philosophy of Objectivism, are likely to take many more decades. Many individuals will have to read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and understand them on their own or with the help of much enlarged centers of learning such as The Objectivist Center. The internet offers many opportunities to make our ideas better known and we have an obligation, if we want to live in a better society, to make an effort to make them available to others. This is an important way to make an end run around the blocking performed by the public schools and universities. We must use it for all we are worth. Nonetheless, many children will never understand the principles of Objectivism well if we do not ultimately get them taught in the schools.

A Personal Look Back

This is just a superficial note on the history of my life. It is simply a brief sketch of some major events and of some of the things I have seen. The reader may judge how this may have shaped my perspective.

My Dad served in the Pacific as a naval aviator in WWII. He married my Mom when he came back from his first tour out and before going back out a second time in preparation for the invasion of Japan. After the war, Dad left the service for a while, but then went back in and served in the Navy for 23 years. I was the oldest child, but I was followed by 2 sisters, a brother, and then two more sisters. Meanwhile, my Dad went on numerous cruises to the Pacific, the Caribbean, and to the Mediterranean Sea. I lived in many states growing up: MN, CA, TN, MD, FL, VA, TX, NJ, VA again, RI, and then OK when Dad retired. My Mom and Dad were and are good and loving parents who taught their children to be self-reliant and responsible. I am fortunate to have a great brother and four very wonderful sisters.

When I started school in Texas, I was only interested in rough play, though I was always a nice kid. I know this because I did not beat up weaker kids, I took care of my younger sister and let her tag along with us boys even though some of my friends would rather she did not, and I tried to help out at home. In school, I could not see the blackboard. By the third grade in NJ, I was about to be put back, since I could not read. My eyesight was corrected and my mother spent endless hours teaching me to read. I hated it. Half way through the 4th grade, I discovered that there were books worth reading. Books on people in history especially interested me. Chief Black Hawk, Kit Carson, Daniel Boone, Robert E. Lee, U. S. Grant, John Paul Jones, Rogers and his Rangers, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Stephen Decatur and the Barbary Pirates, George Washington Carver, Thomas Edison and others were fascinating. It is a good thing for kids to learn about how remarkable individuals can make a difference and accomplish much despite adversity. Today, I suspect that books about heroic people are less popular because educators are afraid that kids will become hero-worshipers and be inspired to become individualists. I now really enjoyed school, though I had not earlier. About the 6th grade in Virginia, I started reading science fiction, news magazines, and BusinessWeek, whenever I was not playing baseball. In the 7th grade in Rhode Island, I started to read regular adult novels, when I was not playing basketball. From the 7th to the 10th grade, under the influence of a very good man, the Rev. Stenning, I was a serious Christian. I was the Acolyte he could count on for a 6 AM service during Lent. Jerry Wells, Anthony Campagna, Mary Hutchinson, Bob White, Katie Webb, Martin, and Stacy Kinney provided intellectually stimulating relationships.

We moved to Tulsa, OK for the 11th grade and I found a new set of intelligent friends, such as Ron Walker, Ron Brautigam, David Jacobsen, Brooks Campbell, Spencer Grosvenor, Nick Hunter, Larry Bunn, and David Warner. Many of us played a mean game of sandlot tackle football. Meanwhile, the church we went to was overflowing with hypocrites, particularly the minister, and I began more and more to question the validity of Christianity itself as I was repulsed by the small-minded and petty actions of many Christians. The summer between the 11th and 12th grades, I went to a summer program at Brown University and studied calculus, materials science, and computer programming. In the 12th grade, Ron Walker and I tore John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society to shreds in a debate. Ron suggested I read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, which caused this already very analytical and rational kid to enter into a period of white-heat thinking. I moved on to Atlas Shrugged and loved the experience of reading it and had even more ah ha moments. Many bits and pieces of the truths I had understood were fitting together much better now. So much was clarified. The summer after graduating, I worked as a geophone placement technician for an oil company and was based in Enid, OK. I subscribed to the Objectivist Newsletter and read its back issues. Before summer's end, I was sure I understood Ayn Rand's work well enough to be certain that it was essentially the right philosophy. This careful study served me well in the inhospitable university environment I was soon to enter, and would have served Ron Walker well if he had ever devoted himself to a similar effort.

My next stop was Brown University, where I was a physics major whose high school course in physics was wholly inadequate. I worked extremely hard to make up ground, but nonetheless got into innumerable discussions in the Freshman dorms with the other guys there. Soon, there were often 6, 8, or more guys arguing in favor of various forms of socialism mostly, but sometimes Christianity, with me in these discussions. I was always the lone individualist, not to mention the lone Objectivist, but time after time my opponents had to concede that I was right. Of course, they usually came back the next day and asked what I would do about the poor or the disabled in some context or other, as though posing the question somehow overrode the prior day's discussion. Finally, I met Larry Bellows, an applied math major, who was also an Objectivist. That was a wonderful day. It was great to have a friend who shared my values, was extremely intelligent, and was a really nice guy. Still later, I met Roger Donway, a philosophy major and an Objectivist. Finally, a friend outside of math and science and a very well-read Objectivist with a wide-ranging knowledge of the humanities. Roger was also a good guy, though he was tough on anyone who did not know what they were talking about. As I said, he was a good guy. Roger's older brother Walter was also an Objectivist and made an occasional appearance and he had an impressive friend who was Iranian. When Larry, Roger, and I were juniors, Roger introduced us to a freshman Objectivist with a very quick and keen mind, David Kelley. In the remainder of that year and my senior year, I spent many happy hours in conversation with Roger and David. Larry and I very often ate together and talked then.

After graduating, I returned home to Tulsa and expected to be drafted before summer's end due to the Vietnam War. Somehow, I was not. So, in the Fall, I started graduate studies in physics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. In October, I received my order for induction, which was changed to give me a report date of 15 June 70. I studied hard for the year and took all of my final exams despite them being made optional due to the Vietnam War protests that had frightened the faculty. After Basic Training at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO, I was sent to Ft. Polk, LA for Light Arms Infantry Advanced Training. After a week at home, I went to Vietnam. While there, I was at Quang Tri Combat Base and then Camh Ranh Bay, for 13 months, since I extended my tour in order to get an early out from the army. In Feb 72, I returned to CWRU to finish my Ph. D. in physics working with my excellent thesis advisor, Prof. Richard Hoffman. I investigated the surface magnetization of nickel single crystal surfaces using Mossbauer emission spectroscopy and Auger electron spectroscopy. While a graduate student, I met my wife, Anna Palka, who was then a microbiologist at the Rainbow Baby and Children's Hospital. She then got a M.S. in biology and started work as a lab technician in medical research. I then had a postdoctoral fellowship.

I moved on to the Naval Surface Warfare Center in White Oak, MD, where I worked with a fine team headed by Dr. Ron Lee to develop the Surface Evaluation Facility there. I worked on high-energy density batteries, corrosion problems, amorphous materials, sensors, coatings, composite materials, energetic materials, and developing surface analysis techniques, for 10 years. While there, I worked with my good friend Dr. Francisco Santiago, who will not call himself an Objectivist, though that is what he really is. Anna went to Pharmacy School at the Univ. of Maryland and got her degree despite having our 3 daughters. I moved to Martin Marietta Laboratories in Baltimore, in 1990, where I worked on surface contamination, adhesion, sensor electronics, interfacial reactions, rocket motor problems, and infrared sensor distortion correction problems. Just short of six years, Lockheed Martin closed the Baltimore Labs down. I bought up much of the surface analysis equipment, some microscopes, two mass spectrometers, and much vacuum equipment to set up my independent materials analysis laboratory in 1995. We now provide materials characterization services to a large number of commercial firms and some government agencies and universities. We offer surface analysis, thermal analysis, microscopy, electrochemistry, mass spectroscopy, and some mechanical testing for failure analysis, quality control, process and product development, consulting, and expert witness services. Fortunately, my staff scientists and engineers are an excellent team.

President Bush to Continue

President Bush has won both the majority of the votes and sufficient states to win the Electoral College. This is a good result, but his program includes not only good goals, but also some very bad goals. Some of the very bad goals are very popular with many of his voters. As a man who loves the complete panoply of our freedoms, I will have much to do to encourage the wise programs and to block the irrational ones.

In his victory speech today, President Bush put his emphasis on his good goals. He vowed again to be resolute in fighting the terrorists and in helping Afghanistan and Iraq, to simplify the tax laws, and to reform Social Security with privatized retirement funds. These are great goals.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, while congratulating President Bush on his re-election, stated the need to renew the effort to solve the problem of Palestine. The only solution I can see is that there is a need to so invigorate the economies of the nearby states of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt that those societies are eager to invite the Palestinians into their countries to help them fill out their own workforces. This clearly can only be accomplished in the long run and requires that the people of those countries make a serious effort to improve their governments and add dynamism to their economies by injecting laissez faire capitalism.

President Bush understands this and he hopes Iraq will be the first example of such an Arab and Muslim state. This will take time, but the effect on the neighboring countries, if it is successful, will be huge. The recalcitrant, thug-filled Sunni triangle will have to be suppressed with sufficient force to allow this. The Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south will have to be given sufficient autonomy that their regions can prosper and serve as examples to the Sunni population of what they could accomplish as producers rather than as thugs. We should help the Kurdish and Shiite areas to prosper by providing more security and economic help in their areas and waiting for the Sunnis to get the message.

With his increased support in the Senate and the House, President Bush should move to make the tax decreases permanent so business planning can be freed of the worry of the rates shooting up again soon. Some of the $600 billion in overseas earnings of American-based multinational companies should be coming home in the next several years now that the tax to be paid for bringing it home will drop greatly. This will generate much business investment and many more jobs in the U.S. Reductions in the capital gains taxes that President Bush has indicated he wants should also help to make our now vigorous economy become still more vigorous. We can then respond to the need for more productive workers by increasing the number of highly educated and skilled people that we allow to immigrate to the U.S. This will generate still more growth and jobs, without being a social services burden to anyone. It also provides more workers to spread the Social Security tax over to support the Baby Boomers in their retirement. We need badly to give the public school system more competition. This is the most practical way to begin its badly needed reform. The better investment climate, stronger incentive to earn income, and the stronger work-force will make it easier to reform the Social Security debacle. This is not to say that we should wait until these economy-boosters have already produced their effects before starting the privatization of Social Security. We should carefully explain all of these plans to Americans and enlist their support in this new vision of a freer and richer society. Privatized Social Security will add still more investment money to the economy and make the new investment holders more responsible and knowledgeable with respect to business. I believe that President Bush understands how such a coordinated plan fits together and he needs to start making this clear to the people.

On the bad side, President Bush's re-election was accompanied by a great many propositions that are said by their supporters to protect the sanctity of marriage. These measures are small-minded and irrational. I will soon write commentaries on homosexual and bisexual freedom of conscience. I will build upon a foundation of freedom of conscience and why we must welcome expressions of individual conscience whether we wish to make the same choice ourselves or not. These issues are frightening to many and receive too little rational discussion because people fear the irrational response of others. Oftentimes, that response is ugly. President Bush is willing to take the lead in many difficult situations, but his fundamentalist Christian side does not allow him to do so on some issues. He is not likely to be very vigorous in promoting these issues, since they are hurtful and I do not think the President likes to hurt people. We should watch vigilantly, however, since we know that some cohorts do not mind in the least pointlessly hurting others, though they call themselves followers of the gentle Jesus.

The subject of abortions is also one subject to passions and a strong polarization of some Christians with respect to the majority of the population. Most people are resolved to leave the choice of giving birth or aborting to the pregnant woman. This is as I believe it should be. However, this issue is not a trivial one and it does carry with it an issue of freedom of conscience that cuts two ways. Just as government should not deny a woman the right to an abortion, neither should government take money from those who view abortion as murder and provide it to the poor to pay for their abortions. Government should not be playing any role in this issue except to see to it that neither side uses force against the other. There should be a live and let live policy. Oops! No, in this context, I have to say a policy of free choice must reign. There really is no other practical choice here.

We must watch our civil liberties closely even as we fight the war on terrorism or the war on organized crime. It took centuries to secure the right to be free from unreasonable searches. The Patriot Act allows searches of our homes without us knowing it with a court order. We must see to it that this provision is not abused. We have already largely lost the hard-won right to our property without unreasonable seizure to such recent laws as environmental laws, organized crime laws, and the desire to increase the tax base by accommodating a private enterprise. We do not similarly want to lose our right to have a free trial. If an American is caught with the Taliban, I believe it wise to see to it that he is tried in the manner that any American accused of a crime is tried. Our right to trial was won too hard to let it go under any circumstance. That right does not apply, however, to non-citizens who are or have attacked us.

On many fronts, we must be vigilant in defense of our rights. Our Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness require that we have great freedom to make the many choices required for us to be competent managers of our own lives. Unless a very strong rational argument can be made for depriving an individual of this very wide ranging freedom of choice in any aspect, neither government nor any combination of people have the right to take away any choice. We must always err on the side of freedom and never on the side of apparent convenience. We must never be afraid to demand a good reason when someone proposes to limit our freedom of thought or any action other than the initiated use of force against others. Not even if they say that they do not need to justify themselves to us. Well, no, they do not if we are discussing what color suit they are wearing, their choice of hobbies, or even whom they love. But, they must have a justifying rational argument to back up their use of force to attain their ends. If they do not, then one is justified in using force to protect those of one's values that they have initiated an attack against. Better that we be willing to rationally evaluate the actions we take with respect to others than have to constantly respond with force to repel force. That makes for a very ugly society and quickly leads to the end of civilized life. We have so much to trade freely with one another and to our mutual advantage, that this civilized minimal use of force leads us to a much richer and more secure life.

The Politics of Benevolence

Why do many well-meaning people think that it is a cruel world in which government does not lend a helping hand to others as a constant and primary function? Primarily this conviction arises from a combination of two premises. The first is that the world is inherently cruel and will bash and batter the most rational and purposeful individual sometime in their life until they cannot possibly recover on their own. The second is that many individuals are not sufficiently well-endowed with intelligence and character that they can achieve the success in life that we, the elite, have achieved.

The first premise is essentially that the cards in life are stacked against everyone. People who believe this are pessimists and there are some such people. But, those individuals who are very pessimistic are generally in no position to help others much. They, like everyone else, will be knocked down by the many trials of life. Those with some optimism in their outlook rise again to face the constant challenge of life. The real pessimist will likely refuse to get up one day after being knocked down. But pessimism comes in degrees and some people have little enough to get up most of the time and may feel they need to help others afflicted by this view worse than they are. If this is one's worldview, the issue is too all-encompassing to be addressed here today.

Most of the people who want to deliver alms to the needy by using the force of government do so because they have a low opinion of the ability and character of many of their fellow humans. A disproportionate fraction of these people seem to hold this opinion in strong correlation with their own wealth, income, and education. If you are college-educated, then you are more likely to support Kerry, while if you are high-school educated, you are more likely to support Bush. The wealthy suburbs of most of the large cities of the northeast and West coasts are strong Kerry neighborhoods. The less well-off small towns and rural areas support Bush. Every four years for the last several Presidential elections, the Democratic Party convention had much wealthier delegates than did the Republican convention. Yet, the Democratic Party is eager and willing to vote higher taxes upon those with greater incomes. Why? Because the party leadership with its wealth and higher education has a low opinion of most other Americans and yet they believe in the mantra of equality.

Now, this has some very interesting consequences. First, they look at the African-Americans and the Hispanic-Americans and convince themselves that they need their help on a broad group basis. Apparently, they judge them to be incompetent and unable to compete on an equal basis. Now, if they thought this was just because these groups may be hurt by often living in areas with bad schools, then one would expect them to address that issue with all the tools available. These would include a welcome to school voucher programs and a demand for more rigorous teachers and courses. The most they ever seek is more money to be pumped into schools which are often well-funded already, but badly managed. Fundamental reforms of public schools are opposed vigorously. In conversations with many elite, liberal Democrats, I have learned that the reason they want programs to offer special assistance to the African-Americans and the Hispanic-Americans is because they believe that these groups are inferior in intelligence and character. For public consumption, they claim instead that this is because these groups are still suffering from victimization. Some of the elite believe this propaganda themselves, but many do not. If I were of one of these groups, I would be furious at the insult whether with respect to being inferior or being unable to rise above victimhood.

What are the practical consequences of being treated as though one is in need of special government assistance by virtue of being from a group classed as either inferior or mired in long-term victimhood? The consequences to one's ability to develop a self-reliant and self-confident character are very erosive. Every time one fails, as most of us do from time to time, one has a ready-made excuse to blame the failure on others. But, the way to success is to think about how one erred and fix it and try again. Or maybe it was just bad timing and one simply needs to try again at the right moment. An example of the latter might be starting a travel business just weeks before 9/11. In any case, one has to believe in one's own ability and the resilience of one's character, and that these make a big difference.

Americans graduated from the public schools are not in general the best educated people in the world. Most Americans are not very knowledgeable about how to lead productive lives when they finish their formal educations. What we excel at is in becoming competent with our on-the-job training. Because of that, by the time we are in our 30s, we are the most competent people in the world. This happens because we teach ourselves and we have colleagues who teach us. It happens because we have confidence that we can do it. We do not allow a fair share of this confidence to those minority groups we curse with Affirmative Action for the wanting. When they achieve a goal, neither we nor they are entirely sure that they achieved it by virtue of their effort or by virtue of a lowering of the bar. This is a terrible way to undercut the effort of whole groups of Americans. Many very capable African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans of my acquaintance really resent this doubt and more and more are hoping that the Affirmative Action programs will go away. They are sure they can compete as equals. Everyone else should be willing to give them this opportunity.

Another problem is that the higher taxes the Democratic Party elite want are generally leveled on higher incomes, but still start in the middle-income brackets. They hide this fact by trying to define the middle-class income upper end much lower than it really is. Then they say the middle class is getting smaller, when what has really happened is that more people are simply making more income than they have defined as appropriate to the middle class. This might be taken to mean that they want a poor middle class! These punitive tax rate schemes have the effect of making it harder for those who are not rich to become rich. The rich often do not mind this at all. We see a graphic illustration of this in their refusal to allow inexpensive housing to be built in their neighborhoods, to require 3-acre lots for homes built in huge areas of some counties, to require large green areas, backing for urban renewal elimination of inexpensive housing, and refusal to allow trash incinerators, gas stations, and any commercial businesses near them. On the other hand, disproportionate numbers of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans want to achieve a comfortable status. More and more of them are starting to realize that the Democratic programs of high taxes will stand in their way. The property-holder concept of President Bush does make sense for them and everyone else, provided one believes that they and most other people can manage their own lives and their own investments wisely. The doors to wealth will really be much more open with further income tax reductions, less punitive restrictions on investment money for small businesses, and the development of personally-held retirement investments as a part of the solution to the Social Security crisis.

Curiously enough, the logic of the Democratic Party elite should mean that they will want to transfer considerable wealth from themselves to the generally less well-off high-school educated Republicans. More and more, Hispanic- and African-American individuals should see that the route to better education and the acquisition of real, personal wealth is through the policy of self-management fostered more by the Republican Party. The remaining Democratic Party elitists will be committed to yielding power to the Republicans and being unable to make the government make them transfer their money to the Republican beneficiaries. How ironic! The Republican Party will be truly benevolent to these elitists by allowing them to keep what they have earned.

Unfortunately, while it is clear that a still small, but larger portion of the African- and Hispanic-American population is coming to understand where their interests really lie, there may not yet be enough of them who understand to return President Bush to office today. What a horrible tragedy that will be. The elitists may win another victory, but their days are numbered! Their house of cards cannot stand. George Bush may be a bit ahead of his time and he may not have been an adequately eloquent spokesman, but he is wise enough to see much further into the future than he is given credit for doing. Vastly wiser than his unworthy opponent, Senator Kerry.

The Presidential Election

The two contenders for President are very different men. One is a resolute, principled man whose beliefs stem from a mix of pre-Enlightenment Christian religion and the Enlightenment view that we live by reason and this requires freedom of choice. He sees most Americans as basically competent to live their lives and to make their own choices. He knows that he cannot be successful in doing this for us in most things, but feels obliged to guide us to be virtuous in some Christian beliefs. He is a man who has faced the practical choices of managing in the free market economy, where he learned something about how business investment creates jobs and produces the great wealth of America. America has managed to survive this kind of belief mixture for a very long time. The other is a man committed to socialism and a post-modernist view. To him, we are largely programmed by circumstances and race and are generally characterized as victims or oppressors. Few of us are able to intelligently make the most critical choices in our lives. We need a few elite leaders, most especially him, to provide us constant direction in making these choices. He sees us as children dominated by envy of those who have more income and property than ourselves and promises to distribute these more equally. He would have us become more like France and Germany, where we trade off a more dynamic and rich society for one with more equality. He has experience only in government and working for non-profit outfits. He believes that government creates jobs and that any tax cut is a gift government gives to those who earned the taxed income or property.

It is widely believed that the war on terror is the most important issue of our time. While it is very important, I am not convinced that it is as important an issue as the excessive scope and size of our present governments. Nonetheless, the critical nature of this job and the fact that the President is the Commander-in-Chief direct us to examine which contender for our vote is best able to provide for our security. Both men have military experience and served in Reserve units. Kerry's was called to active duty and he served in Vietnam. Upon returning to the States, he not only opposed the war, but he actively proclaimed the moral superiority of the North Vietnamese communists cause. He used the public attention he received to build a political career and he has been in public service ever since. While a senator, now in his 4th term, he repeatedly sought reductions in defense and intelligence budgets while the cold war was very much in progress. Over and over, he sought reductions far beyond anything his more right-minded colleagues thought reasonable. As President, Bush has shown that he is resolute in pursuing terrorists and in putting pressure on those evil regimes who support them to cease doing so. He has delegated the theater responsibilities to commanders on the ground in a manner we were not so fortunate to see in Vietnam. The results have been better as a result. He is a pragmatic man, who believes that all people want to be free. He is learning from his mistakes, as are his commanders on the ground. Those commanders trust him to be resolute in his purpose, as do our allies. Kerry does not trust military commanders, so he will never heed their advice or give them the necessary power to conduct the efforts on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. Given his history as a traitor during the Vietnam War and his record of bad judgment in almost 20 years as a senator, our military leaders will not be able to respect and trust him. This is a huge burden to add to their shoulders. Kerry's disrespect for the brave men of Afghanistan and Iraq who are trying hard to create democracies with vastly more freedom than those countries have ever had is also a terrible problem. The same applies to our allies, whose efforts are not trivial, given the limited war-making ability that most of them have. Furthermore, Kerry cannot really regard the terrorists as evil and cannot muster the resolve that comes with that evaluation. He sees them as victims, who have been programmed by poverty and environment to hate us. He believes that hatred is not without considerable justification. This is not conducive to a commitment to the vigorous pursuit of terrorists. Long ago he showed us that he was little repelled by the terrorism of the North Vietnamese.

While the defense of our country is one of the core purposes validating our Federal government, the greatest issue we always face in the modern era is that the many levels of government not infringe our daily exercise of choice in managing our own lives. In this, among the most important issues is the maintenance of our right to choose how we will use our time. The sum of how we use our time is our life. Most of our time is devoted to the production of income and the acquisition of property. We should be very reluctant to select the candidate for president who is entirely wrong-headed about how the economy and private enterprise work. Kerry has little respect for those who produce. He thinks they are cows to be milked to provide the money necessary to provide the government programs necessary to sustain most of us. President Bush understands that earning a living makes a man a hero. He wants to make it easier for us to achieve as much as we can as the producers of the unheralded American wealth. He has fought hard to achieve tax cuts which have reduced the punitive nature of the income tax. He also has worked hard to lessen the tax burdens on business investment and to allow companies to bring profits earned overseas home. The lowering of personal tax rates, corporate tax rates, and the rate on money from overseas operations will allow entrepreneurs to create many jobs. He understands that foreign companies have created many jobs in America and that American companies with operations overseas are dynamic concerns who create more jobs here in America. We are growing at a rate much faster than Canada, France, Germany, and Japan as a result of his tax reductions. He still has much more on his agenda, including more tax cuts for personal and business income and investment. He also understands that the tax law is much too complicated and that taxes and planning for their avoidance rob us of much of our productivity.

President Bush is willing to recognize that the Social Security program is failing. He knows that the future costs have to be contained or America will suffer the French disease of extremely burdensome taxes, slow growth, and high unemployment. Kerry wants to follow the French example and imagines he can avoid the consequences. If Bush manages to push the privatization of the social security program forward, this will have a huge impact on freeing Americans of the sense that socialism is sometimes good. By making almost every American a property and investment holder, we will have a great decrease in the politics of envy practiced by Kerry. I can think of nothing more important. If we do not fix this social security problem, we will have a horrific tax burden falling on those who will be workers in 20 years. I have heard many complaints about the 3.5% of GDP debt we have now (and it is too high), but the debts and the taxes of the future will be huge in comparison, if we do not now reform social security. For 20 years, this problem has been clear and politicians have ignored it. Bush has shown far more honesty in recognizing it than any other President and has the resolve to tackle the problems he sees needing his effort. Kerry has no practical plan for social security. The privatization plans Bush favors will put an incredible boost of investment money into the economy as well. Our private sector will become even more robust and productive. This will provide well enough for the Baby Boomers in retirement and allow their children to be able to count on a means to retire. There is a huge differential on this critical issue between the candidates.

It is clear to me that President Bush is much wiser than Kerry and has the resolve to lead the nation in the right direction on most issues. He is wrong on issues such as that the government has a role to play in sanctifying marriages and some other issues steming from his religion, but on many issues, he understands that the people are adequately qualified to make their own choices. I will have more to say about his errors of judgment at a later time. If he wins office again, it is our duty to oppose his errors with letters to our Representatives and Senators. I will do my part. On the other hand, Kerry thinks we all need constant guidance and assistance. To him, we are each and every one the prodigal child. I find this offensive. I have long been an adult. Aren't you an adult or planning soon to be one? What could be greater than to manage one's own life as a free self-entrepeneur?