Bumper sticks and misunderstood selfishness.

You know the bumper-stickers you see all the time, you know with the "one human family" on it where as soon as you see it you know a liberal is sitting in the car. I wonder if they ever think that terrorists who intentionally target children in Isreal are part of their united "family".

Another good one that caught my eye (on the same car, I know it's crazy. It's not like most people who have nothing intelligent to say have big mouths, or in this case alot of stickers.) "The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all." -Unknown. I can see why someone who would not give us context would be unknown, because then he would have to stand up to reason. Let's see how well he holds up.

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all. Indeed of course that would depend on what your view on the world is, personally I hold the tenets of rational egoism (i.e. Objectivism the philosophy of Ayn Rand) and human life (my life) as the standard of good, nothing much is needed to secure that other than the freedom to do what I want without violating the rights of others. It certainly doesn't need to be on my head to save every person out in the middle of anywhere, a slave to the suffering of those around me. My good would be secured just fine as long as I had the police and government to mercilessly impose the standard of freedom on those who would attempt to do me harm.

However if the good were to be the equality of a nation, then you would have to use force (i.e. the violation of rights in the case of those who did not initiate its use.) to secure it. That is violence and destruction. In fact more evil has been caused on this earth by systems claiming to be selfless and good, communism, socialism and theocratic dictatorships (they wish to impose the will of god not man) however the system deemed most selfish and egocentric, seems to only bring prosperity. This to the student of objectivism is no suprise, seeing as every human is an individual and a system that allows him to be free and profit from production will lead to prosperity for all individuals involved it in the poorest in our country live greater than the middle class in most 3rd world countries. Whereas governments that fail to acknowledge individual rights dismiss individual humans as statistics to be used in economic equations, to be interchangibly assigned and allocated to produce materials they don't want to produce or forced into working a place where they recieve poor pay and satisfaction. Is it any wonder these systems fail consistently wherever they are tried? This statement could be used to justify creating equality as all communist regimes have tried to create it, by brute force, gulags, and the continual violation of other nations rights, since they do not value their own citizens right to be free what makes you think they desire for ours to as well? In fact they could say that the good would be for all people to be equal and try to enforce it at the point of a sword to "secure" it.

The good can't be something people just magically feel, if so we would see Americas and prosperious places springing up everywhere all the time, because everyone wants to do good, liberals who march on to try to impose health care for equality have been presented with evidence of its inefficiency countless times it fails because it violates individual rights, but still they press on because they think it is ultimately the good. How many blood baths have been justifed by spouting selfish objectives? Hitler resorted to crying for the glory of the race and nation, Stalin for the proles, Mao against richer (read selfish via marxist lens) land owners (who were mostly poor peasents with enough money to you know feed their family and pay taxes.), Lennon for hatred against imperialism using zero-sum (read false to those who know) economic thinking. The list goes on into the beginning of time when the first witchdoctor cried that his tribe was better due to the will of god or the other who said his tribe was better thanks to the color of their skin. Not one motivated by making only himself rich, though they may have secretly been motivated by it, it could not properly be called selfishness in any rational sense because a. their action benefits several others who without which looting could not be done (that's a group many more than one self) b. ultimately it required the sacrifice of others i.e. they did not gain and earn their wealth with their selves, this is what I deem selfless. Whether an action is selfish or not does not determine whether it is good. Period. However thanks to Ayn Rand ethics has gone been rescued from the depths of subjectivism, both individual, group and godly. It has been transformed into a science now with time man will finally come to understand what is good or not through his rational faculty and this ambiguity of "the good" will be erased from human memory. But the time where this is recognized univerally has not come yet therefore we must endure until our fellow humans see the beauty of a system designed around reality, rationality and human life.

I usually do not allow myself to run on a tangent, even if it is relevent. The focus was on the bumper sticker and I daresay I put far more thought into it than the fool who stuck it to their car.

There is a site i'm usually fond of visiting know as the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler which is usually a good site to see anger expressed in rants, however today I saw a post that was about as full of indignation as Ted Kennedy crying about some lady who couldn't afford medicine. The problems begin when unfortunately 2 officers lives were lost in the line of duty closing local businesses for a spell when the bodies were found, for businesses this is a tiny loss bareable due to the serivce of those men who protect us. However memorials were held, with what I would think were the funds taxed out of the citizens which is not necessarily bad in itself seeing as how most people would wish to memorialize the death of good men. However a business choose after the memorial where it was closed for a couple of saturdays. Restaurants don't run on air though so after tabulating the loss in profits to the total of $9,000 dollars asked to be reembersed in a letter I quote "Although this is miniscule in comparison to two officers losing their lives, it did have a major financial impact on our store." and this is probably true. I don't see a problem with someone asking for a loss in business profit. It's sad that 2 police died, but this does not happen in a vaccum and life does not stop instantly, what police fight for is to insure humans can continue living their lives despite the existence of those who would put it on hold. Also the police could have rembursed 5,000 dollars by dismissing a couple of fines for broken alarms. Yet somehow someone asking for lost profits is probably the most evil person on earth next to Ahmednejad, provoking talk such as,

"Did it ever occur to the selfish shitbird owner that maybe the cordoning served to protect him as well? Did it ever occur to the bastard that maybe the two officers had been among the ones dispatched to his restaurant when his fucked up, discount, Wally-World alarm system screwed up? Did it ever occur to the obnoxious whale turd that those two officers, through their duty, had served to protect him as well until their lives were brutally ended by the scum that they were trying to protect him, among others, from?

Did it ever once occur to the egotist Idiotarian imbecile that life comes with risks, and that there are times when you can blame others and times when you can’t?"

Indeed even though Eric Rainwater knew his request was miniscule it did have a major impact on his store. While it may have been in bad taste, and since corporate gave him an asschewing and he lost alot of customers (wait how is securing a massive loss selfish again?) it should also be recognized that the police used his taxed funds to protect him when you become a police officer you do not hold a superior position above your fellow man by the selection of your profession we are glad you do what you do but you decided to do it and you get paid for it. It's that simple. Plus would they still do it if they wern't paid? Or if they didn't have patrol cars (paid for with taxes) or guns (again with taxes)? All of these were paid for to insure our safety, some men select this feild as one where they want to make their money. Again the reality is the processions caused a substantial loss to a business, which he asked to be paid back nicely since it was his money too that was used to insure the safety of the community. The last sentence can be used to virtually justify any action since there are sometimes you can't blame people. You know even if they shut down the street your business works on they still can't be blamed for it because someone died so all of our lives should stop and we should start loving one another and not acknowledging damaging losses. Then we get his with this little gem.

"What else? Suing the City for loss of business during road construction? Suing G-d for inclement weather?"

Indeed if god would ever come see me I would give him a piece of my mind over all of the natural disasters to ever occur in known history resulting in the loss of human life. But for the life of me he hasn't visited me and I can't find him anywhere, I find this inexcusable since I am in the phone book. I know it's appropriate to sue the city in cases where business is lost due to road contruction, first of all because the land isn't bought at market and usually has to be "bought" (i.e. they tell you to take the price or throw you in jail or just cease it) at a deflated market price. They use your money to build the road, which they told you to pay or go to jail. So damn it I want the money they cost me by building it where I didn't want them to with the money I didn't want them to use.

I have an idea, since you hate selfishness so much why don't you give up your selfish view that all individuals should be selfless? Confused? It's simple, consider what your actually saying before you say it. When you invoke selfishness as an indication of evil you are doing in effect the same thing that every communist, socialist, enviromentalist, liberal and jihadi did to justify his actions. You can't escape that everything you value you value with your self, some of those things are very dear to you, your children, your lively-hood, your country. All of your values are selfish, if you wish to be an honest unselfish person, put your children on the street, give up your lively-hood and your country. You won't? Why? That's the unselfish (read through virtually ever single worldview ever expressed since the beginning of humanity except objectivism: the moral thing to do.) remember you selfishly value your individual rights, why don't you give those up too? Since you hate terrorists so much let them kill you, after all that is the greatest sacrifice (read loss) you could perform and the most unselfish act you could commit.

Still you will not? Well then your a hypocrite. Like every liberal who wants to do good by destroying capitalism yet destroys the foundation of what good is in the process you have given them more ammunition by your concession that the good is the unselfish. So next time they want to impose a control on business remember to be selfish and fight for what's right.