So, too, objectivists fail to align themselves with Stoics like Marcus Aurelius -- who espoused self-mastery, defined as the harnessing of appetites by reason. Objectivists thus unmoor themselves from two-plus millennia of answers to uniquely human problems: e.g., how to get over on a Saturday night without feeling bad about it on Sunday morning.

For help in these questions we must turn to sources other than official objectivism. In this connection I’d note that my friend Neil Peart, who is familiar with objectivism and accepts much of it, has written an interesting album’s worth of lyrics on the mastery of appetites (Rush, “Hold Your Fire,” 1987). Neil considers how we must constrain, by thought, “those primal kinds of inner things” which would otherwise drive us to behave badly. The strength of these drives, the difficulty of braking them, brings up my final point.

If we desire by nature to do many things, we do not desire to do all these things in equal degree. Indeed, a keen observer will find it difficult not to conclude that by nature we want to have sex more than we want to be wise. Thus the proverb “Love is blind"; and thus too Nietzsche’s maxim: “Love is the state of mind in which man most decidedly views things as they are not.”

Objectivists will perhaps distinguish themselves from lower types of men by their heroism in sexual matters: by their honesty: by their nobility: by their rational animality: by their refusal to jump in bed with someone, as Jerome Tuccille once put it, “just because they like the shape of that person’s buttocks.” But why can't they just admit that such situations raise issues, or pose problems, precisely because all men by nature desire to fuck?

~Tom Welsh

Baltimore

Since my name is mentioned I feel I should defend myself, even though these are baseless accusations that Ed has yet to meet any burden of proof I invariably defend Bush, it's ridiculous that I'm even granting a discussion on this by responding, but a part of me wants to establish to third party observers I don't invariably defend our current President.

I have defended his foreign policy, and only the policy specifically that pertains to the decision to go to war in Iraq, I don't even agree with all of the particulars of his foreign policy, I could sit here and pick out every post here on RoR where I have in fact criticized Bush, but then again I'm not the one making the accusation so that's not my responsibility.

Please Ed, find me the post and the thread where I defended his actions that have eroded the fourth amendment? When did I defend warrantless wiretaps? Please provide the evidence or stop. This is getting tiresome and insulting. No more evasion, no more accusing others of emotional instability, back up your words or withdraw them.