 Neither capitalism nor egoism nor minarchism nor romanticism is the essence of Objectivism. Anarchists may think that the essence of Rand is her politics, but compared to the essential nature of her epistemological method, which anarchists necessarily do not comprehend, her politics and her stands on other more concrete issues amount almost to mere accidents in the Aristotelian sense. Objectivism is the rejection of package deals and of stolen and floating and frozen concepts. Without the analysis of the contextual origin of individual concepts there is no such thing as Objectivism. The concept of rights would never arise if there were not some (potentially objective) third party to which at least one of the parties of a dispute could appeal. 
Ted Keer
The Concept of Rights and the Social Context
Obama is not a president. He just plays one on TV.
Ted Keer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Quotes/1558.shtml#4
Can you imagine the press running an article in 1939 saying that Hitler, speaking from Moscow, approves of FDR's decision not to allow increased immigration of Jews from Europe and hopes that FDR keeps his promise to turn back refugees? Without comment. With a straight face?
Ted Keer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/2549.shtml#0
[Steve Wolfer said,] "If you insist on changing all of the dominant philosophy of our culture all at once, you can't get there from here." Well, that's the dirty little secret of the Left, isn't it? Attacks on personal liberty (e.g., bans on foodstuffs and toilets that flush) and bizarre movements toward some utopia divorced from reality (gay marriage and rights for orangutans) can proceed as fast as our chubby little minds can imagine. But real solutions to real problems (allowing drilling in ANWR, slogging it out with the terror states) are forbidden because in reality such things take time to implement and to show results. The Left doesn't want anything that will actually work and hence will actually need time to work. It wants the immediate satisfaction of forbidding, of fiats, of a false sense of ethical superiority. Never actually wanting to arrive anywhere, the Left pretends it can close its eyes and click its heels, and not wishing to get there from here it need never expend the effort to depart.
Ted Keer
Would you register for the Objectivist party?
I'd go so far as to say that recognition of the invalidity of the stolen concept is Objectivism in its essence. Rand's ethics depends upon it - her identification of the concept of value depending upon the concept of life is an example. Attempts to deny her axiomatic concepts based upon more derivative ideas such as doubt are another example of the fallacy. Almost every denial of one of Rand's formulations is based upon the stolen concept.
Ted Keer
What is original to Objectivism
The wonder of Rand's thought is that it coheres. It self corrects. It is the only real and unapologetic attempt at systematization since Marxism, and the most noble since that of the Greeks. Rand's original theory of concept formation and her brilliant identification of the stolen concept stand around her system like a fence; keeping in the productive fruit of her and her spiritual predecessors, and expelling weeds from the garden of thought.
Ted Keer
What is Objectivism Defined As?
War is the default natural state of man, whether vendetta or inter-tribal. This state of nature can also be called anarchy, a fact which so-called anarcho-capitalists evade. Political freedom exists only within a polity, and a polity arises only through effort. The polity must establish its sovereign autonomy and must maintain it, by war, when necessary. Only historically ignorant or spoiled children born in the modern West have had the luck to evade this truth. Wars of conquest, like that of England against Ireland, are evil and to be avoided. War itself is a necessity of every free man's existence.
Ted Keer
http://www.solopassion.com/node/1671
You need to study ten years of primary sources and textbooks for every one year of studying philosophy actually to understand reality beyond a floating abstraction.
Ted Keer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Banter/0220_4.shtml#84
Making people say what they mean is not just half the battle, it is victory.
Ted Keer
Rebirth of Reason (http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/1742.shtml#12)
Objectivism is a philosophy which avers that knowledge is possible. Science is that knowledge, systematized and, when based on reason and observation, self-correcting.
Ted Keer
Rebirth of Reason
Yes, there is a Santa Claus, someone who distributes unconditional joy, and every day is Christmas. And Santa Claus is you.
Ted Keer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralForum/0741_2.shtml#50
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