The first question to answer is how altruism allegedly supports freedom.  How can a system of self-sacrifice lead to a system of individual liberty?

For Comte Altruism meant the discipline and eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity. As thus understood, altruism involves a conscious opposition not only to egoism (whether understood as excessive or moderate self-love), but also to the formal or theological pursuit of charity and to the atomic or individualistic social philosophy of 17th-18th century liberalism, of utilitarianism, and of French Ideology.

My notes while reviewing this thread (I read every post except for I skipped John Dailey's):

William Scott Scherk mischaracterizes my post 25 and seems to imply that I'm a sociopath.  From the perspective of a socialist, I would appear to be so.  From the perspective of a capitalist, I care more about them than most anyone in the world, and they could not think of me as such.  My post was all about taking individualism/NOIF to the extreme, where jails are funded through voluntary means rather than taxation.

Jon Letendre considers my proclamation ("You disgusting pitiful hypocrite.") towards Neil Parille as abuse.  Reading it over again now, I chose the wrong words "pitiful" and "hypocrite".  On the other hand, the word "disgusting": I was disgusted by his post of socialist slippery speak.  Overall, whether his impact on the world is disgusting to me was unknown to me, as Michael SK pointed out...  so my proclimation was over the top.  Instead I should have blatenly stated that his statements were socialist slippery speak, and asked him to reveal what he thinks the government should do and whether he thinks people should be forced to help others.  Now looking over some of Neil Parille's posts and articles, would I be correct to describe Neil as a Christian Egalitarian?

Michael SK wrote in post 80:

"I will go further, however. If I ever learned of a person eating around a starving baby that was not his, with no other adult around, and letting that baby die, I would take very severe measures against that person. In that context, this whole "all-or-nothing" issue of rights just doesn't have very much meaning. What kind of world is that where the adult's property rights would supersede a basic survival need of an infant, when no other recourse was available to the infant? An infant is not an adult and there is a minimum responsibility involved."

So there I think was the admission that MSK in fact does support forceful redistribution of property.

In post 99 MSK quoted Rand: "The government must protect the child, as it would any other citizen."  Then went on making points using this quote, performing the exact "Take a sentencences peice by piece, dropping contentual meaning" (paraphrased) that Joe Rowlands criticized MSK on.

In post 104 MSK said:

"I stand by Rand's words. Citizens have the right to life. Starvation (under the conditions discussed) is abuse."

So MSK takes a "positive rights" position, where an incompitent's needs must be provided for by others, or reworded from one of the "others" perspective: Its your duty to provide for the needs of others.

In post 119 Luke Setzer said (on letting needy beggars who claim that he has the duty to help them):

"Trust me, I know myself and that cold, black space of accumulated rage that my heart harbors."

Haha, Luke I feel the same way.

MSK post 236:

"There are two fundamental rights colliding here, and that makes this issue more complicated than it seems.  Once again, I am not arguing for curtailing anybody's rights, but in protecting very basic ones in emergencies.  Meanwhile, see if you wish to look into children's rights, especially the right-to-life."

So here MSK does identify the contradiction that positive rights contradicts natural rights.  But he does not recognize that Objectivist's "right to life" is not a positive right (duty for everyone to take care of other's needs), that instead it is a negative right (one has the right to do whatever one wants within the confines of his own property and only with consentual use of another's property).

In Post 261, William Scott Scherk said:

"I should note again then, my only point in this long thread. Cast in the form of a question, it is "What about the ick factor?" In other words, how does objectivism avoid boners like Holcberg's -- how does objectivism avoid being associated with 'malignant hearts,' even sociopathic tendency? do objectivists give a shit about the ick factor?"

My answer is this: That its simply a fact of life that some people live on the fringe of health and die.  Socialists (positive rightists) will use this to make Objectivists look bad in a dishonest way through mischaracterization, manipulation of meanings of words, and other dirty logical tricks.  Landon Erp responded similarly.

In Post 272, C. Jeffery Small said

"While I agree with Rand's observation that the purpose of a code of ethics (i.e., a moral system) is principally to provide guidance under normal living conditions, it is my contention that emergency situations, rather than falling outside the bounds of ethical consideration, are fully appropriate for consideration and necessary to test the boundaries, compleatness and appropriateness of one's moral positions. If an ethical system cannot address a reasonable hypothetical emergency, then it is a sign that the system has not been fully fleshed out. Too often, Objectivists are prepared to dismiss these examples with the wave of the hand, and I think this has been a serious impediment to the further development of Objectivist ethics."

I totally agree.

In post 287 Jason Quintana said that MSK said:

"I guarantee that an intelligent (and common-sense) approach to ensuring care for stray children will do much toward Objectivism being accepted by the public at large, rather than being for a small subculture that gets neurotic at times and bickers itself to death."

It is fundamental to Objectivism that: One should not obligated to provide for the needs of others.  From the Objectivist position, those who do not agree to this are of course enemies...  it may very well be the case that Objectivists are a minority until those in the frontier have exceptional success and greatly increase in numbers...  which will take generations.  Altering a fundamental premise of the philosophy for the sake of being able to conscript more followers is simply suicide to the philosophy, and given that this premise results in prosperity, its alteration would degenerate the philosophy to the same standing as humanism/egalantarianism.

On post 308, Mike Erickson reviewed:

Lessons learned from this thread:

We have established that what we have the RIGHT to do is not always the MORAL thing to do.

Our ACTIONS are defined by our MORALITY. RIGHTS define CONSTRAINTS on action but say nothing about the actions we SHOULD take.

Observation: For the purpose of convincing people of the value of objectivism [ACTIVISM] examples of RIGHTS should be chosen such that they do not illustrate behaviour that 99% of humans would judge to be immoral.

Well said Mike.

One thought I have resulting from threads like this:  Debate is generally to be civil.  But once name calling starts... it is not necessarily true that the first person who called the other the name is a "bad" person.  You have to look through the debate for yourself, and determine for yourself whether each participant is your friend or foe, and you may find that the first to insult is actually your friend and that you feel the same way towards the opponent.  The passion of name calling results from one identifying that the other's position, whether it is due to logical error or conflict in goals, will result in significant negative consequences to his own goals.

Welcome over to the Dark Side, Michael, I've been expecting you!

Re article by Rowlands:

>>>>Politics is a branch of ethics.  It is defined by the ethical system at its root<<<<

Only if you stretch 'ethics' to include an exotic, pragmatic means version of Utliitarianism. In other words, I can easily define the US Constitution to mean , "Because the ends of life are incommensurate, all we can do is to devise, politically speaking, a useful, user-friendly format upon which citizens might peacefully debate and decide which ends serve them best".

In other words, no ethical 'good' is prioritized as an end. All we can hope for is a usable means".

The 'system' is moral to the extent that it allows full expression of divergent ends that its citizens clearly possess.

In passing, those who desire to find an ethical end within the constitution are normally found on the usual Founding Father easter-egg hunt, thereby uncovering such nuggets of profundity as 'Govern best=govern least!!" Or, 'We love liberty! 'Self-evident truths!" Governing least means leaving  our slave prop-tee alone, we love our own liberty, we were just kidding about equal creation.

>>>Altruism is the ethical system that holds the well-being of others as the standard of good.<<<

I've never heard of altruism being called a 'system'. Rather, it's a personal ethical reflection that says we should help the needy. How this might get morphed into a 'system' is beyond my comprehension because it's never happened, anywhere, at any time. Is this some sort of a straw dog?

So thank you, Michael, for having pointed out the Kantian observation that we are hard-wired for altuism, based upon an innate empathy. So I suppose this is why he was called a 'witch-doctor?

That being the psychological case, I would suggest that it would give bullshit a bad name to argue out philosophical principles that are not grounded in what we know of human behavior and motivation.

But then again, 'Harry' could do it. After all , as I noted on OL, he totally fucked up 'perception' and sensation'. So expect anything from someone who can't even get the 101 psychobabble right.

Of course to say we're hard-wired for altruism doesn't exclude that we're wired for greed, too. This, I suppose, it what permits us to fight it out and assess 'merit' and 'deserving' of assistance--in other words, the truly needy by whatever standard.

In this sense, the political system of need is really a negotiated middle--ostensibly  not the struggle of opposites because each of us has two sides to begin with. So no, you can't realistically say that you're against altruism, because it's a part of who you are.

The best outcome, then,  is to understand that  others will employ your altruistic side against your own self-interest.

EM

Re Dean's Ick:  After thinking about it for a while I've decided that guardianship laws should be decided on a city government level.  This enables local cultures to enforce their own minimum provision requirements and outlaw their own viewpoints on what is unacceptable abuse.  Then at least families can potentially move to a local where overbearing government doesn't prevent them from doing something helpful for their own children that the mob mistakenly considers unhealthy.  Yes it does then allow strange cultures to do deplorable things to their children... but I would rather have this than not be able to let my healthy infant (who can turn his head noproblemo, no risk of suffication) sleep on his tummy.  Or be forced to make my child memorize some state or federal propaganda that they deem "essential education".