Jamie's response to Ann Coulter's Article on John McCain - "I've Seen Enough Killing To Support Abortion" John McCain spoke a truth which should be engraved on the Washington Monument, to endure there despite his subsequent equivocation and the temporary insanity manifested by Ms. Coulter, who seems, like many Republicans, to have forgotten the Original Intent which gave rise to our freedoms. McCain's statement, about abortion, was: "Well, you know, there's another life involved in this issue - the woman's". The live, living, fully-formed and conscious adult woman involved should not be so easily forgotten by Ms. Coulter, who is one herself. Her position is traitorous not only to womankind, but to all Americans. If a woman has no right to determine the disposition of her own body, she has no rights at all and, by implication, neither does anyone else. To equate a fetus with a conscious, autonomous child who has been born and lives outside the body of another is to ignore reality and to devalue children as well as women. Until Ms. Coulter and other Republicans understand that -- and until they admit that to force continuation of pregnancy when an alternative exists, is a particularly hideous violation of individual rights -- they will sound like any other vicious collectivists, and will be as dangerous. I would remind Ms. Coulter of her own words: "Either it's a life or it isn't." Her irrationality consists of her failure to admit that the statement applies to the woman - and only to the woman.

Despite Ms. Coulter's vocation, she has a problem with English -- confusing a child with a fetus, the actual with the potential, and a woman with a broodmare. I am not a conservative or liberal; I'm an Objectivist - and am therefore the Constitutionalist which Ms. Coulter only pretends to be. Perhaps a little something in another language would help her understand what our Founding Fathers had in mind: "Laissez-faire!".

Jamie's Political Philosophy
I am an Objectivist, which means that I have a philosophy, which means: an integrated view of existence. I've adopted as a guide to thought and action the principles and axioms (two different things) of Objectivism, which holds as axiomatic that A is A and cannot be non-A, that therefore existence exists and that consciousness exists by which we perceive reality.

Two axioms: existence and consciousness and, therefore identity. If you and I cannot agree to those things, we cannot have a discussion since there will be no way to validate it and proof of a thing will not exist. I'll quote Ayn Rand here, because she was dedicated to clarity of expression; even her enemies acknowledge that. I quote her here because if we cannot agree on the following three paragraphs, we cannot have any sort of political/philosophical discussion. She said:

Existence exists - and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives, and that one exists (while) possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.

If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as a consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness

Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two - existence and consciousness - are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end. Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that IT exists and that you KNOW it.

Further,with regard to identity, Ayn said:
Whatever you choose to consider, be it an object, an attribute or an action, the law of identity remains the same. A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A. Or, if you wish it stated in simpler language: You cannot have your cake and eat it too." She further says "existence IS identity"; she does not say "existence HAS identity.

From there one goes to the principle that causality is best classified as a corollary of identity, 'corollary' being a self-evident implication of already established knowledge. Further, every entity has a nature; it is specific, noncontradictory, limited; it has certain attributes and no others; and everything must act in accordance with its nature

Further, and most important: "Consciousness presents itself as something specific - as a faculty of perceiving an object, not of creating or changing it. For instance, a child may hate the food set in front of him and refuse even to look at it. But his inner state does not erase his dinner. Leaving aside physical action, the food is impervious; it is unaffected by a process of consciousness as such, unaffected by anyone's perception or nonperception, memory or fantasy, desire or fury. The basic fact implicit in such observations is that consciousness, like every other kind of entity, acts in a certain way and only in that way. Existence, this principle declares, comes first. Things are what they are independent of consciousness - of anyone's perceptions, images, ideas, feelings. Consciousness, by contrast, is a dependent. Its function is not to create or control existence but to be a spectator: to look out, to perceive, to grasp that which is.

Okay, those are some fundamentals of Objectivism. There is much more. However, one must understand that Objectivism is serious philosophy, and all the joking around won't change the fact that when you discourse with an Objectivist, you are talking with someone who wishes to know the world and reality, who is dedicated to perceiving and declaring objective truth - not just as a talkshow claim, but as a way of life. Ayn Rand was a great mind totally dedicated to understanding the world and our place in it. She spent her whole life in that pursuit, never once deterred from it by anything or anyone. In other words, I can make what might seem to you like outrageous, unfounded statements that only some old-fashioned, right-winger would put forth. Such people do exist and do argue politics. I'm not one of them. I take intellectual pursuit seriously, most very especially when we're talking about America's future, I do so from the standpoint of an Objectivist, which is serious business, and I can back up what I say. Objectivism stresses fundamentals, which are arrived at by logic. Therefore, we can have no discussion about anything unless we can agree on the above basic Aristotelian-Randian premises. In other words, to be a serious intellect taken seriously, one cannot state with any degree of respect in return, that the meaning of "is" is one thing one day and something else the next.

One of Objectivism's important spokespersons said, "The worst thing one person can to do another is to instill in his victim a sense of the irrational". Victim is the key word. I would never do that to anyone and most people wouldn't, Objectivist or no. So in argumentation, we must first agree on the above, because every single discussion will, I warrant, get back to those fundamentals. It always does. Either there is an objective reality -- or not. Either there is a train coming at you while you are standing on the track, denying it, or there is not. If there is, the denial will be short-lived. Ayn Rand did not want people to be short-lived, nor to be victimized by those would attempt to convince that there is no such thing as reality, that existence is a "maybe", and that the human mind is unable to perceive and conceptualize it. Instead, her philosophy is benevolent in its conclusions, stating - proving - that man's greatest value and virtue is rationality and each individual's achievement of it, capitalism being the only social system devoted to those ideals.

Philosophy is revealed in many ways. United Colors of Benetton has some advertising campaigns listed that are quite beautiful and thought-provoking. My favorite is Priest and Nun. Benetton is persevering in the face of ongoing criticism and attack. They're to be congratulated.