> > philosophical meaning, Elian Gonzalez must be allowed to remain here.
> > Let this poor boy have a
> > chance to live a human life. If "compassion" is one of our politicians'
> > chief values, as they
> > keep telling us, can't they show him any of it?
>
> You know, this really irks me, since objectivists are supposedly AGAINST the
> state saying what we can and cannot do with our children. A call for
> compassion is the last thing I want to hear from this camp of followers, who
> blatantly say that compassion should not be a value.
(1) Nowhere in this essay does Peikoff suggest for a moment that the
state should force anyone to do anything--read the words as carefully
as they are written: we should "allow" Elian to stay; the state should
not deport him or his father.
(2) Compassion (and "benevolence") is specifically mentioned many times
by Rand and other Objectivists as a positive value; your claim that it
is not is false. What Objectivists do disdain is altruism, which is
an entirely different thing.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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