> I understand and agree with this: but what do you say to people who say
> that's what they're criticising (that this ethic says nothing about
> whether or not to have compassion)?
>
> I would say that, actually, it isn't an ethic at all but, very precisely,
> a politic.
That's a cop-out: I think Galt's oath /is/ an ethic, and one of the most
beautiful sentences ever written in the language. It expresses precisely
the ethic that "obligation" and "compassion" are not merely unrelated
but quite contradictory. It is impossible to have true, effective,
compassion from a sense of obligation. Compassion /requires/ freedom.
Compassion /must/ be voluntary. Though it is not directly a positive
ethic (i.e., a "thou slalt" rather than "thou shalt not"), it does
express the root from which her positive ethics come: the love of life.
-- 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