The Rational Animal 🤔

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The Rational Animal 🤔

The Rational Animal 🤔

@theobjectivist

Champion of Reason, Individual Rights and Capitalism.

United States Katılım Ocak 2025
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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
The average American today lives better than John D. Rockefeller did in 1926. That is not an exaggeration. It is a fact. Rockefeller could not fly across the country in five hours. You can for $200. He could not video call his family from another continent. You do it for free. He had no antibiotics, no MRI, no air conditioning in July. He could not carry every book ever written in his pocket. You are reading this on a device that does all of that and more. Americans throw away 30-40% of their food. Not because they are wasteful, but because food is so abundant that waste is affordable. Your car has climate control, navigation, and safety systems that did not exist at any price a century ago. Your home has heating, cooling, refrigeration, and entertainment that emperors could not have imagined. None of this was voted into existence. None of it was redistributed from the rich. It was created by free minds operating in what remains of a free market. Every comfort you enjoy today is the product of a man who thought, invented, produced, and traded voluntarily. This is what the remnants of capitalism still deliver, even while it is being dismantled. Imagine what a fully free society could build.
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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
This is just how the law works. Under the 17th Amendment, state legislatures can let governors make temporary appointments when a Senate seat opens. South Carolina does exactly that. McMaster fills it until the next election, and whoever holds the seat has to win that election like anyone else. So voters do get a say, and soon. Because Graham had already won the June primary, state law triggers a fast-tracked special primary to pick the nominee for November. Filing opens within weeks. And "completely unqualified" isn't accurate. Darline Graham Nordone has over 28 years in leadership positions in state government. She currently serves as Commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, sits on the SC State Workforce Development Board, and is president-elect of the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind. Worth noting too: McMaster said at the press conference that he gave Trump the idea, not the other way around, contradicting Trump's post claiming credit for the recommendation. You can disagree with her politics or her selection. That's fair game. But the process is legitimate, the appointment is temporary, and the only qualification that ultimately matters is whether she'll defend the rights of the people she represents. Judge her on that, and vote accordingly if she runs.
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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
Khanna keeps calling these settlers "violent." I have watched the videos. I see men blocking a road, carrying rifles, kicking tires, and laughing. Israeli police body cameras confirmed no violence occurred. If you have video showing otherwise, post it. Show me where the violence is. Draw circles around it because I don't see it. Because Khanna reserves the word "violent" for settlers who kicked tires. Meanwhile, the people who carried out the mass murder, rape, and torture of over 1,200 Israelis on October 7th? He calls that "horrific" and then co-sponsors legislation to strip Israel of every weapon it needs to make sure it never happens again. Imagine you or your loved ones having to experience what those individuals had to experience at the hands of evil men who Ro Khanna wants to protect by cutting off every weapon to the nation defending itself against them. He co-sponsors the Block the Bombs Act and opposes all U.S. arms transfers to Israel.
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist

I will not let this equivocation pass. You present the trip as honest inquiry. It was nothing of the kind. By your own account to Reuters, this was a visit "exclusively to the West Bank, with programming led by Palestinians." You designed it to hear one side, and then delivered a verdict, "genocide," "apartheid", as though it were discovered rather than decided before you boarded the plane. That is not investigation. It is confirmation. You may say you have met hostages before. Fine. Then you knew there was another side, and chose not to hear from it on the trip where you rendered judgment. That is worse, not better. A man who wanted to know would have looked at all of it. A man who wanted a verdict looked only where he knew it waited. And within hours of the roadblock, you fundraised on it, and said you're "more resolved" to run for president. That's not a fact-finding mission. It's a campaign advertisement filmed at the site of a war.

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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
Mamdani knows a little about acting. He knows nothing about economics or rights. Observe the premise: that two private companies may not join hands without permission from a man who has never built anything. By what right, Mayor? Paramount is owned by its shareholders. Warner Bros. by its own. They wish to trade with one another, by mutual consent, using property that is theirs. You did not create these companies, you did not fund them, and you own no part of them. Yet you announce that this merger "does not serve the public," as though the public were a shareholder who forgot to attend the vote. And note the omniscience required. You know, in advance, the correct number of studios, the correct price of streaming, and the correct fate of every theater in Manhattan. The men who actually run these companies apparently do not, but you do, from City Hall, having never met a payroll. "New York's workers helped build this industry." They were paid to. That was the deal. The producers built it. You showed up to tell them they may not own it.
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@NYCMayor

Proud that New York is one of 12 states suing to stop Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. This is not a merger that serves the public. It would hand one company nearly a third of the movies and cable channels Americans watch, raise prices for streaming and cable, endanger the livelihoods of thousands of New York artists and entertainment workers, and threaten to shutter theaters across our city. New York's workers helped build this industry. They should not be sacrificed for the sake of further corporate consolidation.

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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
The program is SB-168, funded with $135.5 million from the 2026-27 state budget. It gives a $3,500 instant point-of-sale rebate on new EVs and $1,750 on used ones. It's limited to first-time EV buyers, with no income cap. New cars must be under $50,000, used under $25,000. The rigged part. That $50,000 price cap is waived entirely for EVs made by "California-headquartered zero-emission vehicle companies," meaning Rivian and Lucid, whose cheapest models cost $58,000 and $71,000. They sail past the ceiling everyone else must meet. And Tesla? Excluded on its higher-priced models, because Tesla moved its headquarters to Texas in 2021. So what Newsom actually built: a subsidy, paid for by taxpayers, that punishes the company which created the American EV market for having left his state, while writing a bespoke exemption into the law so his politically favored local firms can charge $71,000 and still collect. That's not environmental policy. It's a man using seized money to reward the companies that stayed and punish the one that left, then going on TV to claim Musk "turned his back on California."
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Denny Sawyer (Politics)
Denny Sawyer (Politics)@sputthga·
@theobjectivist Does he realize this will benefit @elonmusk? Or does the bill exclude Teslas? And no, I'm not gonna bother reading it because I left California almost 40 years ago and this doesn't affect me.
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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
Where does the $3,500 come from, Governor? Not from you. From the taxpayer, seized by force, and handed to someone else so he can buy a car. You didn't create a rebate. You created a transfer: from the man who earned it to the man you'd rather subsidize, with you taking the credit for the generosity of a stranger's paycheck. And notice the confession buried in it. If electric cars were the obvious better product, no one would need to be bribed to buy one. The rebate exists because the market said no, so you overruled it with other people's money. "We won't forfeit the future to China." You're imitating China. Central planners deciding which industries win, which products citizens should own, and who pays for it. That's not competing with a command economy. That's becoming one. The future isn't forfeited by letting people choose. It's forfeited by men who think they get to choose for them.
Governor Gavin Newsom@CAgovernor

California is filling the void left by Trump and the GOP repealing the federal electric vehicle tax credit. I've signed legislation creating an instant rebate for Californians going electric — $3,500 off new EVs and $1,750 off used models. We won't forfeit the future to China.

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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
Ask yourself what "crimes against humanity" is doing in that sentence, because it's being used to erase a distinction you cannot afford to lose. A nation attacked by a terrorist army has the absolute right to destroy it. Hamas murdered 1,200 civilians and took 250 hostages. That is the initiation of force, and Israel's retaliation is not a crime. It's justice. And when an aggressor deliberately fights from behind civilians, the moral responsibility for their deaths falls on him, not on the nation defending its own people. No country is obligated to sacrifice its citizens to spare the human shields the enemy chose. That principle is not refuted by 4K footage of a war the enemy started. But I won't defend everything under one flag, because I don't judge by flags. A settler who burns a farmer's grove or drives a village from its homes is not defending Israel from Hamas. He is initiating force against men who did not attack him, and a government that fails to prosecute it is failing its one proper function: protecting rights, including the rights of those under its power. That's the honest position, and it's the consistent one. The same principle that condemns the settler thug vindicates Israel's war. It's the initiation of force that's evil, always, no matter who does it. You want me to swallow a package deal: point at a real wrong, then use it to indict a just war. I won't. And notice that you've never once condemned the men who started this by slaughtering civilians on purpose. Principle isn't tribal. Try it sometime.
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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
I will not let this equivocation pass. You present the trip as honest inquiry. It was nothing of the kind. By your own account to Reuters, this was a visit "exclusively to the West Bank, with programming led by Palestinians." You designed it to hear one side, and then delivered a verdict, "genocide," "apartheid", as though it were discovered rather than decided before you boarded the plane. That is not investigation. It is confirmation. You may say you have met hostages before. Fine. Then you knew there was another side, and chose not to hear from it on the trip where you rendered judgment. That is worse, not better. A man who wanted to know would have looked at all of it. A man who wanted a verdict looked only where he knew it waited. And within hours of the roadblock, you fundraised on it, and said you're "more resolved" to run for president. That's not a fact-finding mission. It's a campaign advertisement filmed at the site of a war.
Ro Khanna@RoKhanna

Looks like there is body camera video of this unprecedented, illegal detention of Americans by a foreign country. When are the arrests of these violent settlers and 4 IDF officers taking place @netanyahu?

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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
Observe what this premise means if taken seriously. The doctor who cures your child has succeeded. So your child's life is a defeat for someone. The farmer who grows more food has succeeded. So his abundance is another man's hunger. Edison lit the world, so the world went dark. Follow it out: every discovery, every cure, every building ever raised is now a crime against mankind. The premise rests on a lie: that wealth is a fixed pile to be divided, so one man's gain must be another's loss. It isn't. Wealth is created. The producer takes nothing from you. He adds what did not exist. And notice the conclusion Dugin actually wants. If success is evil, only failure is virtuous, and we must "suffer together." That is not morality. It is a demand that men stop producing and share the ruin equally. Which brings us to this post. It has 2.2 million views. By his own standard, that is a moral catastrophe. Every writer who reached fewer readers was defeated by him. He should be ashamed of his reach, delete the post, and distribute the audience equally among the men he beat. He won't, of course. The rule is for you. He calls achievement satanic. But it is the man who tells you to embrace the darkness together who should frighten you.
Alexander Dugin@AGDugin

The very concept of the success is deeply immoral. If you are successful the other is loser. We shouldn’t accept it. We should prosper or suffer together. Otherwise it is satanic.

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The Rational Animal 🤔 retweetledi
Jeffery Small
Jeffery Small@cjsmall·
"The members of Europe's busybody class would be well advised to do the same, and not just for themselves." "Simply put, Europe treats air conditioning as part of the problem when it should be considered a big part of the solution," Once again, we're talking about AC and suggesting with paragraph after paragraph of analysis that the smart government move would be to allow rather than deny it. However, by making the utility of AC (and ten thousand other specific things you have covered in the past) the issue, you simply provide cover for the true abomination staring us in the face and once again allow it to skate by, unidentified and unchallenged. The real problem is that government -- any and all governments -- have assumed the power to dictate over the lives of what should be sovereign individuals, acting as slave masters with their whips and guns employed to demand obedience. People are treated as literal chattel, to be commanded and disposed of in service of whatever brainchild or whim the masters decide upon. This is an ethical, not a utilitarian issue. While you debate AC policy, you are failing to zero in on what is really at stake here: individualism vs. authoritarian collectivism; liberty vs enslavement. When you speak out and fight for the sovereign individual you are ultimately fighting for the right to choose AC, and all the other utilitarian issues of life. On the other hand, fighting for AC actually empowers the authoritarians by implicitly conceding that they are correct to hold sway over this issue and, in this particular case, simply have made the wrong choice. As Charlie Brown would say: Good Grief! As Linus would say: Do Better!
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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
Now the con man claims California's regulations built Musk's billions. Observe the reversal. Regulation is not the cause of production. It is the obstacle a producer must overcome to produce at all. Musk built rockets, cars, and satellites in spite of the permits, the delays, the agencies, and the men like Newsom who stand over the creator taking credit for the thing they only obstructed. This is the looter's oldest claim: that the parasite made the achievement possible. The bureaucrat who taxed you now says he funded you. The regulator who blocked you says he enabled you. The state that took a cut declares itself the source. Rand named this type precisely. Newsom is the Wesley Mouch of California: a man of no ability, no product, no creation of his own, who attaches himself to the men who build and calls their work the fruit of his permission. Musk isn't turning his back on California. He is refusing to keep feeding the men who never fed him.
Chief Nerd@TheChiefNerd

Gavin Newsom Says Elon Musk is ‘Turning His Back’ on California “Regulation in California created the conditions that allowed him to take the risk to become the multi-billionaire, maybe trillionaire, that he’s become … Now he’s turning his back on the state that promoted him.”

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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
Let's take you at your word, Congressman, and grant your version entirely. Now run the experiment in reverse. Imagine terrorists slaughter 1,200 Americans on our soil. Now imagine a foreign politician, from an allied nation, decides your country's response is unjustified. He flies here on a "fact-finding" trip. He refuses to meet the survivors or the families of the hostages. Instead, he arranges an itinerary guided entirely by people sympathetic to the attackers, tours the area where the attack was planned, films himself, and then goes home to tell his country that America is committing apartheid and genocide. What would you say to that man? Would you call it fact-finding? Or would you recognize it as a foreign politician using your nation's tragedy as a prop to advance his own political career? Because that's the trip you took. You've said openly you're "more resolved" to run for president after it. You fundraised off the incident within hours. And your own account of the itinerary tells us what you went looking for. Whatever happened at that roadblock, and if Americans were detained unlawfully, it should be investigated, doesn't erase the question you refuse to answer: what were you doing there, and who was it for?
Ro Khanna@RoKhanna

The Israeli government is lying to cover up for 4 IDF soldiers who aided violent settlers brandishing M4 guns and threatening American lives. I am calling for their arrest and prosecution. I have met with Israeli hostages and condemned the brutal, terrorist attacks of Oct 7. That does excuse the IDF from detaining American citizens.

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The Rational Animal 🤔 retweetledi
Alex Epstein
Alex Epstein@AlexEpstein·
The richest people in this country have access to huge amounts of intelligence: custom medical advisors, custom tutors, custom assistants. Data centers are making this accessible to the average American. My full appearance on @FoxBusiness on the moral case for data centers:
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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
They're not torpedoing their chances. They've won on multiple recent occasions, because they're simply an extension of both parties. Democrats and Republicans share the same underlying moral framework: altruism, the creed that self-sacrifice is the good and self-interest is the sin. That's why Republicans can never win the argument. The moment they try to cut anything, the left cries "that's cruel, that's selfish, you must sacrifice," and the right, holding the identical morality, has no answer. It can only surrender slowly. You cannot beat a consistent altruist while sharing his premise. The socialists just take it further, and consistency wins. So expecting the socialists to self-destruct is putting your head in the sand. This isn't a blunder they'll trip over. It's the logical endpoint of a morality the whole culture accepts. You can evade reality only so long before it catches up, and it's catching up now. The only way to face it is with a rational, self-interested morality: the principle that your life is your own and you exist for your own sake. Fortunately, one exists. It's called Objectivism. Unfortunately, the culture is so thoroughly indoctrinated that changing it is a monumental task, made worse by a government that controls the schools and universities teaching the opposite. But monumental isn't impossible. Ideas move downstream from philosophy, and philosophy is won one mind at a time. The socialists aren't overplaying their hand. They're playing the only hand the culture dealt them. Change the morality, or keep losing to the side willing to take it to the end.
Bill Mitchell@mitchellvii

ARE DEMOCRATS TORPEDOING THEIR MIDTERMS WITH FULL SOCIALISM! You have to wonder. They elected Mamdani in New York. Trump called him a "Communist Lunatic." Now they're running open socialists nationwide! Only a small slice of America even calls itself liberal. Most Democrat voters just want lower grocery bills. So why lurch hard left before an election that decides Congress? Maybe it's not a mistake. Maybe the socialists are fine losing 2026 if it clears the field for 2028, when AOC or Mamdani says we tried it their way and lost, now it's our turn. The devil either overplayed his hand, or he's playing the long game.

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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
Read the article you referenced Congressman @RoKhanna. It refutes you. Barzar earns $32.90 an hour, has over $1 million in his 401(k), $15 co-pays, a house with a pool, and had every one of his wife's three brain surgeries covered in full. Costco gave him this. Not Congress. Not a wealth tax. Not you. A private company, freely, because paying and keeping good workers is good business. That's the whole point you keep missing. Costco proves the market rewards productive labor without a single mandate. Their stock is up 2,000% doing it. The "living wage" you want to force already exists where value is freely traded, and it was built by the very system you spend your days attacking. So what's your actual purpose? Barzar isn't bitter. He's grateful, and proud, and he built a good life. You'd rather teach the man with less to resent the man with more, when Costco shows there's nothing to resent, only something to aspire to. The producer earns his reward. Envy earns nothing. Stop selling grievance and let the market you fear keep lifting men like Tony Barzar.
Ro Khanna@RoKhanna

If workers actually earned a living wage and could afford a middle class life, there would be so much less bitterness and anger in our society. Costco shows that policies of a living wage and worker ownership can also be good for business. wsj.com/business/retai…

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Jeffery Small
Jeffery Small@cjsmall·
We're not building a bullet train up here in Seattle -- just your run of the mill light rail lines -- but the description of failure in the article is pretty close to dead on for what is happening here. If only there were some principles, some philosophy, that could explain what is happening. I guess we will never know.
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The Rational Animal 🤔
The Rational Animal 🤔@theobjectivist·
Let's be precise, Governor, since precision is your enemy here. Donating to a candidate you believe in isn't "buying an election." It's called speech, and the First Amendment protects it. Money allows someone the ability to spend their time convincing you they are right. Money cannot vote. Only individual citizens push the button, and every one of them is free to take a billionaire's ad and vote the other way. The proof is a graveyard of rich men who thought otherwise. Bloomberg spent over $1 billion of his own money in 2020 and won a grand total of one contest: American Samoa. Harris outspent Trump $875 million to $355 million in 2024 and lost. If money bought elections, you'd be praising President Bloomberg. Voters decide. Wallets don't. Now the part you're counting on people to miss. "Dark money" is election spending funneled through nonprofits and shell companies that legally hide their donors, so no one can see who's paying. You shriek about "buying elections" while your own side ran the largest dark-money operation in history, $1.9 billion of it in 2024, the majority backing Democrats, spent by people whose names you'll never know. Meanwhile Musk disclosed every dollar he gave. You want to jail the man who spent in the open, then rob the taxpayer to fund candidates through public financing. Force to silence the transparent, force to bankroll the hidden. You don't fear money in politics. You fear speech you can't control. The Constitution protects the donor's voice. It was never written to protect the politician from hearing one he dislikes.
Gavin Newsom@GavinNewsom

Translation: California made it illegal for Elon Musk to buy elections. And next, we’re going to make it a felony for Donald Trump to rig one. Watch out.

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Keşfet

@RealJamesWoods @elonmusk @brithume @FoxBusiness @RoKhanna @BarackObama @taylorswift13 @cristiano