“Racism” by Ayn Rand

“A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race — and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.”

excerpts from
“Racism”
by Ayn Rand

(An article published in the September, 1963 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter
and included as a chapter in the book, The Virtue of Selfishness )

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.  It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry.  Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Free speech: is it an illusion?

Is there really such a thing as free speech, or is it all just an illusion?  Language defines the world within which we live because through language we define and shape ideas and concepts; the basis of what we think. In turn, what people think determines how they behave. Therefore, controlling the behavior of people is simply a matter of shaping their world by defining the concepts that form the basis of their thoughts. There are three ways to accomplish this:

• Redefine concepts and ideas slowly over time to accom-modate desired changes.
• Allow unwanted concepts and ideas to fade into obscurity
• Prevent undesirable concepts and ideas from developing.

How US manipulated climate accord

All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. ……Zhou Enlai

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial “Copenhagen accord”, the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.