Farewell comrade!

We can make our own website... just a thought

Well I for one am being accused of being a shoelace...? and they don't like shoes or something. Either way, I think my first 24 hours were enough to reply to you about how I'm feeling abut the downvotes and I'm taking my money to a different gulch.

I don't think they have induced justice yet

oh ok... sure. I'm so glad to have landed here... I think I understand now why OP had to ask what it going on...

I'll show myself out. Thanks for saving me from becoming a producer. Good observation...

MikeM posted it up on here:
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

Still there, 5 secs ago.

Just observant. By the way, your shoe laces are untied.
Going to just ignore bloviations made by all the pompous bloviators here pretty much from now on.
A lot of us pretty much know who you all are.

I looked at the two pages where you suggested and have two observations.

First, I don't think the inflammatory comments were intended as serious, rather a deliberate reaction mimicking the ongoing stream of attacks, which served to reveal the nature of the posters by bringing them out more in increasing intensity. In other words they were played and it worked, exposing further what is going on here.

Second, whoever he is he wasn't hiding the duplicate user logins. He openly said he was doing that to defend himself and was surprised that someone didn't realize it.

It isn't something I would do and don't recommend it. It appears to be an unfortunate consequence of the increasing hostility here in which someone has lost all respect, toying with the perpetrators to further expose them, not a serious con.

The moderator removed both, as he had to given the guidelines. Missing from that action was the rest of them who were not removed.

As for SonofAyn, I don't know who he is, but hope it leads one way or another to more serious discussion here about Ayn Rand rather than the nonsense we have been seeing on what is supposed to be an Ayn Rand forum. It has become not just nonsense for an Ayn Rand forum, but uncivilized outbursts of seething resentment not appropriate anywhere.

Yes but where was the previous link to it that was hidden here?

Every individual judges for himself. Reason requires judging. That is not a "problem". The forum owners judge posts in accordance with their own guidelines and should be acting accordingly.

That whole comment you just posted is filled with gratuitous personal attacks and insults. That is all it is. It does not belong here.

It is not difficult for anyone to judge that your leading post in a discussion on science dismissing educated knowledge as "personal dogma" was a presumptuous, inappropriate personal attack. It was even less difficult to judge your increasing personal attacks as worse, including this one. It isn't discussion you want. You don't want to be judged for what you say and cannot tolerate rational explanation contradicting you. Being a "good person" does not mean pandering to your insults.

Many Ayn Rand forums over the decades have degenerated into intellectual zoos, which is why I generally avoided them. I don't think it was statists and collectivists which took them over so much as a kind of psychology. And like Gresham's law it drove out the good.

One good one that did last with consistent quality was Betsy Speicher's Forum 4 Ayn Rand Fans, which was well moderated. Personal attacks were not allowed and those whose psychology and means of thinking and writing were not appropriate to the purpose of the forum were politely led to go elsewhere to a place more appropriate for them. Yet there was plenty of civilized intellectual controversy and creativity over a wide range of subjects. It no longer exists only because Betsy no longer wanted to run it, which took a lot of time and effort, and her husband Stephen was no longer with us. But it is possible. There is no 'rule' preventing it, only the toleration of irrational behavior.

Our posts here aren't out of line or offensive at all. The systematic 'downvoting' targeting by author while attacking Ayn Rand illustrates the point of your original post opening this thread. Their own posts on this thread smearing the people they oppose -- in the name of supporting "discussion" -- provide all the background comment chains you need for an understanding of what is going on.

There aren't many of them engaging in that behavior -- a couple of 'votes' displayed have little meaning, but even worse is that there isn't much left on this forum countering it.

The personal animosity is not new, it has erupted here in the past and has been a constant undercurrent, but has become more intense recently as the emotional outbursts grow and feed on themselves.

Despite being attracted to some aspects of Ayn Rand they did not pursue the philosophy that made her work possible the way supporters in the past have. In spite of supporting some aspects of political freedom, they don't like Ayn Rand's views contradicting anti-individualist conservative bandwagons and internet fads they are attracted to, don't tolerate being intellectually challenged, do not tolerate straightforward principled explanation, defense and application of Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason, and reveal a seething, festering personal resentment. They don't know what objectivity means and do not want to be judged.

They have become increasingly militant and defiantly anti-intellectual -- even resenting that their targets know too much, smeared as "thinking we know everything". The militancy now copies the tactics of Saul Alinsky in the form of the internet feuding and targeting that can be found almost everywhere now from political and ideological factions across the board.

I think you said a few times that you come from a communist country and know what real oppression is. It must be especially disconcerting to you to see here such intense ugly emotional eruption over such existentially harmless intellectual challenge.

John Galt’s Speech from Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”
can be read by opening this link-
https://amberandchaos.net/?page_id=73
(Thanks to MikeMarotta)

mminnick thanks for making the point.

There is a rule that institutions, even those with objectives ranging from libertarian to conservative, eventually get taken over by statist collectivists.
After a good run this site is following that rule.

We see it when a post recommending the non-fiction works of Ayn Rand gets down-voted. The crusaders are stomping in with bad language, fallacious argument, rudeness, excess apostrophes, and even bad spelling.

The auto-down-voters target the most original and the best Objectivist thinkers. Yes one or two can be rather blunt, I am reminded of Ellis Wyatt, one of my heroes, but an Ayn Rand character would be unknown to the crusaders.

Paranoid much

And here is the whole problem: You have set yourself up as Judge. EVERY post you make is a snide, arrogant condemnation, with a just less than foul insult, and arrogant assertion that YOU are the right one and EVERYONE else is wrong. You are a perfect liberal shill. You do EXACTLY what Pelosi, Schumer and Occasionally Uses Cortex do: Pontificate, blowhard and condemn with no facts, just a huge mumbo jumbo of rarely used words and statements, and then act as a pseudo intellectual. You have no manners, no common courtesies. You are no Objectivist, all you are is a pawn, who just is used to excoriate others positions. You offer no actual evidence. When was the last time YOU posted a real life Political example of anything good? You don't. You exist as the arbiter of Objectivism and contaminate most discussions with your negativity. I have tried to engage you in polite discourse, and you refuse to be a good person.

N, that has been part of the system all along. In WW2 the Germans would take allied planes and fly them into allied formations, to report all their moves, altitude etc, so they could be shot down, It took several of these before anyone caught on. Exact same thing. That is WHY you DO need to care about politics, they count on all the individualists to give up in disgust and then go about their own business, and then when they figure out they now own it all, try to stop it. Kalifornia, New York, DC are all examples. Once they have a supermajority, it is just a dictatorship by the mob and you are doomed to a violent revolution. Venezuela.

Right on the mark AJ, politics is a tool they use to enslave any Objectivist person, they cannot stand to be near an individual, because politics is one of two sides, an individualist supporting society or a state controlled on, anything else is just a blend, usually by the state run side, made to look like the individualist supporters (aka RINO). I submit John McCain and Paul Ryan as examples. They will enslave and control, so as to loot at will. See every democrat controlled place in the country, high taxes, laws that control individuals, and imposed "free sh@t" that others have to pay for. Not much different from Atlas Shrugged, now, is it? Some oned who disagrees need to show me one democrat controlled entity where individuals are respected and there is no "free sh@t" to buy others into it.

There were no "vacuous personal attacks" in my post. Your posts have a history here that you are not acknowledging. Your post again illustrated your own snide personal attacks and misrepresentations. Rejecting personal attacks for what they are is not "vacuous personal attacks".

Take a look in New. Look for two squashed Post Hidden(s) near the top. Click on both. Both show BiggestShoeLaces and ExistenceUniversity, who showed up yesterday, to be the same person. Now SonofAyn shows up today the very next day all full of hubris and bluster, though, if I'm right about him, he has toned himself down a bit.
Newbies usually don't come into The Gulch with such a great big KABOOM!
Prisons are filled with con artists and I worked maximum security for 21 years and have a full retirement.
Most corrections officer don't get that far. Most quit, fewer get fired and even fewer leave in handcuffs for being corrupted on the average of one every two years.

I stopped reading you when you moved from content to vacuous personal attacks.

An insult? Drawing a parallel between two things I've witnessed is insulting? lol

In looking over this post (original and all replys and comments) I notice the ewv and SonofAyn seem to be receiving markdowns to 0 or even lower. Why?
I don’t necessarily agree with their posts put they do not seen totally out of line or particularly offensive. Am I missing an undercurrent in other posts and comment chains that are needed for full understanding of the connotative meanings of some of the comments and replies? If this is the case perhaps reference should be made to the post if it is still available(i.e. not hidden or deleted). I am just trying to understand what has happendd to this community. I have been a member for over 5 years and have not seen this level of animosity displayed ever.
I have to ask: What the hell is wrong with you people? The discussions used to be about news events, Objectivism and the philosophy of Ayn Rand and its applications especially via Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. How I almost never see either mentioned. I do see ad hominim attacks flowing and cascading through multiple posts and comments.
Enough is enough. Grow up people.

I haven't followed whatever the switcheroos you refer to, but SonofAyn's comment is true.

Reason requires judging. Your snide personal attacks are not exempt.

By George I think you’ve got it.