Huh? Everything seems to be OK to me. I have not experienced argumentative people. Just different levels of understanding and experience as more people get on. I have gotten frustrated once or twice. But that doesn't mean this forum is dead.

Are you suggesting that Conservatives are not welcome or wanted in the Gulch? I really want to know.

If you look at the book AS, you see Dagny and Hank constantly battling the statists. Thats whats happening to us all now to one degree or another. Its depressing. Dealing with them is occupying more and more time and attention in my life for sure.

Its time to just not give them the attention that they expect, but only the attention that they demand by force.

Harry Browne's book about living free in an unfree world (which I just read), is spot on. The gulch should be a light in the night for how we do that in a positive way.

Government exists today in the USA because people are supporting and enabling it. Look at all this election coverage. In reality, the government cant do positive things no matter who gets elected. It can only do more or less BAD things by getting in the way. It doesnt deserve so much of our attention.

I agree. I have spent the last 9 years building a business that I hope to sell one day. If Sanders gets in, I can give up at least half of what I created in his tax proposals. It used to be that capital gains for small business stock one held for 5 years was 10%. Now he wants 50%. I better sell it in 2016, or just milk it dry before his taxes go into effect. No incentive to do anything after that for me.

I think gulchers have that sense of life in dealing with their own lives. BUT, that said, dealing with the collectivism every day is indeed debilitating. If the conversations in the Gulch were focused on what we can do to better preserve our own lives in a declining society, and get ready to rebuild as soon as government programs "get out of the way", the tone of the gulch would improve.

Right now, most of the attention goes TO government and what it is doing. Government is just an impediment in my life. I try to ignore it as much as possible. It isnt the all powerful force that it wants us to believe it is. Its populated by minion clerks just trying to get a paycheck that I have to write. I try to give them only as much attention as they can garner by actual force. I would rather have no interaction with them at all.

Free speech- yes,
the right to be offensive - yes.
But I remind those who verbally lash out that they are admitting failure by having nothing to say apart from abuse.

“Common courtesy may seem a quaint anachronism,
but without it, logic and reason die on the sword of uninformed passion. ”
Pierre Ryckmans

And,
" one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.”
Margaret Thatcher
This means, give us your thoughts and ideas, keep your anger off the page.

Conservatives, news headline and political junkies, and anti-Objectivists. Emotive rather than Rational, Reasoning thinkers and posters.

But as much or more than anything, it's a lack of confidence in the philosophy and life applications of Objectivism by all but a handful of the Objectivists of the site.

RMP

It died.

It died when a small group of Producers decided they had a lock on the truth of all things Rand.

It died when they choose to push the Ignore button instead of exercising the persuasive power of Reason and Logic.

It died when they choose to substitute vituperation for argumentation.

It died when down-voting and the word "nonsense" became their comments of choice.

Joe

Pirate, my impression is that the Gulch is now dominated by a few individuals who seem intent on being wordy and complicated and convincing everyone how intelligent and superior they are. The result is that, like K, I find myself bored. The sense of life that made the Gulch so wonderful (I posted about it once) is being smothered by this attitude. This is my individual experience.

I apologize for re-posting this from Khalling's I'm BORED post, but my answer to her also applies here.

The reality that things are getting progressively (word chosen very carefully) worse exponentially is sinking in. The Fed's proposal of negative interest rates is an example.

If you look at the five stages of grief, this forum had/has many who are angry. The next stage after that is depression and detachment. I am moving into that phase now. After that comes dialogue and bargaining. There had been a lot of people dialoguing, but now have moved into the frightening stage given our current circumstances called acceptance. I will never accept the current situation. I suggested to my wife and kids last night that, if Bernie Sanders is elected, that we should just shrug and leave.

Its an election season. Lots of manipulation going on, and I get distracted from core matters when confronted repeatedly. Guilty. OTOH, this is an forum open to other points of view. Do you want to restrict that? Do you want to allow it, but not challenge irrationality with reason?

A culture, like an individual, has a sense of life or, rather, the equivalent of a sense of life—an emotional atmosphere created by its dominant philosophy, by its view of man and of existence. This emotional atmosphere represents a culture’s dominant values and serves as the leitmotif of a given age, setting its trends and its style. Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto.

The Gulch used to be vibrant and full of life. Now if feels like any other news feed that worms its way into my email.

Ok, define "sense of life in the Gulch."