This is Atlantis, prove me wrong

1. Metaphysics Objective Reality
2. Epistemology Reason
3. Ethics Self-interest
4. Politics Capitalism

If you want this translated into simple language, it would read: 1.
“Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed” or “Wishing won’t make it
so.” 2. “You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.” 3. “Man is an end
in himself.” 4. “Give me liberty or give me death.”

If you held these concepts with total consistency, as the base of
your convictions, you would have a full philosophical system to guide
the course of your life. But to hold them with total consistency—to
understand, to define, to prove and to apply them—requires volumes of
thought. Which is why philosophy cannot be discussed while standing on
one foot—nor while standing on two feet on both sides of every fence.
This last is the predominant philosophical position today, particularly
in the field of politics.

My philosophy, Objectivism, holds that:

1. Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.
2. Reason
   (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by
   man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only
   source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of
   survival.
3. Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to
   the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing
   himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his
   own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest
   moral purpose of his life.
4. The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders,
   by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no
   man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force,
   and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others.
   The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it
   uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who
   initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of
   full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been)
   a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for
   the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

~ by Jamie on July 12, 2008.