The Politically Incorrect Show - 23/02/2001

[Music - Die Fledermaus]

Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Friday February 23, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd., the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.

[Music up, music down!]

Today, finally, I can announce the coming to fruition of a project that has been dear to my heart for a long time. SOLO is here. What is SOLO? SOLO stands for Sense of Life Objectivists. What does that mean? Well, Objectivism is the philosophy I subscribe to. It was formulated by the Russian/American novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand, chiefly through her novel Atlas Shrugged & in a series of non-fiction works she wrote after Atlas was published in 1957. It upholds reality, reason, freedom, capitalism - and "romantic realism" in the world of art, integrating them all into a coherent, consistent philosophical system. It is the philosophy that could save western civilisation.

"A sense of life," said Ayn Rand, "is a preconceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man & of existence. It sets the nature of a man's emotional responses & the essence of his character." That's a bit of a mouthful for talkback radio, so think of "sense of life" as the essence & the sum total of your "gut responses." Does life excite you or bore you? Would you rather be free to make your own decisions or told what to do? Do you feel competent to sort out problems, or helpless? Do you like music or noise, intelligible paintings or framed excrement? Do you get passionate about ANYTHING, & if so, what? THESE are all "sense of life" questions.

Ayn Rand spoke of "the total passion for the total height." That's me. In those areas that are important to me, I want the best, & I want it badly. Yet, curiously, among her followers I have encountered a number of people who don't share that. This condition is so notorious that such people even have a name: "Randroids." They exude, not so much a bad sense of life as NO sense of life. They are like robots. They recite Rand's teachings by rote, with no real understanding of what they're droning, have no independence of judgement & get excited only when denouncing others they suspect of heresy, for which they are always on the look-out. David Kelley founded a whole new Objectivist movement to get away from Randroidism, but even it, for me, fails to embody or project the "total passion for the total height." So, SOLO is my small attempt to do just that. It focuses significantly, but by no means exclusively, on the sphere of the passions - art. It's a modest enterprise - just a web site at the moment - but I hope it will serve as a haven for, as I like to put it, the "rationally exuberant & the exuberantly rational." That, I would like to think, is most Objectivists.

SOLO is not yet complete - indeed, never will be, since it will be added to regularly - but there's enough there now for me to run with it. I'm especially pleased to have a message forum on which Objectivists around the world can interact with each other, uncensored. I want to thank my Free Radical web master, Bernard Darnton, for the work he has done in getting the site up; his predecessor David Adams for designing its logo & being a
contributor; and all the other inaugural contributors: Chris Sciabarra, Larry Sechrest, Cameron Pritchard, Michael Koziarski, Derek McGovern, Peter Cresswell, Monart Pon, Tim Sturm, David Bertelsen, James Jowdy & Chris Lewis. SOLO's address is www.freeradical.co.nz/solo

Have fun! Fun is a large part of what SOLO is all about.

In honour of the occasion, let me close with the last moments of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto, played by Howard Shelley.

(Rach 3 to end)

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