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If you want to influence a country's intellectual trend, the first step is to bring order to your own ideas and integrate them into a consistent case, to the best of your knowledge and ability. This does not mean memorizing and reciting slogans and principles, Objectivist or otherwise: knowledge necessarily includes the ability to apply abstract principles to concrete problems, to recognize the principles in specific issues, to demonstrate them, and to advocate a consistent course of action. This does not require omniscience or omnipotence; it is the subconscious expectation of automatic omniscience in oneself and in others that defeats many would-be crusaders (and serves as an excuse for doing nothing). What is required is honesty -- intellectual honesty, which consists in knowing what one does know, constantly expanding one's knowledge, and never evading or failing to correct a contradiction. This means: the development of an active mind as a permanent attribute.
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It is a mistake to think that an intellectual movement requires some special duty or self-sacrificial effort on your part. It requires something much more difficult: a profound conviction that ideas are important to you and to your own life."

--Ayn Rand
The Ayn Rand Letter
Vol. 1, No. 7
January 3, 1972
"What Can One Do?"


Let us inspire and challenge each other to learn more about Objectivism -- the philosophy of reality and reason. One of the ways we can do this is by making an effort to spend time together.

The North Texas Objectivist Society invites you to participate in our next social event:

Saturday, February 9, 2008 at 6:30 PM ? ???? AM!

Casual dress. Mingle freely.

Refreshments -- fruit, chips, dips and salsa! Cold beverages. BYOB or wine. Remind us to make some hot coffee, too.

Hot Food! Varies from barbecued hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, sausages, and hot dogs to baked lasagnas to smoked meats. Hot side dishes, too. Get the food while it is hot! We normally like to serve buffet style at around 7:30 pm. (You are welcome to come late, but after that, the food may not be so hot.)

Feel free to bring a beverage, dish, or dessert if you have something of your own you prefer or you would like to share.

We have been having a great time at our social events! Plenty of time to get to know each other and for in-depth philosophical discussions, too. Please join us!

Please RSVP at http://aynrand.meetup...


It's up to you to make the world you live in.

This will be the first meeting I'll be able to attend since I've joined, and I'm looking very much forward to it! Is there any dish in particular that would go well with what will already be there that I could bring, or does it matter?

Hi Tarah,

I don't know what we will be serving yet. My wife and I usually look at the RSVPs to estimate the number of people and decide what spread to put out on the night.

The weather forecast for Saturday looks good, sunny with a high near 70, so I'm leaning to putting some meats in the smoker, say a brisket and a couple of pork loins. If I can't smoke enough meat for the number of people expected, we'll probably supplement with some oven-baked bbq chicken. All that's usually pretty tasty. We usually put on a simple salad and a vegetable side or two.

If you would like to bring a side dish, that would be great, but no worries. We have had one pot-luck so far, which was a lot of fun, and we'll do again every once in a while. But for most of our social events at the Ranch we like to keep it simple and make it easy for our guests to just show up and enjoy.

We look forward to meeting you this Saturday!