155-566: John Hospers (June 9, 1918 – June 12, 2011) was an American philosopher and political activist. Hospers was interested in Objectivism , and was once a friend of the philosopher Ayn Rand , though she later broke with him. In 1972 , Hospers became the first presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party , and was the only minor party candidate to receive an electoral vote in that year's U.S. presidential election . John Hospers
310-703: A Republican from Virginia , resulting in Nathan's becoming the first woman and the first Jew to receive an electoral vote in a United States presidential election. By 1991, Hospers had left the Libertarians for the Republican Party , where he helped establish the Republican Liberty Caucus . He adopted more conventionally conservative views in his later writings: in 1998, he wrote an article rejecting open border immigration, and in
465-489: A charter for a new colony to the Virginia Company of London . The group financed an expedition under Christopher Newport that established a settlement named Jamestown in 1607. Though more settlers soon joined, many were ill-prepared for the dangers of the new settlement. As the colony's president, John Smith secured food for the colonists from nearby tribes, but after he left in 1609, this trade stopped and
620-663: A group of Spanish Jesuits , explored the Chesapeake Bay during the 16th century. To help counter Spain's colonies in the Caribbean , Queen Elizabeth I of England supported Walter Raleigh 's 1584 expedition to the Atlantic coast of North America . The name "Virginia" was used by Captain Arthur Barlowe in the expedition's report, and may have been suggested by Raleigh or Elizabeth (perhaps noting her status as
775-593: A racially segregated society , and in 1902 rewrote the state constitution to include a poll tax and other voter registration measures that effectively disenfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites. New economic forces meanwhile industrialized the Commonwealth. Virginian James Albert Bonsack invented the tobacco cigarette rolling machine in 1880 leading to new large-scale production centered around Richmond. Railroad magnate Collis Potter Huntington founded Newport News Shipbuilding in 1886, which
930-425: A raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia , in an attempt to start a slave revolt across the southern states. The polarized national response to his raid, capture, trial, and execution that December marked a tipping point for many who believed slavery would need to be ended by force. Abraham Lincoln 's 1860 election further convinced many southern supporters of slavery that his opposition to its expansion would ultimately mean
1085-402: A series of ambush-style killings between colonists and natives under Chief Powhatan and his brother began, resulting in mass starvation in the colony that winter. By the end of the colony's first fourteen years, over eighty percent of the roughly eight thousand settlers transported there had died. Demand for exported tobacco , however, fueled the need for more workers. Starting in 1618,
1240-416: A "short-circuit" destroying it. Objectivism acknowledges the facts that human beings have limited knowledge, are vulnerable to error, and do not instantly understand all of the implications of their knowledge. According to Peikoff, one can be certain of a proposition if all of the available evidence verifies it, i.e., it can be logically integrated with the rest of one's knowledge; one is then certain within
1395-486: A 2007 revision of his book Libertarianism , he said he supported the Iraq War . Hospers' books include: Hospers was editor of three anthologies, and contributed to books edited by others. He wrote more than 100 articles in various scholarly and popular journals. Hospers was editor of The Personalist (1968–1982) and The Monist (1982–1992), and was a senior editor at Liberty magazine. Additionally Hospers wrote
1550-722: A bloody Confederate victory. Union General George B. McClellan organized the Army of the Potomac , which landed on the Virginia Peninsula in March 1862 and reached the outskirts of Richmond that June. With Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston wounded in fighting outside the city, command of his Army of Northern Virginia fell to Robert E. Lee . Over the next month, Lee drove the Union army back , and starting that September led
1705-439: A century, at a magnitude of 5.8, struck central Virginia on August 23, 2011 . 35 million years ago, a bolide impacted what is now eastern Virginia. The resulting Chesapeake Bay impact crater may explain what earthquakes and subsidence the region does experience. A meteor impact is also theorized as the source of Lake Drummond , the largest of the two natural lakes in the state . The Commonwealth's carbonate rock
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#17327722289161860-400: A concept 'dog'. Because of its characterization of concepts as "open-ended" classifications that go well beyond the characteristics included in their past or current definitions, Objectivist epistemology rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction as a false dichotomy and denies the possibility of a priori knowledge. Rand rejected "feeling" as sources of knowledge. Rand acknowledged
2015-428: A concept, one mentally isolates a group of concretes (of distinct perceptual units), on the basis of observed similarities which distinguish them from all other known concretes (similarity is 'the relationship between two or more existents which possess the same characteristic(s), but in different measure or degree'); then, by a process of omitting the particular measurements of these concretes, one integrates them into
2170-539: A governor who ignored the assembly and sent him back to England against his will. William Berkeley was named governor in 1642, just as the turmoil of the English Civil War and Interregnum permitted the colony greater autonomy. As a supporter of the king, Berkeley welcomed other Cavaliers who fled to Virginia. He surrendered to Parliamentarians in 1652, but after the 1660 Restoration made him governor again, he blocked assembly elections and exacerbated
2325-498: A human cognitive need: it allows human beings to understand concepts as though they were percepts . Objectivism defines "art" as a "selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments"—that is, according to what the artist believes to be ultimately true and important about the nature of reality and humanity. In this respect Objectivism regards art as a way of presenting abstractions concretely, in perceptual form. Virginia Virginia , officially
2480-618: A major urban business and shopping center in Tysons , Virginia's largest office market. Neighboring Prince William County , with over 450,000 residents, is Virginia's second-most populous county and home to Marine Corps Base Quantico , the FBI Academy , and Manassas National Battlefield Park . Arlington County is the smallest self-governing county in the U.S. by land area, and local politicians have proposed reorganizing it as an independent city due to its high density. Loudoun County
2635-437: A method of defining human nature and the nature of the world in which we live. My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. Rand's philosophy begins with three axioms : existence, consciousness, and identity . Rand defined an axiom as "a statement that identifies
2790-437: A national park, but is protected by both state and federal legislation and the inter-state Chesapeake Bay Program . Virginia is divided into 95 counties and 38 independent cities , which the U.S. Census Bureau describes as county-equivalents . This general method of treating cities and counties on par with each other is unique to Virginia and stretches back to the influence of Williamsburg and Norfolk in
2945-415: A person's actions promote and fulfill his own life or not is a question of fact, as it is with all other organisms, but whether a person will act to promote his well-being is up to him, not hard-wired into his physiology. "Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history." In Atlas Shrugged , Rand wrote "Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life
3100-442: A physical form—a work of art—that one can comprehend and to which one can respond emotionally. Academic philosophers have generally paid little attention to or dismissed Rand's philosophy, although a smaller number of academics do support it. Nonetheless, Objectivism has been a persistent influence among right-libertarians and American conservatives . The Objectivist movement , which Rand founded, attempts to spread her ideas to
3255-622: A professional philosopher and Rand's designated intellectual heir, later gave it a more formal structure. Peikoff characterizes Objectivism as a "closed system" insofar as its "fundamental principles" were set out by Rand and are not subject to change. However, he stated that "new implications, applications and integrations can always be discovered". Objectivism's main tenets are that reality exists independently of consciousness , that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception (see direct and indirect realism ), that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through
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#17327722289163410-405: A proof that the axioms of existence, consciousness, and identity are true. It is proof that they are axioms , that they are at the base of knowledge and thus inescapable." Rand said that existence is the perceptually self-evident fact at the base of all other knowledge, i.e., that "existence exists". She further said that to be is to be something , that "existence is identity". That is, to be
3565-642: A referendum and went into effect in 1971. In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African American elected as governor in the United States, and in 1992, Bobby Scott became the first Black congressman from Virginia since 1888. The expansion of federal government offices into Northern Virginia's suburbs during the Cold War boosted the region's population and economy. The Central Intelligence Agency outgrew their offices in Foggy Bottom during
3720-456: A right to self-determination . Objectivism describes government as "the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control—i.e., under objectively defined laws"; thus, government is both legitimate and critically important in order to protect individual rights. Rand opposed anarchism because she considered that putting police and courts on the market is an inherent miscarriage of justice . Objectivism claims that
3875-601: A single new mental unit: the concept, which subsumes all concretes of this kind (a potentially unlimited number). The integration is completed and retained by the selection of a perceptual symbol (a word) to designate it. "A concept is a mental integration of two or more units possessing the same distinguishing characteristic(s), with their particular measurements omitted." According to Rand, "the term 'measurements omitted' does not mean, in this context, that measurements are regarded as non-existent; it means that measurements exist, but are not specified . That measurements must exist
4030-458: A social context." These rights are specifically understood to be rights to action, not to specific results or objects, and the obligations created by rights are negative in nature: each individual must refrain from violating the rights of others. Objectivists reject alternative notions of rights, such as positive rights , collective rights , or animal rights . Objectivism claims that the only social system which fully recognizes individual rights
4185-530: A specific and finite identity, just like everything else that exists; therefore, it must operate by a specific method of validation. An item of knowledge cannot be "disqualified" by being arrived at by a specific process in a particular form. Thus, for Rand, the fact that consciousness must itself possess identity implies the rejection of both universal skepticism based on the "limits" of consciousness, as well as any claim to revelation, emotion or faith-based belief. Objectivist epistemology maintains that all knowledge
4340-446: A specific course of action. [...] It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death". Rand argued that the primary emphasis of man's free will is the choice: 'to think or not to think'. "Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one's consciousness
4495-943: A strategy called " massive resistance ", and the General Assembly passed a package of laws in 1956 that cut off funding to local schools that desegregated , causing some to close. Courts ruled the strategy unconstitutional, and on February 2, 1959, Black students integrated schools in Arlington and Norfolk , where they were known as the Norfolk 17 . County leaders in Prince Edward, however, instead shut their school system in June 1959. The Supreme Court ordered them to reopen and integrate their public schools , which finally happened in September 1964. Federal passage of
4650-619: A strong effect on eastern and southeastern coastal areas, making the climate there warmer but also more constant. Most of Virginia's recorded extremes in temperature and precipitation have occurred in the Blue Ridge Mountains and areas west. Virginia receives an average of 43.47 inches (110 cm) of precipitation annually, with the Shenandoah Valley being the state's driest region. Virginia has around 35–45 days with thunderstorms annually, and storms are common in
4805-511: Is processed knowledge—whether on the sensory, perceptual or conceptual level. An "unprocessed" knowledge would be a knowledge acquired without means of cognition. The aspect of epistemology given the most elaboration by Rand is the theory of concept-formation, which she presented in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology . She argued that concepts are formed by a process of measurement omission. Peikoff described this as follows: To form
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4960-653: Is also needed to establish knowable propositions. The philosopher John Hospers , who was influenced by Rand and shared her moral and political opinions, disagreed with her concerning issues of epistemology. Some philosophers, such as Tibor Machan , have argued that the Objectivist epistemology is incomplete. Psychology professor Robert L. Campbell writes that the relationship between Objectivist epistemology and cognitive science remains unclear because Rand made claims about human cognition and its development which belong to psychology, yet Rand also argued that philosophy
5115-403: Is an essential part of the process. The principle is: the relevant measurements must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity." Rand argued that concepts are organized hierarchically. Concepts such as 'dog,' which bring together "concretes" available in perception, can be differentiated (into the concepts of 'dachshund,' 'poodle,' etc.) or integrated (along with 'cat,' etc., into
5270-672: Is called the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, named after the river of the same name that flows through it. The Cumberland Plateau and Cumberland Mountains are in the southwest corner of Virginia, south of the Allegheny Plateau . In this region, rivers flow northwest into the Ohio River basin. The Virginia Seismic Zone has not had a history of regular earthquake activity. Earthquakes are rarely above 4.5 in magnitude . The Commonwealth's largest earthquake in at least
5425-401: Is capitalism, specifically what Rand described as "full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism". Objectivism regards capitalism as the social system which is most beneficial to the poor, but does not consider this its primary justification. Rather, it is the only moral social system. Objectivism maintains that only societies seeking to establish freedom (or free nations) have
5580-675: Is driven by technology companies and U.S. federal government agencies. Hampton Roads is also the site of the region's main seaport and Naval Station Norfolk , the world's largest naval base. Virginia's history begins with several Indigenous groups , including the Powhatan . In 1607, the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent English colony in the New World , leading to Virginia's nickname as
5735-480: Is filled with more than 4,000 limestone caves , ten of which are open for tourism, including the popular Luray Caverns and Skyline Caverns . Virginia's iconic Natural Bridge is the remaining roof of a collapsed limestone cave. Coal mining takes place in the three mountainous regions. More than 72 million tons of other non-fuel resources, such as slate , kyanite , sand, or gravel, were mined in Virginia in 2020 . The largest known deposits of uranium in
5890-523: Is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive he must act and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch—or build a cyclotron—without a knowledge of his aim and the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think." In her novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged , she also emphasizes
6045-470: Is incapable of error. For example, optical illusions are errors in the conceptual identification of what is seen, not errors of sight itself. The validity of sense perception, therefore, is not susceptible to proof (because it is presupposed by all proof as proof is only a matter of adducing sensory evidence) nor should its validity be denied (since the conceptual tools one would have to use to do this are derived from sensory data). Perceptual error, therefore,
6200-526: Is logically prior to psychology and in no way dependent on it. The philosophers Randall Dipert and Roderick Long [ ar ; arz ; es ; ru ; zh ] have argued that Objectivist epistemology conflates the perceptual process by which judgments are formed with the way in which they are to be justified, thereby leaving it unclear how sensory data can validate judgments structured propositionally. Objectivism includes an extensive treatment of ethical concerns. Rand wrote on morality in her works We
6355-471: Is no 'itself' until it is aware of something." Thus, Objectivism posits that the mind does not create reality, but rather, it is a means of discovering reality. Expressed differently, existence has "primacy" over consciousness, which must conform to it. Any other type of argument Rand termed "the primacy of consciousness", including any variant of metaphysical subjectivism or theism. Objectivist philosophy derives its explanations of action and causation from
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6510-547: Is not motivated by a desire to live his own human life, but by a wish to live on a sub-human level. Instead of using "that which promotes my (human) life" as his standard of value, he mistakes "that which I (mindlessly happen to) value" for a standard of value, in contradiction of the fact that, existentially, he is a human and therefore rational organism. The "I value" in whim-worship or hedonism can be replaced with "we value", "he values", "they value", or "God values", and still, it would remain dissociated from reality. Rand repudiated
6665-499: Is not possible. Rand consequently rejected epistemological skepticism , as she said that the skeptics' claim to knowledge "distorted" by the form or the means of perception is impossible. The Objectivist theory of perception distinguishes between the form and object. The form in which an organism perceives is determined by the physiology of its sensory systems. Whatever form the organism perceives it in, what it perceives—the object of perception—is reality. Rand consequently rejected
6820-415: Is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible", and "the fact that a living entity is , determines what it ought to do". Rand writes: "there is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on
6975-720: Is part of the Atlantic Plain , and the Middle Peninsula forms the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay . Central Virginia lies predominantly in the Piedmont , the foothill region of the Blue Ridge Mountains , which cross the western and southwestern parts of the state. The fertile Shenandoah Valley fosters the state's most productive agricultural counties, while the economy in Northern Virginia
7130-534: Is summarized by the oath her Atlas Shrugged character John Galt adhered to: "I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." Some philosophers have criticized Objectivist ethics. The philosopher Robert Nozick argues that Rand's foundational argument in ethics is unsound because it does not explain why someone could not rationally prefer dying and having no values, in order to further some particular value. He argues that her attempt to defend
7285-498: Is the logical consequence of humans following evidence to its logical conclusion. The only alternative would be that they live without orientation to reality. A corollary to Rand's endorsement of self-interest is her rejection of the ethical doctrine of altruism —which she defined in the sense of Auguste Comte 's altruism (he popularized the term ), as a moral obligation to live for the sake of others. Rand also rejected subjectivism. A "whim-worshiper" or "hedonist", according to Rand,
7440-545: Is the fastest-growing county in the state. In western Virginia, Roanoke city and Montgomery County , part of the Blacksburg–Christiansburg metropolitan area , both have surpassed a population of 100,000 since 2018. On the western edge of the Tidewater region is Virginia's capital, Richmond , which has a population of around 230,000 in its city proper and over 1.3 million in its metropolitan area. On
7595-441: Is the means of human knowledge, it is therefore each person's most fundamental means of survival and is necessary to the achievement of values. The use or threat of force neutralizes the practical effect of an individual's reason, whether the force originates from the state or from a criminal. According to Rand, "man's mind will not function at the point of a gun". Therefore, the only type of organized human behavior consistent with
7750-476: Is to be "an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes". That which has no nature or attributes does not and cannot exist. The axiom of existence is conceptualized as differentiating something from nothing, while the law of identity is conceptualized as differentiating one thing from another, i.e., one's first awareness of the law of non-contradiction, another crucial base for the rest of knowledge. As Rand wrote, "A leaf ... cannot be all red and green at
7905-409: Is ultimately based on perception. "Percepts, not sensations, are the given, the self-evident." Rand considered the validity of the senses to be axiomatic and said that purported arguments to the contrary all commit the fallacy of the "stolen concept" by presupposing the validity of concepts that, in turn, presuppose the validity of the senses. She said that perception, being determined physiologically,
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#17327722289168060-474: Is verbally identified and serves as the basis of further knowledge. According to Rand, attaining knowledge beyond what is given by perception requires both volition (or the exercise of free will ) and performing a specific method of validation by observation, concept-formation, and the application of inductive and deductive reasoning . For example, a belief in dragons, however sincere, does not mean that reality includes dragons. A process of proof identifying
8215-544: Is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality—or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make." According to Rand, therefore, possessing free will, human beings must choose their values: one does not automatically have one's own life as his ultimate value. Whether in fact
8370-449: The 1972 U.S. presidential election , Hospers and Tonie Nathan were the first presidential and vice-presidential nominees, respectively, of the newly formed Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party was poorly organized, and Hospers and Nathan managed to get on the ballot in only two states ( Washington and Colorado ), receiving 3,674 popular votes. Hospers and Nathan received one electoral vote from faithless elector Roger MacBride ,
8525-647: The Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge , which marks the beginning of the Outer Banks . State agencies control about one-third of protected land in the state, and the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation manages over 75,900 acres (307.2 km ) in forty Virginia state parks and 59,222 acres (239.7 km ) in 65 Natural Area Preserves , plus three undeveloped parks. Breaks Interstate Park crosses
8680-699: The Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965), and their later enforcement by the Justice Department , helped end racial segregation in Virginia and overturn Jim Crow laws . In 1967, the Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on interracial marriage with Loving v. Virginia . In 1968, Governor Mills Godwin called a commission to rewrite the state constitution. The new constitution, which banned discrimination and removed articles that now violated federal law, passed in
8835-560: The Committee of Nine . During the post-war Reconstruction era , African Americans were able to unite in communities, particularly around Richmond , Danville , and the Tidewater region , and take a greater role in Virginia society; many achieved some land ownership during the 1870s. Virginia adopted a constitution in 1868 which guaranteed political, civil, and voting rights , and provided for free public schools. However, with many railroad lines and other infrastructure destroyed during
8990-760: The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains . The state's capital is Richmond and its most populous city is Virginia Beach . Its most populous subdivision is Fairfax County , part of Northern Virginia , where slightly over a third of Virginia's population of 8.7 million live. Eastern Virginia
9145-473: The Kantian dichotomy between "things as we perceive them" and "things as they are in themselves". Rand wrote: The attack on man's consciousness and particularly on his conceptual faculty has rested on the unchallenged premise that any knowledge acquired by a process of consciousness is necessarily subjective and cannot correspond to the facts of reality, since it is processed knowledge … [but] all knowledge
9300-862: The Korean War , and moved to Langley in 1961, in part due to a decision by the National Security Council that the agency relocate outside the District of Columbia. The Pentagon , built in Arlington during World War II as the headquarters of the Department of Defense, was struck by a hijacked plane in the September 11, 2001 attacks . Mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and in Virginia Beach in 2019 led to passage of gun control measures in 2020. Racial injustice and
9455-635: The Southwest Mountains around Charlottesville . The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the Appalachian Mountains with the highest points in the Commonwealth, the tallest being Mount Rogers at 5,729 feet (1,746 m). The Ridge-and-Valley region is west of the mountains, carbonate rock based, and includes the Massanutten Mountain ridge and the Great Appalachian Valley , which
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#17327722289169610-723: The Torpedo Factory in Alexandria had over 5,050. High-school student Barbara Rose Johns started a strike in 1951 at her underfunded and segregated school in Prince Edward County . The protests led Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill to file a lawsuit against the county . Their case joined Brown v. Board of Education at the Supreme Court, which rejected the doctrine of " separate but equal " in 1954. The segregationist establishment, led by Senator Harry F. Byrd and his Byrd Organization , reacted with
9765-944: The Tutelo , who spoke Siouan , to the west. In response to threats from these other groups to their trade network, thirty or so Virginia Algonquian -speaking tribes consolidated during the 1570s under Wahunsenacawh, known in English as Chief Powhatan . Powhatan controlled more than 150 settlements that had a total population of around 15,000 in 1607. Three-fourths of the native population in Virginia, however, died from smallpox and other Old World diseases during that century, disrupting their oral traditions and complicating research into earlier periods. Additionally, many primary sources, including those that mention Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas , were created by Europeans, who may have held biases or misunderstood native social structures and customs. Several European expeditions, including
9920-834: The Union , which led to the separation of West Virginia in 1863. Although the state was under one-party rule for nearly a century following the Reconstruction era , both major political parties have been competitive in Virginia since the repeal of Jim Crow laws in the 1970s. Virginia's state legislature is the Virginia General Assembly , which was established in July 1619, making it the oldest current law-making body in North America . Unlike other states, cities and counties in Virginia function as equals, but
10075-560: The University of Minnesota , Brooklyn College , California State College Los Angeles (1966–1968) and at the University of Southern California , where for many years he was chairman of the philosophy department and professor emeritus . In 2002, an hour-long video about Hospers' life, work, and philosophy was released by the Liberty Fund of Indianapolis , as part of its Classics of Liberty series. Multiple sources, including
10230-607: The Virginia big-eared bat , the state mammal . The Virginia opossum is the only marsupial native to the United States and Canada, and the native Appalachian cottontail was recognized in 1992 as a distinct species of rabbit, one of three found in the state. Whales, dolphins, and porpoises have been recorded in Virginia's coastal waters, with bottlenose dolphins being the most frequent aquatic mammals . Virginia's bird fauna comprises 422 counted species, of which 359 are regularly occurring and 214 have bred in Virginia, while
10385-555: The breeding of slaves , often through rape, a profitable business. Slaves in the Richmond area were also forced into industrial jobs, including mining and shipbuilding. The failed slave uprisings of Gabriel Prosser in 1800, George Boxley in 1815, and Nat Turner in 1831, however, marked the growing resistance to slavery. Afraid of further uprisings, Virginia's government in the 1830s encouraged free Blacks to migrate to Liberia . On October 16, 1859, abolitionist John Brown led
10540-431: The class divide by disenfranchising and restricting the movement of indentured servants, who made up around eighty percent of the workforce. On the colony's frontier, tribes like the Tutelo and Doeg were being squeezed by Seneca raiders from the north, leading to more confrontations with colonists. In 1676, several hundred working-class followers of Nathaniel Bacon , upset by Berkeley's refusal to retaliate against
10695-606: The headright system tried to solve this by granting colonists farmland for their help attracting indentured servants . Enslaved Africans were first sold in Virginia in 1619. Though other Africans arrived as indentured servants and could be freed after four to seven years, the basis for lifelong slavery was developed in legal cases like those of John Punch in 1640 and John Casor in 1655. Laws passed in Jamestown defined slavery as race-based in 1661, as inherited maternally in 1662, and as enforceable by death in 1669. From
10850-766: The siege of Yorktown . His surrender on October 19, 1781, led to peace negotiations in Paris and secured the independence of the colonies. Virginians were instrumental in writing the United States Constitution : James Madison drafted the Virginia Plan in 1787 and the Bill of Rights in 1789. Virginia ratified the Constitution on June 25, 1788. The three-fifths compromise ensured that Virginia, with its large number of slaves, initially had
11005-550: The state fish . Downhill in the Piedmont, stripeback darter and Roanoke bass become common, as do swampfish , bluespotted sunfish , and pirate perch in the Tidewater . The Chesapeake Bay hosts clams, oysters, and 350 species of saltwater and estuarine fish , including the bay's most abundant finfish, the Bay anchovy , as well as the invasive blue catfish . An estimated 317 million Chesapeake blue crabs live in
11160-549: The "Virgin Queen" or that they viewed the land as being untouched) or related to an Algonquin phrase, Wingandacoa or Windgancon , or leader's name, Wingina , as heard by the expedition. The name initially applied to the entire coastal region from South Carolina in the south to Maine in the north, along with the island of Bermuda . Raleigh's colony failed, but the potential financial and strategic gains still captivated many English policymakers. In 1606, King James I issued
11315-441: The 1930s to over one million by the 2010s. Native carnivorans include black bears , who have a population of around five to six thousand in the state, as well as bobcats , coyotes , both gray and red foxes , raccoons , weasels and skunks . Rodents include groundhogs , nutria , beavers , both gray squirrels and fox squirrels , chipmunks, and Allegheny woodrats , while the seventeen bat species include brown bats and
11470-416: The 2022–2023 winter season. Climate change in Virginia is leading to higher temperatures year-round as well as more heavy rain and flooding events. Urban heat islands can be found in many Virginia cities and suburbs, particularly in neighborhoods linked to historic redlining . The air in Virginia has statistically improved since 1998. The closure and conversion of coal power plants in Virginia and
11625-554: The Appalachian Mountains can lead to significant snowfalls across the state, such as the January 2016 blizzard , which created the state's highest recorded one-day snowfall of 36.6 inches (93 cm) near Bluemont . On average, cities in Virginia can receive between 5.8–12.3 inches (15–31 cm) of snow annually, but recent winters have seen below-average snowfalls, and much of Virginia had no measurable snow during
11780-842: The Black population was reduced by the Great Migration to northern industrial cities in the first half of the 20th century, since 1965 there has been a reverse migration of Blacks returning south . The Commonwealth has the highest number of Black-white interracial marriages in the US , and 8.2% of Virginians describe themselves as multiracial . More recent immigration since the late 20th century has resulted in new communities of Hispanics and Asians. As of 2020 , 10.5% of Virginia's total population describe themselves as Hispanic or Latino , and 8.8% as Asian . The state's Hispanic population rose by 92% from 2000 to 2010, with two-thirds of Hispanics in
11935-518: The Census Bureau recognizes several hundred unincorporated communities . Over three million people, 35% of Virginians, live in the twenty jurisdictions collectively defined as Northern Virginia , part of the larger Washington metropolitan area and the Northeast megalopolis . Fairfax County , with more than 1.1 million residents, is Virginia's most populous jurisdiction, and has
12090-526: The Civil War, the Commonwealth was deeply in debt, and in the late 1870s redirected money from public schools to pay bondholders. The Readjuster Party formed in 1877 and won legislative power in 1879 by uniting Black and white Virginians behind a shared opposition to debt payments and the perceived plantation elites . The Readjusters focused on building up schools, like Virginia Tech and Virginia State , and successfully forced West Virginia to share in
12245-756: The Great Dismal and Nottoway swamps. Other common trees include red spruce, Atlantic white cedar , tulip-poplar , and the flowering dogwood , the state tree and flower . Plants like milkweed , dandelions, daisies, ferns, and Virginia creeper , which is featured on the state flag , are also common. The Thompson Wildlife Area in Fauquier is known for having one of the largest populations of trillium wildflowers in North America. White-tailed deer , one of 75 mammal species found in Virginia, rebounded from an estimated population of as few as 25,000 in
12400-791: The Iroquois, and other allied tribes on both sides. A militia from several British colonies, called the Virginia Regiment , was led by Major George Washington , himself one of the investors in the Ohio Company. In the decade following the French and Indian War , the British Parliament passed new taxes which were deeply unpopular in the colonies, and in the House of Burgesses ; opposition to taxation without representation
12555-460: The Kentucky border and is one of only two inter-state parks in the United States. Sustainable logging is allowed in 26 state forests managed by the Virginia Department of Forestry totaling 71,972 acres (291.3 km ), as is hunting in 44 Wildlife Management Areas run by the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources covering over 205,000 acres (829.6 km ). The Chesapeake Bay is not
12710-736: The Libertarian Party, have referred to Hospers as the first openly gay person to run for president of the United States. However, The Guardian reported that his family "strenuously denied" that he was gay. Hospers died in Los Angeles on June 12, 2011, at the age of 93. During the period he taught philosophy at Brooklyn College, Hospers was very interested in Objectivism . He appeared on radio shows with Ayn Rand , and devoted considerable attention to her ideas in his ethics textbook Human Conduct . According to Rand's biographer, Barbara Branden , Hospers met Rand when she addressed
12865-466: The Living (1936), Atlas Shrugged (1957) and The Virtue of Selfishness (1964). Rand defines morality as "a code of values to guide man's choices and actions—the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life". Rand maintained that the first question is not what should the code of values be, the first question is "Does man need values at all—and why?" According to Rand, "it
13020-630: The May 23 referendum, armed pro-Confederate groups prevented the casting and counting of votes from areas that opposed secession. Representatives from 27 of these northwestern counties instead began the Wheeling Convention , which organized a government loyal to the Union and led to the separation of West Virginia as a new state. The armies of the Union and Confederacy first met on July 21, 1861, in Battle of Bull Run near Manassas, Virginia ,
13175-555: The Ohio Valley region has helped cut the amount of particulate matter in Virginia's air in half. Current plans call for 30% of the Commonwealth's electricity to be renewable by 2030 and for all to be carbon-free by 2050. Forests cover 62% of Virginia as of 2021 , of which 80% is considered hardwood forest, meaning that trees are primarily deciduous and broad-leaved . The other 20% is pine, with loblolly and shortleaf pine dominating much of central and eastern Virginia. In
13330-848: The Old Dominion . Slaves from Africa and land from displaced native tribes fueled the growing plantation economy, but also fueled conflicts both inside and outside the colony. Virginians fought for the independence of the Thirteen Colonies in the American Revolution , and helped establish the new national government. During the American Civil War , the state government in Richmond joined the Confederacy , while many northwestern counties remained loyal to
13485-655: The U.S. Census Bureau found that only 0.5% of Virginians were exclusively American Indian or Alaska Native , though 2.1% were in some combination with other ethnicities. The state government has extended recognition to eleven tribes. Seven tribes also have federal recognition. The Pamunkey and Mattaponi have reservations on tributaries of the York River in the Tidewater region . [REDACTED] American Community Survey five-year estimate According to U.S. Census data as of 2022 on Virginia residents aged five and older, 83% (6,805,548) speak English at home as
13640-552: The U.S. are under Coles Hill, Virginia . Despite a challenge that reached the U.S. Supreme Court twice , the state has banned its mining since 1982 due to environmental and public health concerns. Virginia has a humid subtropical climate that transitions to humid continental west of the Blue Ridge Mountains . Seasonal extremes vary from average lows of 25 °F (−4 °C) in January to average highs of 86 °F (30 °C) in July. The Atlantic Ocean and Gulf Stream have
13795-478: The United States as of 2020 . El Salvador is the most common foreign country of birth, with India , Mexico , South Korea , the Philippines , and Vietnam as other common birthplaces. The state's most populous racial group, non-Hispanic whites , has declined as a proportion of the population from 76% in 1990 to 58.6% in 2020. Immigrants from Britain and Ireland settled throughout the Commonwealth during
13950-489: The United States. Virginia has a total area of 42,774.2 square miles (110,784.7 km ), including 3,180.13 square miles (8,236.5 km ) of water, making it the 35th- largest state by area. It is bordered by Maryland and Washington, D.C. to the northeast; by the Atlantic Ocean to the east; by North Carolina to the south; by Tennessee to the southwest; by Kentucky to the west; and by West Virginia to
14105-530: The Virginia General Assembly proposed a new surveying commission in 1871. Representatives from Tennessee preferred to keep the less-straight 1803 line, and in 1893, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for them against Virginia . One result is how the city of Bristol is divided in two between the states. The Chesapeake Bay separates the contiguous portion of the Commonwealth from the two-county peninsula of Virginia's Eastern Shore . The bay
14260-640: The area held by the Seneca and their larger Iroquois Nation , and in 1748, a group of wealthy speculators, backed by the British monarchy, formed the Ohio Company to start English settlement and trade in the Ohio Country west of the Appalachian Mountains . France, which claimed this area as part of New France , viewed this as a threat, and in 1754 the French and Indian War engulfed England, France,
14415-714: The army and revolutionary militias. Virginia was the first colony to ratify the Articles of Confederation in December 1777. In April 1780, the capital was moved to Richmond at the urging of Governor Thomas Jefferson, who feared that Williamsburg's coastal location would make it vulnerable to British attack. British forces landed around Portsmouth in October 1780, and soldiers under Benedict Arnold raided Richmond in January 1781. The British army had over seven thousand soldiers and twenty-five warships stationed in Virginia at
14570-745: The article "Art and Morality" for the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics (JCLA) , Vol. 1, No. 1, Summer 1978. Objectivism Ayn Rand Institute Other Objectivism is a philosophical system named and developed by Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand . She described it as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute". Rand first expressed Objectivism in her fiction, most notably The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), and later in non-fiction essays and books. Leonard Peikoff ,
14725-480: The axiom of identity, referring to causation as "the law of identity applied to action". According to Rand, it is entities that act, and every action is the action of an entity. The way entities act is caused by the specific nature (or "identity") of those entities; if they were different, they would act differently. As with the other axioms, an implicit understanding of causation is derived from one's primary observations of causal connections among entities even before it
14880-426: The base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it." As Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff argued, Rand's argument for axioms "is not
15035-448: The basis in reality of a claimed item of knowledge is necessary to establish its truth. Objectivist epistemology begins with the principle that "consciousness is identification". This is understood to be a direct consequence of the metaphysical principle that "existence is identity". Rand defined "reason" as "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses". Rand wrote "The fundamental concept of method,
15190-547: The bay as of 2024 . There are 34 native species of crayfish, like the Big Sandy . Amphibians found in Virginia include the Cumberland Plateau salamander and Eastern hellbender , while the northern watersnake is the most common of the 32 snake species. As of 2019 , roughly 16.2% of land in the Commonwealth is protected by federal, state, and local governments and non-profits. Federal lands account for
15345-566: The beginning of 1781, but General Charles Cornwallis and his superiors were indecisive, and maneuvers by the three thousand soldiers under the Marquis de Lafayette and twenty-nine allied French warships together managed to confine the British to a swampy area of the Virginia Peninsula in September. Around sixteen thousand soldiers under George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau quickly converged there and defeated Cornwallis in
15500-743: The citizens" and it must act in an impartial manner according to specific, objectively defined laws. Rand argued that limited intellectual property monopolies being granted to certain inventors and artists on a first-to-file basis are moral because she considered all property as fundamentally intellectual. Furthermore, the value of a commercial product derives in part from the necessary work of its inventors. However, Rand considered limits on patents and copyrights as important and said that if they were granted in perpetuity, it would necessarily result in de facto collectivism. Rand opposed racism and any legal application of racism. She considered affirmative action to be an example of legal racism. Rand advocated
15655-528: The colonial period, when roughly three-fourths of immigrants came as indentured servants . The Appalachian mountains and Shenandoah Valley have many settlements that were populated by German and Scotch-Irish immigrants in the 18th and 19th centuries, often following the Great Wagon Road . Over ten percent of Virginians have German ancestry as of 2020 . The largest minority group in Virginia are Blacks and African Americans, about one-fifth of
15810-585: The colonial period. Only three other independent cities exist elsewhere in the US. The differences between counties and cities in Virginia are small and have to do with how each assess new taxes, whether a referendum is necessary to issue bonds, and with the application of Dillon's Rule , which limits the authority of cities and counties to countermand acts expressly allowed by the General Assembly . Counties can also have incorporated towns , and while there are no further administrative subdivisions ,
15965-506: The colony's start, residents agitated for greater local control, and in 1619, certain male colonists began electing representatives to an assembly, later called the House of Burgesses , that negotiated issues with the governing council appointed by the London Company. Unhappy with this arrangement, the monarchy revoked the company's charter and began directly naming governors and Council members in 1624. In 1635, colonists arrested
16120-517: The concentration of independent cities in the Tidewater region is that several rural counties there re-incorporated as cities or consolidated with existing cities to try to hold on to their new suburban neighborhoods that started booming in the 1950s , since cities like Norfolk and Portsmouth were able to annex land from adjoining counties until a moratorium in 1987. Others, like Poquoson , became cities to try to preserve racial segregation during
16275-408: The concept of 'animal'). Abstract concepts such as 'animal' can be further integrated, via "abstraction from abstractions", into such concepts as 'living thing.' Concepts are formed in the context of knowledge available. A young child differentiates dogs from cats and chickens but need not explicitly differentiate them from deep-sea tube worms, or from other types of animals not yet known to him, to form
16430-406: The context of the evidence. Rand rejected the traditional rationalist / empiricist dichotomy, arguing that it embodies a false alternative: conceptually based knowledge independent of perception (rationalism) versus perceptually based knowledge independent of concepts (empiricism). Rand argued that neither is possible because the senses provide the material of knowledge while conceptual processing
16585-409: The desegregation era of the 1970s. The 2020 census found the state resident population was 8,631,393, a 7.9% increase since the 2010 census . Another 23,149 Virginians live overseas, giving the state a total population of 8,654,542. Virginia has the fourth-largest overseas population of U.S. states due to its federal employees and military personnel. The fertility rate in Virginia as of 2020
16740-541: The eastern edge is the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, where over 1.7 million reside across six counties and nine cities, including the Commonwealth's three most populous independent cities: Virginia Beach , Chesapeake , and Norfolk . Neighboring Suffolk , which includes a portion of the Great Dismal Swamp , is the largest city by area at 429.1 square miles (1,111 km ). One reason for
16895-500: The end of slavery across the country. The seizure of Fort Sumter by Confederate forces on April 14, 1861, prompted Lincoln to call for a federal army of 75,000 men from state militias . The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 voted on April 17 to secede on the condition it was approved in a referendum the next month. The convention voted to join the Confederacy, which named Richmond its capital on May 20. During
17050-516: The equation of rational selfishness with hedonistic or whim-worshiping "selfishness-without-a-self". She said that the former is good, and the latter bad, and that there is a fundamental difference between them. For Rand, all of the principal virtues are applications of the role of reason as man's basic tool of survival: rationality, honesty, justice, independence, integrity, productiveness, and pride—each of which she explains in some detail in "The Objectivist Ethics". The essence of Objectivist ethics
17205-419: The evidence of one's senses and reason... Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as 'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing. ' " Reliance on revelation is like reliance on a Ouija board ; it bypasses the need to show how it connects its results to reality. Faith, for Rand, is not a "short-cut" to knowledge, but
17360-403: The first of several invasions into Union territory. During the next three years of war, more battles were fought in Virginia than anywhere else, including the battles of Fredericksburg , Chancellorsville , Spotsylvania , and the concluding Battle of Appomattox Court House , where Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865. Virginia was formally restored to the United States in 1870, due to the work of
17515-457: The idea that human knowledge and values are objective : they exist and are determined by the nature of reality, to be discovered by one's mind, and are not created by the thoughts one has. Rand stated that she chose the name because her preferred term for a philosophy based on the primacy of existence —" existentialism "—had already been taken. Rand characterized Objectivism as "a philosophy for living on earth", based on reality, and intended as
17670-409: The if stands for man's choice: "if you want to achieve a certain goal". Rand's explanation of values presents the proposition that an individual's primary moral obligation is to achieve his own well-being—it is for his life and his self-interest that an individual ought to obey a moral code. Ethical egoism is a corollary of setting man's life as the moral standard. Rand believed that rational egoism
17825-448: The importance of emotion for human beings, but she maintained that emotions are a consequence of the conscious or subconscious ideas that a person already accepts, not a means of achieving awareness of reality. "Emotions are not tools of cognition." Rand also rejected all forms of faith or mysticism, terms that she used synonymously. She defined faith as "the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against
17980-401: The importance of productive work, romantic love and art to human happiness, and dramatizes the ethical character of their pursuit. The primary virtue in Objectivist ethics is rationality , as Rand meant it "the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action". The purpose of a moral code, Rand said, is to provide
18135-469: The initiation of physical force against the will of another is immoral, as are indirect initiations of force through threats, fraud, or breach of contract. The use of defensive or retaliatory force, on the other hand, is appropriate. Objectivism claims that because the opportunity to use reason without the initiation of force is necessary to achieve moral values, each individual has an inalienable moral right to act as his own judgment directs and to keep
18290-578: The land on Virginia's islands, which include Tangier Island in the bay and Chincoteague , one of 23 barrier islands on the Atlantic coast. The Tidewater is a coastal plain between the Atlantic coast and the fall line . It includes the Eastern Shore and major estuaries of Chesapeake Bay. The Piedmont is a series of sedimentary and igneous rock -based foothills east of the mountains. The region, known for its heavy clay soil, includes
18445-466: The largest bloc in the House of Representatives . Together with the Virginia dynasty of presidents, this gave the Commonwealth national importance. Virginia is called the "Mother of States" because of its role in being carved into states such as Kentucky , and for the numbers of American pioneers born in Virginia. Between 1790 and 1860, the number of slaves in Virginia rose from around 290 thousand to over 490 thousand, roughly one-third of
18600-440: The late afternoon and evenings between April and September. These months are also the most common for tornadoes , eight of which touched down in the Commonwealth in 2023. Hurricanes and tropical storms can occur from August to October. The deadliest natural disaster in Virginia was Hurricane Camille , which killed over 150 people in 1969 mainly in inland Nelson County . Between December and March, cold-air damming caused by
18755-873: The majority, with thirty National Park Service units, such as Great Falls Park and the Appalachian Trail , and one national park, Shenandoah . Almost forty percent of Shenandoah's total 199,173 acres (806 km ) area has been designated as wilderness under the National Wilderness Preservation System . The U.S. Forest Service administers the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests , which cover more than 1.6 million acres (6,500 km ) within Virginia's mountains, and continue into West Virginia and Kentucky . The Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge also extends into North Carolina, as does
18910-620: The middle of the 20th century, are the focus of conservation efforts in the state and a reintroduction program in Shenandoah National Park . Virginia has 226 species of freshwater fish from 25 families, a diversity attributable to the area's varied and humid climate, topography, interconnected river system, and lack of Pleistocene glaciers . Common examples on the Cumberland Plateau and higher-elevation regions include Eastern blacknose dace , sculpin , smallmouth bass , redhorse sucker , Kanawha darter , and brook trout ,
19065-683: The morality of selfishness is, therefore, an instance of begging the question . Nozick also argues that Rand's solution to David Hume 's famous is-ought problem is unsatisfactory. In response, the philosophers Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl have argued that Nozick misstated Rand's case. Charles King criticized Rand's example of an indestructible robot to demonstrate the value of life as incorrect and confusing. In response, Paul St. F. Blair defended Rand's ethical conclusions, while maintaining that his arguments might not have been approved by Rand. Rand's defense of individual liberty integrates elements from her entire philosophy. Since reason
19220-474: The north and drifted an additional 3.5 miles by the border's westernmost point . After Tennessee joined the U.S. in 1796, new surveyors worked in 1802 and 1803 to reset their border with Virginia as a line from the summit of White Top Mountain to the top of Tri-State Peak in the Cumberland Mountains . However, deviations in that border were identified when it was re-marked in 1856, and
19375-466: The northwest. That Virginia's boundary with Maryland and Washington, D.C. only extends to the low-water mark of the south shore of the Potomac River has been an issue for water rights over the years. . Virginia's southern border was defined in 1665 as 36°30' north latitude . Surveyors marking the border with North Carolina in the 18th century however started about 3.5 miles (5.6 km) to
19530-522: The one on which all the others depend, is logic . The distinguishing characteristic of logic (the art of non-contradictory identification) indicates the nature of the actions (actions of consciousness required to achieve a correct identification) and their goal (knowledge)—while omitting the length, complexity or specific steps of the process of logical inference, as well as the nature of the particular cognitive problem involved in any given instance of using logic." According to Rand, consciousness possesses
19685-412: The operation of reason is that of voluntary cooperation. Persuasion is the method of reason. By its nature, the overtly irrational cannot rely on the use of persuasion and must ultimately resort to force to prevail. Thus, Rand argued that reason and freedom are correlates, just as she argued that mysticism and force are corollaries. Based on this understanding of the role of reason, Objectivists claim that
19840-461: The population. Virginia was a major destination of the Atlantic slave trade . The Igbo ethnic group of what is now southern Nigeria were the largest African group among slaves in Virginia. Blacks in Virginia also have more European ancestry than those in other southern states, and DNA analysis shows many have asymmetrical male and female ancestry from before the Civil War, evidence of European fathers and African or Native American mothers. Though
19995-620: The pre-war debt. But in 1883, they were divided by a proposed repeal of anti-miscegenation laws , and days before that year's election, a riot in Danville , involving armed policemen, left four Black men and one white man dead. These events motivated a push by white supremacists to seize political power through voter suppression , and segregationists in the Democratic Party won the legislature that year and maintained control for decades. They passed Jim Crow laws that established
20150-518: The presence of Confederate monuments in Virginia have also led to large demonstrations, including in August 2017, when a white supremacist drove his car into protesters , killing one, and in June 2020, when protests that were part of the larger Black Lives Matter movement brought about the removal of Confederate statues . Virginia is located in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of
20305-438: The principles by reference to which man can achieve the values his survival requires. Rand summarizes: If [man] chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course. Reality confronts a man with a great many "must's", but all of them are conditional: the formula of realistic necessity is: "you must, if –" and
20460-456: The process of concept formation and inductive logic , that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (see rational egoism ), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism , and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans' metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into
20615-413: The product of his effort. Peikoff, explaining the basis of rights, stated, "In content, as the founding fathers recognized, there is one fundamental right, which has several major derivatives. The fundamental right is the right to life. Its major derivatives are the right to liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness." "A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in
20770-420: The proper functions of a government are " the police , to protect men from criminals— the armed services , to protect men from foreign invaders— the law courts , to settle disputes among men according to objective laws", the executive , and legislatures . Furthermore, in protecting individual rights, the government is acting as an agent of its citizens and "has no rights except the rights delegated to it by
20925-436: The public and in academic settings. Rand originally expressed her ideas in her novels—most notably, in both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged . She further elaborated on them in her periodicals The Objectivist Newsletter , The Objectivist , and The Ayn Rand Letter , and in non-fiction books such as Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and The Virtue of Selfishness . The name "Objectivism" derives from
21080-469: The rest are mostly winter residents or transients . Water birds include sandpipers, wood ducks, and Virginia rail , while common inland examples include warblers, woodpeckers, and cardinals, the state bird . Birds of prey include osprey, broad-winged hawks , and barred owls . There are no endemic bird species. Audubon recognizes 21 Important Bird Areas in the state. Peregrine falcons , whose numbers dramatically declined due to DDT poisoning in
21235-498: The right to legal abortion . Rand believed capital punishment is morally justified as retribution against a murderer, but dangerous due to the risk of mistakenly executing innocent people and facilitating state murder. She therefore said she opposed capital punishment "on epistemological, not moral, grounds". She opposed involuntary military conscription . She opposed any form of censorship , including legal restrictions on pornography , opinion or worship , famously quipping; "In
21390-454: The same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time... A is A ." Objectivism rejects belief in anything alleged to transcend existence. Rand argued that consciousness is "the faculty of perceiving that which exists". As she put it, "to be conscious is to be conscious of something ", that is consciousness itself cannot be distinguished or conceptualized except in relation to an independent reality. "It cannot be aware only of itself—there
21545-524: The southwest and Mexico by the end of the period. Palisaded towns began to be built around 1200. The native population in the current boundaries of Virginia reached around 50,000 in the 1500s. Large groups in the area at that time included the Algonquian in the Tidewater region , which they referred to as Tsenacommacah , the Iroquoian -speaking Nottoway and Meherrin to the north and south, and
21700-476: The state government manages most local roads. It is also the only state where governors are prohibited from serving consecutive terms. Nomadic hunters are estimated to have arrived in Virginia around 17,000 years ago. Evidence from Daugherty's Cave shows it was regularly used as a rock shelter by 9,800 years ago. During the late Woodland period (500–1000 CE ), tribes coalesced, and farming, first of corn and squash, began, with beans and tobacco arriving from
21855-686: The state living in Northern Virginia . Northern Virginia also has a significant population of Vietnamese Americans , whose major wave of immigration followed the Vietnam War . Korean Americans have migrated there more recently, while about 45,000 Filipino Americans have settled in the Hampton Roads area. Tribal membership in Virginia is complicated by the legacy of the state's " pencil genocide " of intentionally categorizing Native Americans and Blacks together, and many tribal members do have African or European ancestry, or both. In 2020,
22010-587: The state population, and the number of slave owners rose to over 50 thousand. Both of these numbers represented the most in the U.S. The boom in Southern cotton production using cotton gins increased the amount of labor needed for harvesting raw cotton , but new federal laws prohibited the importation of slaves. Decades of monoculture tobacco farming had also degraded Virginia's agricultural productivity . Virginia plantations increasingly turned to exporting slaves , which broke up countless families and made
22165-489: The state than moving to it in 2021. This is largely credited to high home prices in Northern Virginia, which are driving residents there to relocate south; Raleigh is their top destination. Aside from Virginia, the top birth state for Virginians is New York , with the Northeast accounting for the largest number of domestic migrants into the state by region. About twelve percent of residents were born outside
22320-416: The student body at Brooklyn College. They became friends, and had lengthy philosophical conversations. Rand's discussions with Hospers contributed to her decision to write non-fiction. Hospers read Atlas Shrugged (1957), which he considered an aesthetic triumph. Although Hospers became convinced of the validity of Rand's moral and political views, he disagreed with her about issues of epistemology ,
22475-518: The subject of their extensive correspondence. Hospers also disagreed with Rand about free will (with him favoring determinism , while she advocated a libertarian view ) and conscription (Hospers supported it, Rand was opposed). Rand broke with Hospers after he, in his position as moderator, critiqued her address, and she felt he had criticized her talk on " Art and Sense of Life " before the American Society of Aesthetics at Harvard . In
22630-752: The teaching of " intelligent design " in public schools. Rand opposed involuntary taxation and believed government could be financed voluntarily, although she thought this could only happen after other reforms of government were implemented. Some critics, including economists and political philosophers such as Murray Rothbard , David D. Friedman , Roy Childs , Norman P. Barry , and Chandran Kukathas , have argued that Objectivist ethics are consistent with anarcho-capitalism instead of minarchism . The Objectivist theory of art derives from its epistemology, by way of "psycho-epistemology" (Rand's term for an individual's characteristic mode of functioning in acquiring knowledge). Art, according to Objectivism, serves
22785-473: The transition to statism, every infringement of human rights has begun with a given right's least attractive practitioners". Objectivists have also opposed a number of government activities commonly endorsed by both liberals and conservatives, including antitrust laws, the minimum wage , public education , and existing child labor laws. Objectivists have argued against faith-based initiatives , displaying religious symbols in government facilities, and
22940-432: The tribes, burned Jamestown. Bacon's Rebellion forced the signing of Bacon's Laws , which restored some of the colony's rights and sanctioned both attacks on native tribes and the enslavement of their people. The Treaty of 1677 further reduced the independence of the tribes that signed it, and aided the colony's assimilation of their land in the years that followed. Colonists in the 1700s were pushing westward into
23095-483: The western and mountainous parts of the Commonwealth, oak and hickory are most common, while lower altitudes are more likely to have small but dense stands of hemlocks and mosses in abundance. Spongy moth infestations in oak trees and the blight in chestnut trees have decreased both of their numbers, leaving more room for hickory and the invasive tree of heaven . In the lowland tidewater and Piedmont , yellow pines tend to dominate, with bald cypress wetland forests in
23250-482: Was 55.8 per 1,000 females between the ages of 15 and 44, and the median age as of 2021 was the same as the national average of 38.8 years old. The geographic center of population is located northwest of Richmond in Hanover County , as of 2020 . Though still growing naturally as births outnumber deaths, Virginia has had a negative net migration rate since 2013, with 8,995 more people leaving
23405-481: Was born to a Dutch-American family in Pella, Iowa , on June 9, 1918, the son of Dena Helena (Verhey) and John De Gelder Hospers. He graduated from Central College in 1939 before earning an MA in English from the University of Iowa in 1942 and a PhD in philosophy from Columbia University in 1946. He conducted research, wrote, and taught in areas of philosophy, including aesthetics and ethics. He taught philosophy at
23560-518: Was formed from the drowned river valley of the ancient Susquehanna River . Many of Virginia's rivers flow into the Chesapeake Bay, including the Potomac , Rappahannock , York , and James , which create three peninsulas in the bay, traditionally referred to as "necks" named Northern Neck , Middle Peninsula , and the Virginia Peninsula from north to south. Sea level rise has eroded
23715-759: Was led by Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee , among others. Virginians began to coordinate their actions with other colonies in 1773 and sent delegates to the Continental Congress the following year. After the House of Burgesses was dissolved in 1774 by the royal governor , Virginia's revolutionary leaders continued to govern via the Virginia Conventions . On May 15, 1776, the Convention declared Virginia's independence and adopted George Mason 's Virginia Declaration of Rights , which
23870-696: Was responsible for building 38 warships for the U.S. Navy between 1907 and 1923. During World War I , German submarines attacked ships outside the port, which was a major site for transportation of soldiers and supplies. After the war, a homecoming parade to honor African-American troops was attacked in July 1919 by the city's police as part of a renewed white-supremacy movement, known as Red Summer . The shipyard continued building warships in World War II , and quadrupled its pre-war labor force to 70,000 by 1943. The Radford Arsenal outside Blacksburg also employed 22,000 workers making explosives, while
24025-687: Was then included in a new constitution that designated Virginia as a commonwealth . Another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson , drew upon Mason's work in drafting the national Declaration of Independence . After the American Revolutionary War began, George Washington was selected by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia to head the Continental Army , and many Virginians joined
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