Rand ping.
I think Rand is a great author, but the world has changed so much recently.
America cannot “shrug”, unless we want China to take everything away from us.
We need to compete. Bigtime. Buy American.
This means that, much like democracy, capitalism is a deeply morally righteous system. …What part of the Christian spectrum does the author fall on?
Of course leftists hate her, because her works completely dismantled their arguments.
I read this yesterday and it makes sense.
I often wonder if put in a position to do so, would Rand have sacrificed her life to defend and sustain her beliefs and world view? If she would have, then she would have betrayed the very beliefs she was defending, and if she declined to do so, then she would have allowed others to run slipshod over them.
I just don't see her pledging her life, her fortune and her sacred honor (if she even believed in such a thing) with the same eagerness or zeal that our founders did.
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." ~Ayn Rand
I use that quote as a response to this. It drives my liberal friends nuts.
"Any African-American who votes Republican is a turncoat.” ~ Jesse Jackson
There is no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is to crack down on criminals. When there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking the law.
doesn't inspire you, and doesn't go through your head every time some new nanny-government regulation affects you personally--then I don't think you can call yourself a conservative.
“The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.” —Ayn Rand
This dude is way too full of himself
Nice analysis, but this:
“Tom Morello is a musical genius, and Zack de la Rocha indisputably has a gift from God.”
Just, no.
It’s what is making radio host Jason Lewis to become more and more obnoxious too. Every time I turn him on, he seems more anti-religious than the last time. A couple of days ago, the took the opportunity to take a slam at Christianity. While making the point that resources are worthless while lying dormant in the ground until someone works and digs them up and processes them to make them into something, he told a typical unfunny Jason Lewis joke about a preacher who went by a farmer’s place several times and each time he was saying, “thank the Lord for all the bounty he’s giving you.” Lewis said the farmer grew tired of hearing this daily “thanks to God” business and told the preacher God didn’t do much of anything until he got busy and worked the land. Lewis and his stupid galt website can crash for all I care. Lewis thinks he’s a self-made man. That man was just a local hostile jerk of a radio host who continually berated even fans until Rush Limbaugh let him fill in for him. That gave Lewis a leg up. And Lewis has benefitted these years by appealing to his conservative Christian audience and they have given him a great deal of support. Now that Lewis has taken to mocking Christianity, going Galt, I think he’s going to be suffering a little bit. Good grief, he’s insufferable. For example, when he has a guest on the line for an interview. Jason feels he has to dominate the discussion. There he has an expert in some field and Lewis comes across as an arrogant know it all. Insufferable.
Similarly, the Christian religion (of which I am a proud member) is not the single wellspring from which the ideals of the Enlightenment and the concepts of Natural Rights and Liberty flow.
I've absorbed plenty of "objectivist" philosophy, and while I may question Rand's presumptions regarding greed, altruism, etc., the conclusions regarding concepts of Individuality, Free Will, and the like are perfectly valid.
True Freedom transcends the tidy little boxes into which various "camps" feel compelled to place it sometimes. Nobody "owns" it, and many different people and "movements" have contributed to it.
IMHO, there is little cause for antagonism between Christians and libertarians, as the common ground is quite abundant.
If we fully embrace and understand the "Pursuit of Happiness", and we accept the fact that each individual must have an expansive right to to define that concept according to their own free will, the petty internecine squabbles disappear.
We are all sons and daughters of Liberty and, therefore, Brothers and Sisters whose birthright is Freedom. Nobody will ever have the right to take that away from us, and those who try will be resisted with all the force of our collective being.
Thus, whether somebody chooses to voluntarily practice an "extreme" philosophy of Christian love and service, or rather embraces an "extreme" notion of self-interested individual free will, we all have our roles to play, and we will very likely be shedding our blood together in the Tyrannical future which threatens to consume all of us who believe in this radical idea called Freedom.
I read “Atlas Shrugged”. All I learned was that Rand was a self-worshipping blowhard living in a fantasy world.
I agree I hate Ayn Rand’s crap. Her anti-Christianity and materialism are really just the opposite side of the materialistic coin that is communism.
Ayn Rand had and has much impact on the culture...
Whats Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry done lately.. or ever?..
A piss-ant bitching about a cultural giant..
The boy needs to “Go GALT”...
I disagree with his statement: “But Lord of the Rings is profoundly and explicitly anti-technology”.
While The Two Towers scene with Sauruman building his army could be interpreted as anti-tech I see it more as anti-corruption. He makes the urakai (I know the spelling is wrong) through a corruption of nature.
I could even reach and say he’s trying to make something better than God, and obviously fails due to his own faults.
Plus - If it were anti-tech wouldn’t he have made the dwarfs bad guys too? I could agree that Tolkien argues for a simpler life, but not that he was anti-tech.
As to Ms Rand... Love the works for the pro-freedom stand, hate it for the free-love take...but I just ignore that part of it as I do with other stories and movies where the overall story is good enough... like ignoring Jar Jar in Star Wars I-III :)
Ayn Rand is like a combination of Anton LaVey and L. Ron Hubbard.
This might interest you.
There are elements of conservatism within her novels and her overarching philosophy that we should celebrate. Her grasp on the two primary economic systems, capitalism and socialism/communism leaves no room for question. As a human rights issue, as a contrast between freedom and slavery, and as a contrast between good and evil is pretty much unquestionable.
We don't have to buy into all that Rand preaches to find the good--the great--in some of it, perhaps a great majority of it. We shouldn't fall into the trap that liberals set of having to accept everything a person is for, else there's nothing of merit to be found. We can pick and choose. We can say, "Yes, I like her views on economics, but I don't care for her views on organized religion or right to life issues."