Posted on 12/24/2016 9:16:10 AM PST by Helicondelta
Huh?
Ayn would not have problems with people voluntarily associating and holding each other accountable to a set of standards.
Who is Johnald Galt?
I have a better opinion of Trump reading Rand than Clinton worshipping Alinsky or Obama following Ayers and listening to Wright.
Still, it's embarrassing. Why doesn't he read something intelligent like Tolstoy or something? Being caught with a stack of Rand novels is like a teenager being caught with a pile of skin mags under his bed.
I’d recommend that folks who want to read what Rand had to say in one manageable chunk, that they read _The Virtue of Selfishness._ And please do bit let the title put you off!
Or, if anyone thinks they can’t get through even that, try _The Ayn Rand Lexicon_ and look up any topic you like. Look up ‘Christmas’, for example. She wasn’t a Christian but she enjoyed the holiday and didn’t try to ban it or mask it with Happy Holidays.
Her best novel, IMO, is _We the Living._
I’m not trying to change minds here. I just think her ideas are powerful arguments against what the left throws up. They should be used!
Without a Prayer: Ayn Rand and the Close of Her System
https://www.amazon.com/Without-Prayer-Rand-Close-System/dp/0940931508#customerReviews
4.0 out of 5 starsA mostly excellent job of demolition.
By John S. Ryan on December 30, 1999
Format: Hardcover
John Robbins is unlikely to receive much respect from Objectivists, since he is a devout Christian — a sola-scriptura Biblical inerrantist whose critiques of Rand are mounted on a thoroughly Calvinist foundation and offered for clearly evangelical purposes. The loss is theirs; Robbins knows “Objectivism” better than most of Ayn Rand’s most devoted followers — including its all too numerous flaws.
Nor should Objectivists ignore his critiques merely because they are “religious,” since it is only in their own minds that “religion” is automatically irrational. Robbins is a follower of the late Gordon H. Clark (familiar to one audience as a highly respected scholar of Hellenistic philosophy, and to another as a party to a well-known theological controversy with Cornelius van Til). Calvinism is no friend of irrationality and, especially as interpreted by Clark, assigns a _very_ high place to reason and logic. As a student of Clark, Robbins develops his critiques with more respect for reason than Rand ever showed in her entire life.
The author of _Answer to Ayn Rand_ (a 1970s work that did not receive a like answer from the Objectivist establishment), Robbins has reworked and expanded his critique for this volume, also adding appendices to deal respectively with Leonard Peikoff and David Kelley. His central contention is quite a straightforward one, and in my view it is essentially correct though I would quibble about some details. It is this: Rand started with her conclusions and worked backwards, very badly, to transfer those conclusions onto a foundation that will not support them. As her libertarian, free-market capitalist, limited-government conclusions in fact depend on a view of man and society that properly and in strict consistency belongs to Christianity (I would say to Western monotheism generally), they are — for Rand — “stolen concepts.” It is only a matter of time until some of her followers work her premises _forward_ and wind up with very different conclusions indeed. (And probably anyone who has ever participated or lurked in an Objectivist discussion forum knows that the day Robbins fears has already come.)
His demolition job is mostly an able one, with only an occasional misfire. Space will not permit a full discussion of Robbins’s contentions here, but in my own view his best chapters are his sustained attacks on Rand’s epistemology and theology. With a keen eye for Rand’s numerous self-contradictions, Robbins demonstrates repeatedly that Rand did not succeed even in presenting a coherent position, let alone supporting it with evidence or argument.”
He's definitely a better read than Rand.
Merry Christmas!
Thanks. Merry Christmas to you too.
Rand at least has a past that people can read, warts and all. Trump does, too, and the People are betting on that than the truth they know about the Clintons. And we still don’t know the whole truth about them.
You’d think that if the Left we’re proud of their heroes, they’d want things like the papers they wrote in college or their transcripts to be generally known. They don’t!
Anyway, one of the big things the Left does really well is to build coalitions among disagreeing factions to defeat conservatives. I think there is much more common ground between Christians and Objectivists and that each would be better off as allies against the establishment wings of both parties.
What is A=A?
Rand's way of ripping off Aristotle.
With few exceptions, I for one have been thrilled with President Elect Trump's cabinet choices. On the few I have reservations about, I'm willing to give them a chance and be wrong.
I don't think there is any. Self-sacrifice and altruism are Christian virtues. To Rand, they are evil. Greed and selfishness are virtues in her system. Objectivism has a lot more in common with Satanism. In fact they are in essence the same philosophy.
Yeah I was going to post a response with stronger language. Horseshit came to mind.
I had a discussion with my young niece at the time I was collecting unemployment eight years ago after stating that I didn’t believe the government should be supplying such a benefit. She asked me if I was a bit of a hypocrite. But I responded no, I was an example to prove my point. The last time I was in a situation when the economy went down and I couldn’t find work, I was self-employed, so I was forced to go out and find a part-time job at Home Depot. This time around, I had been an employee, so I was not forced to do so. It’s not that I wanted to sit around and be paid not to work, but I was afforded the opportunity to do so while I looked for a good job.
As for Social Security, we all pay into it as you wrote and we all eventually are going to receive it. Same with Medicare, we’re pretty much forced into it since the government destroyed the private insurance that existed before Lyndon Johnson’s great Society programs.
A person can argue for what they think is best while playing the game the way the rules are written right now. Posting that she was a welfare queen is ridiculous and really below the level of discussion that should be taking place on this website.
from Gault’s speech quoting Aristotle, the actual quote is A is A but A=A is also used
To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, the man who was—no matter what his errors—the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.
Whatever you choose to consider, be it an object, an attribute or an action, the law of identity remains the same. A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A. Or, if you wish it stated in simpler language: You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.
Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders’ attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A. The purpose of those who taught you to evade it, was to make you forget that Man is Man.
“crap, I still haven’t made it through Galt’s speech”
you didn’t miss anything. Rand used that same speech over and over again throughout the book. After I read it the first time, I just skimmed the repeats.
(I also skimmed the juvenile sexual yearning scenes, which were poorly written as well.)
Yeah, I saw that link. I checked it out and personally, I don’t agree. Rand didn’t care for Libertarians, even though they often use her arguments. I can’t imagine she would have embraced Satanists just because they found some common ground with her philosophy.
It’s like those journalists who called Trump a racists for _not_ denouncing David Duke. Or because a room full of supremacists gave Trump a Nazi-salute, he’s now some sort of neo-Nazi.
Rand didn’t believe in altruism or self-sacrifice, that’s true. But she wouldn’t stand in your way of charitable giving or charitable giving till it hurts—if that is what you want to do.
If you like science-fiction, I recommend Robert Heinlein’s _The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress._ IMO, He covers a lot of the same ground that Rand did in _Atlas Shrugged_ , said it better, and more entertaining in the bargain.
I’m agreeing with you. The Galt speech was unnecessary and repetitive. I think it was a bit insulting, too. Did she really believe that people read over 1,000 pages of Atlas Shrugged and missed the point?
A is A. That was about the only point the speech needed to make; and Shakespeare made it centuries earlier. A rose by any other name would still smell sweet, therefore socialism by any other name still smells like crap.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.