“we are morally required to be the means to our children’s ends”
Hank, you are missing the point, which is that one CANNOT justify the sacrifice and effort required to raise a family from reason alone, or reason supplemented by empirical evidence. Yet family life is the sine qua non of life on this planet.
Thus Rand's philosophy, which is based on the requirements of a free life (assumption: 'Life is a supreme good, an end in itself.') cannot even justify the requirements of reproduction. As noted in my post #28, Rand's novels contain no CHILDREN! And no mention of family life. It's as if the leading characters were all dropped out of the sky in some Twilight Zone episode. This is NOT reality. Her heros are often orphans who taught themselves life skills with no help from anyone.
Rand never raised a family, and avoids that reality like the plague it is - plague to her individualism, that is. She also did nothing for her relatives back in Russia, even though they sacrificed to send her to the USA to begin a life of freedom while they suffered under Communism and the Nazi invasion.
Since Rand's Objectivism is based largely on the requirements for a free life, and since everyone who lives and breathes until they are old enough and smart enough to care for themselves owes it to a loving parent(s), the burden is on YOU and other followers of Rand to show how this kind of irrational love and sacrifice can be derived from the body of Objectivist literature. Or were you raised by wolves?
“one CANNOT justify the sacrifice and effort required to raise a family from reason alone”
Sorry, I do not agree with you, and either did Ayn Rand. I rationally justified all that had to be done to raise a family, and did it. It was NO sacrifice.
If you think the time and effort, the tears and torment, and there is that, is a sacrifice, if your wife and children aren’t worth ten times the cost, if you consider those things a “sacrifice,” you should not have children.
I find those people who believe they’re doing something noble and sacrificial to raise a family (and frequently they are the kind who throw it up in their children’s faces) are despicable. Your love for you wife and family make no price too high to have, to nourish, to enjoy, to tend their every need. What kind of parent considers that a sacrifice?
I pity your family.
I’m not an Objectivist, by the way, but I do get tired of all the lies told about Rand.
For example: “Rand’s novels contain no CHILDREN! And no mention of family life.”
You apparently have never read Rand, or you are a very poor reader. Atlas Shrugged discusses two families, and one family with children, boys, 4 and 7, lived in Galt’s gulch. Dagny talks to the mother, who also happens to own a bakery, about raising and teaching her children. Her husband is a lineman.
What kind of “family” man are you, who repeats lies like that? Do you teach your children to do that too.
Hank