Posted on 08/28/2010 7:06:10 PM PDT by Mojave
This past spring, the Financial Industry Inquiry Commission held hearings on the world's recent financial crisis. The star witness was Alan Greenspan. The Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan translated Greenspan's typically elusive testimony this way: "I didn't do anything wrong, and neither did Ayn Rand by the way, but next time you might try more regulation."
There were obviously many reasons for the Great Recession. But I believe Noonan got to the root of one particular evil.
Fortune magazine once labeled Greenspan "America's most famous libertarian, an Ayn Rand acolyte." (While Rand formally rejected libertarianism, libertarians nonetheless admire her.) But today, both libertarians and Randians are disassociating themselves from Greenspan as quickly as Wall Street.
All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. John Locke
All wealth is the product of labor. John Locke
Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself. John Locke
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. John Locke
Sure does sound like Rand, doesn't it?
And if you know anything about Locke's influences on Jefferson when the Constitution was penned, you wouldn't be so dismissive of my endeavor to educate you on the truth.
For "It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the truth " that Jefferson would abhor your apparent devotion to a government based on some sort of religious underpinnings. The quote courtesy of...you guessed it... John Locke.
Regards.
No, I just want to glean her economics for HS and avoid her morals. I’m saying that since she is dead, she isn’t going to see the light on her morals so I’ve explained them to my kids and how wrong they are but have taught the freedom/economic issues.
In a word, YES. Every form of government is a theocracy, imposing someone's set of values. And "my" morality isn't mine, it's God's, made known in His Word.
Ever wonder why a jury consists of "twelve good men and true?" BECAUSE -- the most important level of government assumes that twelve Biblically-literate Christian men, amateurs, have access to all the wisdom they need to make just decisions. Common law is Bible law, applied to local conditions over the course of 1,500 or so years. Twelve is the number of Biblical civil order -- the twelve patriarchs of Israel, the twelve apostles of Jesus ... the twelve folks in the jury box.
Why do judges wear white wigs in England? To honor the Ultimate Judge, in whose name they act. To visually remind all present of the way Jesus is portrayed in Revelation.
In other words, if the US tax code and entitlement structure is driven by your morality you would have no problem with that and believe that the government is just?
Yes. Because if it was, civil government would be terrified of demanding more for itself than God does, and taxation at all levels would be less than 10% of my income. And yes, because charity would be a personal and church issue, with, perhaps, some civil government encouragement. Perhaps, a tax credit that offsets one's property tax, or income tax, on a dollar for dollar basis. Furthermore, charity would be restricted to the worthy poor, using the test offered in Scripture: "If any man will not work, neither let him eat." Entitlements would nearly vanish, if we preached against theft and covetousness, and viewed with God's horror crimes against property -- even those committed by majority vote.
I don't need an alternate course of action........The principles and ethnics of Christianity certainly work and can deal within the business world.
Concerning my dealing with "government" I don't need "objectivism" as a guiding principle, all I need is to look at and adhere to the founders writing and these precious documents our country was founded and build on
‘Talent’ was a unit of money. The master left each servant with a sum of money to invest, each according to his ability. The one who did not invest, but instead buried is allotment, did not do the master’s bidding.
Then why would he have prayed (to God, the God of the Holy Bible)?
It gets very tiresome when people continually misrepresent Thomas Jefferson, especially in regard to his being a Christian, which, of course, he was.
For all three to some extent are subjective to one's point of view, therefore a political system that is guided by the other two by nature will not respect individual liberty of those who do not subscribe to the economics or morals of the political system.You certainly articulate well the post-modern, relativist view. On the other hand, in the real world there is objective Natural law. In the real world all three (politics, economics and morality) inter-relate and support each other.
As for your objection that they create political systems that "...will not respect individual liberty of those who do not subscribe to the economics or morals of the political system....", name ONE system that exists currently that does what you want it to? Failing a current system, a historical citation would be illuminating.
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789
They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.
-Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814
If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814
Great thread.
Facts:
* Jefferson believed in God, the God of Moses
* Jefferson believed in Jesus Christ
* Jefferson attended church services
* Jefferson prayed
* Jefferson gave money to churches of different denominations
* Jefferson very much admired the Roman-Catholic Church (though himself not a Catholic)
* Jefferson was inconspicuous about his Christianity, preferring not to 'wear it on his sleeve'
* Though himself a Christian he was most tolerant of all denominations and really wasn't bothered if a person 'worshiped one God, a hundred Gods, or none'.
Here uis a thought, don’t tell me what to do or assume that you know what I know or do not. Jefferson took every side he could, he was Clintonesque. He was an adulterous sleaze who used violence to get his own way, he was a traitor to Washington and he excised from his rewritten Bible all that was miraculous. If he was acting as a Christian, he gets an epic fail.
Nicely done, in your habitual fashion of using quotes out of context. Why, you ought to see if David Barton is hiring!
But let's look at your quote in context, as I admire both Hume and Jefferson greatly, no matter that they were opposed on some matters and the way he refers to his previous hero as "degenerate."
Note first of all that the quote is referring to "origin of just powers," not morality.
Second, note that the point is not what Jefferson, himself, believed, but he's pointing out that Hume must trace back to the majority to support his side (I wish I could recall the strong adjective Jefferson applied to Hume's Tory leanings elsewhere in the letter).
Finally, we all know this quote is a favorite of leftists trying to bypass the Constitution and advocate turning our republic into a democracy. Are you advocating democracy or theocracy? I hate to tell you, but a democracy would not lead to the great theocratic rule seem to hope to impose.
“You lose. Nice try, but you lose.”
ROTFLMAO! You declare yourself the winner! Narcissism personified! How Randian of you.
Jews do, too.
He believed Christian morality was superior to others, yet he did not believe in the divinity of Christ.
Of course, you could perhaps go back to times he was a Christian. But you could also do that to say he supported The Crown!
All Rand did was say the world and human nature is a particular way....and we’re not going to speculate how (this coming from her atheism), hence it’s called “Objectivism.” Then she posulated that free-markets and libertarian governance allowed for the greatest good to the greatest number...as genuine good cannot be coerced, and must be voluntary—hence a fully voluntary, small-government, society.
While Rand railed against “altruism” it was because both the Communists and the Nazis she suffered under used a “duty for the common good” (ie. “altruism”) as their primary individual (guilt) motivator for their totalitarian tyranny. Rand was one of those mid-20th Century European intellectuals for whom atheism was an unexamined given.
For example Rand spoke strongly against, the Christian phrase: “Money is the root of all evil” which of course is a MISQUOTE, and really is nonsense—never believed, (obviously) by any successful Church! Jesus did say “The love of money is the root of all (kinds of) evil” which is simply a warning against greed, not money itself or productivity.
I’m a libertarian-conservative, and I admire Rand up to a point. Personally she was a rather pitiful woman, having affairs and other moral failings...but hey, she never looked to God, so its what I expect.
Objectivism, like all atheistic ideologies, doesn’t provide any basis for what is good or bad, except social norms. Therefore it has to borrow from Judeo/Christian ethics, assuming basic good and bad results, even as it attacks Christianity for instituting, (they think,) totalitarian-producing “altrusim...”
Post #3 has a link to an interesting article about Rand from a religious perspective.
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