Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Ayn Rand: Goddess of the Great Recession
Christianity Today | 8/28/2010 | Garry Moore

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.


TOPICS: Religion; Society
KEYWORDS:
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 141-160161-180181-200201-206 next last
To: AnalogReigns
Excellent explanation of Objectivism and where Rand was coming from.

I don't want to get into a debate with the good people who are Objectivists on this site...politically we are allies...but it always makes me chuckle when they say guilt or fear have no place in human affairs...or to use these twins of coercion is somehow evil...have they never been in the military or raised kids !! Hell, without using guilt and fear against my three boys when they were growing up my household would have desended into anarchy!!! :))

And lets not even think about about what an army would be reduced to without these two little tools of every DI since history began !!

161 posted on 08/29/2010 12:38:30 PM PDT by mick (Central Banker Capitalism is NOT Free Enterprise)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 157 | View Replies]

To: mick

Oh thank you!!!
That’s a great resource!


162 posted on 08/29/2010 12:52:40 PM PDT by netmilsmom (I am inyenzi on the Religion Forum)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 160 | View Replies]

To: mick

Anything ending with -ism has its basis in its Ultimate Form: Utopianism. That place where all their theories work. Too bad it doesn’t exist. The rest of us have to deal with such trivialities as history and human nature.
Ism has been the deadliest suffix in the world.


163 posted on 08/29/2010 12:58:36 PM PDT by TradicalRC (Secular conservatism is liberalism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 161 | View Replies]

To: narses
“Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None—except the obligation I owe to myself, ...” Pretty narcissistic to me. Epic fail regards refutation of the quote you claimed was a lie.

You think "The Golden Rule" is narcissistic? What planet are you from?!

164 posted on 08/29/2010 1:40:59 PM PDT by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 62 | View Replies]

To: Mojave

Greenspan wrote an articulate defense of the gold standard. I don’t think there’s any evidence that he pushed to restore the gold standard in the U.S. and many have commented that someone with such beliefs would end up being central banker to the largest economy on the planet. A return to the gold standard and floating exchange rates would obviate the need for a central banker.


165 posted on 08/29/2010 1:51:57 PM PDT by DrC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Mojave
"Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values." --Ayn Rand

What a sublime state of denial you've achieved.

You don't think that Ted Bundy's murder for pleasure would constitute the mindless self-indulgence, that Ayn Rand rejects in this quote?

166 posted on 08/29/2010 1:58:48 PM PDT by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 97 | View Replies]

To: higgmeister

That is not the Golden Rule - nor is the practice of “Objectivism” remotely Christian.


167 posted on 08/29/2010 2:04:51 PM PDT by narses ( 'Prefer nothing to the love of Christ.')
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 164 | View Replies]

To: Publius

I can’t bring myself to read any more Christian whining about Ayn Rand. I’ve lost the stomach for it.


168 posted on 08/29/2010 2:07:20 PM PDT by Misterioso (The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it. -- Ayn Rand)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 158 | View Replies]

To: higgmeister
Happiness as a goal is overrated as a builder and preserver of human civilization. More important in the building of families and nations and even whole civilizations is duty and sacrifice.

History proves, from the growth of Rome to the birth of the United States, that the key requirement for any such endeaver is for men to adhere to a duty above and beyond their pursuit of personal happiness or even their lives. How else to understand and explain what it was that motivated our ancestors to die at Valley Forge or Guadalcanal than a sense of duty and sacrifice. How else to understand and explain what our forefathers did when they came here with nothing except the belief that their sacrifice would make for a better life for their children

Even Aristotle said that true happiness is gained by making the correct moral choices throughout one's life.But the conundrum lies in that making the correct moral choices sometimes entails the sacrifice of what you think will make you happy or even your life. Because in the end happiness cannot be pursued for itself. It will always lead to selfishness and seperation from others. True happiness can only be the end result of doing something else. Like sacrificing for a great cause. Or doing your duty to your children or your parents or your country.

The reason Ayn Rand never had children and was unfaithful to her husband is instructive. She lived her philosophy. In the end she was not a builder, she was a consumer. She consumed the seed corn better men than she had produced. How ironic.

169 posted on 08/29/2010 3:03:33 PM PDT by mick (Central Banker Capitalism is NOT Free Enterprise)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 166 | View Replies]

To: BraveMan
Her one-eyed perspective could not see Adam Smith's insight that people of the same trade rarely get together without conspiring against the public. So she, and Greenspan, would never have imagined the CEOs of mortgage companies marketing liar loans to selfish but na•ve homebuyers, while the CEOs of investment firms and irresponsible ratings agencies packaged these junk mortgages as AAA-rated securities to dump into our pension funds. She would blame that entirely on “bureaucrats and do-gooders.” Had she and Greenspan only understood what fallen humans will do for 30 pieces of silver.

The fool that wrote this never read Atlas Shrugged.

170 posted on 08/29/2010 3:47:45 PM PDT by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 143 | View Replies]

To: Publius
Citing Greenspan's admiration for Rand is like bringing up Charlie Rangel’s military deployment to Korea. Ancient history.
171 posted on 08/29/2010 4:05:00 PM PDT by SpaceBar
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 158 | View Replies]

To: DesertRhino
Nearly everything the woman wrote was warning us about the very policies of the US government, and of the other corruption, which brought us the recession in the first place.

Exactly. It was clear enough to me her beef with "morality" was entirely with the subset "charity" and the premise that it it should be dictated by government.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, lots of folks use her personal conduct and views on religion as a reason to dismiss her political and economic philosophy, without really understanding the separateness of the issues.

If anything, the fault with her political & economic philosophy was just a small matter of degree. The economic system here was intended to be laissez-faire, but never purely so, and our political system of separated powers was supposed to be the force that kept things in balance. I'm not sure she completely understood the founding principles of the United States and the central government's constitutional powers, and the dissection of history that went into their construction, and I attribute her absolutist view to that lack of understanding. But that is neither a reason to throw out the whole thing.

172 posted on 08/29/2010 7:50:17 PM PDT by Clinging Bitterly (We need to limit political office holders to two terms. One in office, and one in prison.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: mick
...the key requirement for any such endeaver is for men to adhere to a duty above and beyond their pursuit of personal happiness or even their lives.

Were you in the French Foreign Legion?

My sense of duty does not exist because you think it should be what makes me happy. The child in me screams that you can't tell me what to do! I make a tacit agreement with my fellow man to adhere to the guidelines of moral and civil society only from my own enlightened self-interest.

I am a moral person because that is the best way to coexist with others and I logically expect only the same from them. No Saint or Potentate will coerce me into duty and sacrifice without justification.

You speak of finding happiness through a sense of duty and sacrifice to its own sake. The Gladiators of Rome through a sense of duty and sacrifice were coerced into giving their lives only to serve evil.

I have lived and will live an upright life according to God's plan and only expect happiness to follow as it will. True happiness can only be the end result of living a correct life and hopefully finding a wonderful wife's smile, or the sweetest dog in the world laying his muzzle in you lap when you least expect it, or driving down the highway and seeing a sea of Irises growing wild around an abandoned and crumbling chimney.

Duty alone means nothing without the enlightened self-interest that makes that duty worth doing.

173 posted on 08/29/2010 8:51:16 PM PDT by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 169 | View Replies]

To: narses
That is not the Golden Rule - nor is the practice of “Objectivism” remotely Christian.

Lets take the same statement and put it back into context as written.

Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None—except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and to all of existence: rationality. I deal with men as my nature and theirs demands: by means of reason. I seek or desire nothing from them except such relations as they care to enter of their own voluntary choice. It is only with their mind that I can deal and only for my own self-interest, when they see that my interest coincides with theirs. When they don’t, I enter no relationship; I let dissenters go their way and I do not swerve from mine. I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs.

She says, "I seek or desire nothing from them except such relations as they care to enter of their own voluntary choice."

In other words, she does unto others only that which she would expect from them. That is pretty straight isn't it?

Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You - Matthew 7:12
I never said or implied that the practice of “Objectivism” was even remotely Christian. I do say that “Objectivism” is very moral in the most reasoned way.
174 posted on 08/29/2010 9:07:24 PM PDT by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 167 | View Replies]

To: Publius

I read up to page 4. The writer completely misunderstands Rand and Atlas Shrugged. For example, he seems to believe her heroes would be the people who drove us into an economic crisis. Not so. They were the bad guys in her book.

The writer also seems to believe Greenspan drove us into collapse by employing the philosophy Rand preached. Where did Rand say the Feds should meddle with the economy?

The article is way off-base.


175 posted on 08/29/2010 9:26:21 PM PDT by Tired of Taxes
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 158 | View Replies]

To: higgmeister
I find it funny and instructive that your first emotional - almost instinctive - response is to yell at me that I must be in The French Freeing Legion. Why didn't you say the US Marine Corps ? Or better yet The Continental Army ? Why the Legion? Maybe because it has a somewhat humorous connotation to Americans that the Marines Corps does not. But you gave away the point by using any military organization. Because you know that with these men duty comes before happiness or even life itself. And that offends you in some ways but still has the power to attract you. You also didn't highlight my whole quote:

History proves, from the growth of Rome to the birth of the United States, that the key requirement for any such endeavor is for men to adhere to a duty above and beyond their pursuit of personal happiness or even their lives. How else to understand and explain what it was that motivated our ancestors to die at Valley Forge or Guadalcanal than a sense of duty and sacrifice. How else to understand and explain what our forefathers did when they came here with nothing except the belief that their sacrifice would make for a better life for their children

As hard as you try you still cannot come up with a satisfactory explanation for why some men were and are willing to give up there lives for their country. The best you can do is this:

Duty alone means nothing without the enlightened self-interest that makes that duty worth doing.

You try to define sacrifice and duty as a some kind of commercial transaction..everybody wins...yea , right...try telling that to a guy who just jumped on alive grenade to save his buddy. Even you don't believe that.

You might be a little closer to your real reason to hate the concept of duty and sacrifice before self with your little joke that the child in you screams that i can't tell you what to do. You sound like a nice guy, but enlightened self interest might be a cool debating point but in the real world I thank God we had tougher and more selfless men than you hitting those beaches and fighting in those foxholes in all the wars we fought to allow you to sleep safely in your bed at night.

Enlightened self interest as an explanation for sacrifice and duty..INDEED !! What a heartless, cold and UNHEROIC WORLD THAT WOULD BE.

176 posted on 08/29/2010 9:45:52 PM PDT by mick (Central Banker Capitalism is NOT Free Enterprise)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 173 | View Replies]

To: mick

FREEING should read FOREIGN above.


177 posted on 08/29/2010 9:50:00 PM PDT by mick (Central Banker Capitalism is NOT Free Enterprise)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 176 | View Replies]

To: narses
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.

You will notice I did not assert that any current political system does respect individual liberty.

However, what the Founders intended, not our current system, came pretty close.

It is sad that what they attempted to create has been destroyed.

178 posted on 08/29/2010 9:56:07 PM PDT by Abundy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 148 | View Replies]

To: higgmeister
"Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values." --Ayn Rand

What a sublime state of denial you've achieved.

You don't think that Ted Bundy's murder for pleasure would constitute the mindless self-indulgence, that Ayn Rand rejects in this quote?

To answer your question..."NO."

Look at the entire quote:

Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None—except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and to all of existence: rationality. I deal with men as my nature and theirs demands: by means of reason. I seek or desire nothing from them except such relations as they care to enter of their own voluntary choice. It is only with their mind that I can deal and only for my own self-interest, when they see that my interest coincides with theirs. When they don’t, I enter no relationship; I let dissenters go their way and I do not swerve from mine. I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs.

Pu in context, clearly Rand's principle doesn't apply to Bundy.

179 posted on 08/29/2010 10:03:41 PM PDT by Abundy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 166 | View Replies]

To: Abundy
Put in context, clearly Rand's principle doesn't apply to Bundy.

You may have mistaken me for someone else. That is exactly the point I was making.

I was asking if Mojave didn't think Ted Bundy's murder for pleasure would constitute the mindless self-indulgence, that Ayn Rand rejects.

Clearly murder for pleasure does constitute mindless self-indulgence and is rejected by Ayn Rand.

180 posted on 08/29/2010 10:11:30 PM PDT by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 179 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 141-160161-180181-200201-206 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson