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.
That sounds like altruism with a mask on. That's not consistent with her "moral purpose," unless A = nonA.
"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
Translation: Do what you want, don't get caught.
” She just says you should do it solely because it is what you wish to do. “
Narcissism is not morality.
I don’t know. I just want my kids to get the good parts.
Personally, since she is dead, I don’t much care about what she thought of morals.
“The highest moral obligation one human being has to another is to never through force or fraud deprive them of the fruits of their labors or their life.”
So taxes are always immoral? Ditto capital punishment?
Quote, please.
Guess blaming it on Bush got old.
“The very essence of her view of dealings with others, was that it should be based solely upon reason and virtue, never upon force.”
I thought it was, that dealings with others should be based on self interest alone.
Greenspan never worshipped Bush.
“Theres no gutting of morality there whatsoever,”
I don’t see her philosophy so much as a gutting of morality; but as a gutting of the Christian REASON for morality.
Some donate to charity to feel good. Others donate to glorify God. Either way, charity gets a donation. But the reason for it is different.
“A is A. How do you oversimplify that?”
By pretending that her philosophy somehow insists that a person never, ever, do anything for another. She just says it should be a free choice based upon reason and self interest. She would not criticize a person who supported an elderly parent, because they loved them, to show gratitude for what they did for them, etc.
She would be critical of the idea that you should be coerced in any way, including religion, to support a bum or another person who does not deserve it.
But there’s an easy solution, if you don’t agree that this is moral, then you are free to give everything you have away to people who don’t deserve it. Then you simply make no demands of me to follow your lead, and the world will work just fine. The rub comes when people of your ilk, demand that people of mine do it your way. In fact, thats what she pretty much writes about.
I'd like the author of this insipid book to come up with some of her own quotes.
OK, but you call the author a liar over a very specific assertion. Is that just noise or can you back up your claim?
Really? Then you have a serious comprehension problem. Not taking peoples stuff from them forcefully or fraudulently is 'altruism'? Whatever dictionary you own you should return where you got it and demand your money back.
not pain or mindless self-indulgence,
You're not real....um....smart, are you.
“Rand would rejoice that our companies and the affluent are sitting on unprecedented wealth while our government and nonprofits are struggling financially.”
Rand would hardly rejoice, but she would point out that the current state of affairs does validate her philosophy to a great extent.
“Thanks. Ayn was a Kmart version of Nietzsche.”
Perspectivism is the philosophical view developed by ***Friedrich Nietzsche**** that all ideations take place from particular perspectives. This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives in which judgment of truth or value can be made. This implies that no way of seeing the world can be taken as definitively “true”, but does not necessarily entail that all perspectives are equally valid.
Perspectivism REJECTS OBJECTIVE METAPHYSICS AS IMPOSSIBLE, and claims that there are no objective evaluations which transcend cultural formations or subjective designations. This means that there are no objective facts, and that there can be no knowledge of a thing in itself.
WOW! Thats exactly what Rand said. sarc/
“A is A” is an example that she used in support of the philosophy of objectivism. If it weren’t a bit more complicated than that, Atlas Shrugged wouldn’t be 700 pages long.
If this is the whole post and not an excerpt, it really wasn’t worth posting.
You got that right. Talk about a stretch of the imagination...
“Personally, since she is dead, I dont much care about what she thought of morals.”
So,,,, you think,,, that when a person is dies, their thoughts on morals no longer have any value? Please further explain this, i think it will be fascinating.
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.