Posted on 11/11/2011 12:43:07 PM PST by OnlyTurkeysHaveLeftWings
The rational man does not sacrifice his values to of for others and does not sacrifice the values of others to or for himself.He pursues his own rational self interest and true interests.
Not likely. Usually the simplest answer is correct. Some hack writer who really doesn't know anything about the book wrote some typical boilerplate about it. Normally nobody would give a damn, but it's freakin' Ayn Rand.
“it was when she realized that she was being used and lied to by a man she thought loved her”
Not that, exactly. It’s that the man she thought she loved for being a Titan of Industry represented in reality the opposite ideal, and that she didn’t want to live in a world where everyone was a weasely, grubbing Peter Taggart.
“values”
“love”
“virtue”
“noblest love”
An atheist cannot define those things. Ultimately, if they believe that they come from nothing but chemical chance, they believe that those things are meaningless chemical reactions, ‘evolved’ to facilitate procreation by a menaingless selfish gene. And they are back to throwing themselves in the river again.
Thankfully, that view is provably wrong. And actually completely ridiculous.
Like proof-reading?
“The rational man [...] does not sacrifice the values of others to or for himself.”
That’s an irrational statement. What could be more rational than shooting someone without fear of capture and stealing their property?
Got my copy in the mail yesterday ;-) I would never have looked at that line anyway, but now feel like I own something like the naked version of the Beatles White album...uh, let me clarify....
“R. Perry, Proofreader” ;-)
Who is John Galt?
Hmm. Also see post #24
Netflix recently moved “Atlas Shrugged, Part 1” from my saved queue into my regular queue. Looking forward to seeing it.
Oops.
“is Atlas Shrugged at odds with Christianity?”
Clearly not. Because as I say, rational self-interest is not antithetical to self-sacrifice. Otherwise no one would ever willingly go to war. And Ayn Rand was not against war for self protection. Clearly self protection and self sacrifice are often coexistent.
The people who put out this press release are at odds with Christianity. Because they have interpreted the book as against all self-sacrifice, which is a shallow, shortsighted interpretation.
Clearly self-sacrifice is part of Christianity. But also rational self-interest and self-protection is a valid part of life which is not excluded by Christianity.
I can understand Rand’s frustration with the established churches of her day. Certainly they largely interpreted the Bible with a sledgehammer when a scalpel was required. Everything was oversimplified. And unfortunately a lot of that is still in many churches today.
Rand was a useful stepping stone on the road to a rational intellectual conservatism. But she was not the end of that road. The modern movement recognizes that Christianity is fully compatible with being rational and intellectual.
Ayn Rand is a good beginning but it is a purely secular approach written by a woman that was an anti-Communist atheist and in favor of abortion. A moral code is completely missing from her work. See the “Molon Labe” book “interview” (in the Appendix) for an excellent Ayn Rand discussion that emphasizes the need for a Christian libertarian approach and how it would work in real-life situations. Best societal framework I have ever found.
Since when?
Back when I read it the story was about taking unjustly extorted taxes from the tax collector and returning them to the tax payer.
Having been some hack writer doing video box copy at various points in my career, I'd go so far as to guess that it wasn't even a writer--it was a graphic designer who was saving money on their lowball bid by not hiring a real copywriter. But the main fault lies with the company for not proofreading the sleeve before sending the digital file to the printer, and for not catching it when the first proof copies came off the press, and for not noticing it when the printed inserts were delivered. The tinfoil hat people can grumble about conspiracies all day, but the producers were asleep at the switch.
I remembered that the man was not “upstanding”, but who he had been escaped me.
Thanks.
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