Posted on 10/31/2011 10:11:20 AM PDT by Para-Ord.45
Ayn Rand is being hailed a prophet. How could she have anticipated, more than 50 years ago, a United States spinning out of financial control, plagued by soaring spending and crippling
How, people wondered, could Rand have foreseen all this? Was she a prophet? No, she answered. She had simply identified the basic cause of why the country was veering from crisis to new crisis.
Was the solution to “go Galt” and quit society? No, Rand again answered. The solution was simultaneously much easier and much harder. “So long as we have not yet reached the state of censorship of ideas,” she once said, “one does not have to leave a society in the way the characters did in Atlas Shrugged. . . . But you know what one does have to do? One has to break relationships with the culture. . . . [D]iscard all the ideas—the entire cultural philosophy which is dominant today.”
"You have cried that man’s sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice the virtues you demanded,” the novel's hero John Galt declares to a country in crisis. “Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster.”
He elaborates: “You have sacrificed justice to mercy.” (For example, calls to make homeownership “accessible” to those who could not afford it and then bailouts and foreclosure freezes to spare them when they couldn’t pay.)
“You have sacrificed reason to faith.” (For example, attempts to prevent stem cell research on Biblical grounds, or blind faith that Mr. Obama’s deliberately empty rhetoric about hope and change will magically produce prosperity.)
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Without Christ there would have been no America and no American ideal of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Stem cell research is thriving and progressing, and does not ineluctably require or demand the destruction of living nascent human beings.
Blind faith is a gross understatement. From the beginning, when I heard that line, "Change," I thought "uh oh." people can't be that stupid; can they? to accept "change," without the slightest suggestion as to what sort of change?
They were. The question now is are they still that stupid facing the disaster that resulted, and the suggestion that we need more of the same?
Possible. The "Great Uniter" has been an utter failure, judging by his results.
The Great Uniter has divided the Nation into two opposing and irreconcileable camps : The OWS fruitcakes, the idle useless parasites for whom the Nanny State and the elected power brokers do not provide enough. And the working citizens who are viewed by those groups as cash cows, a source of everything without limit.
In terms of societies, the most unstable and ephemeral of powder kegs.
Here, shouldn't it be "et Al"?
Are you kidding me??? Objectivist philosophy is based on the absolute standards of right and wrong, good and evil.
Read just the first chapter to Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
simple common sense?
It's quite a list, isn't it. Including the shadow government, the college professors, communists and anarchist now writing our laws and interpreting our Constitution.
No one in American History ever contemplated what would happen when the Attorney General went rogue; or how it could be set right.
As others have said, Her solution is off, but her premise is what is exactly happening today. I read it as more of what socialism/communism can do to a working persons will to work.
Without Christ there would have been no America and no American ideal of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Correct. That was something she lacked.
Lost me right there.
First off, reason and faith are not necessarily in opposition. If your faith tells you that something is immoral, it is entirely reasonable to chose not to do it. You are then using reason to place your morality above baser considerations.
Second, a reasonable person would have learned that there is no conflict between morality and baser pragmatic considerations, with regard to most stem cell research. Only embryonic stem cell research involves insurmountable moral issues. Combine that with the fact that embryonic stem cell research has produced no viable therapies (and is unlikely to do so); while research has produced several promising therapies involving adult stem cells, or umbilical cord stem cells; and you have no reasonable conflict. Actually a reasonable person would stop wasting resources on embryonic stem cell research (just on pragmatic grounds); since there doesn't seem to be a path to profitability there.
The author is either ignorant about the issue — or is being deliberately misleading.
I don’t know if it is denial or just trying to get a real grasp of what is actually happening before committing to a real fix, if one exists.
Ummm ... are you two out of your minds?
America is an expression of Masonic ideals, and do you know what?
Plenty of jews are masons. No Christ required.
YMMV.
This is a deliberate lie... There have been attempts to prevent embryonic stem cell research, which has proven to be less than fruitful. They have pushed for adult stem cell research, which it seems has become quite hopeful. The whole reason the left wants to push for embryonic stem cell research is simply to help justify abortion with the general public.
Abortion is the "slavery" issue of the modern age. I'm not comparing abortion to slavery. What I mean is that the issue of abortion are the same as that of slavery. The "Missouri Compromise" didn't work. A compromise on abortion isn't any more workable.
Mark
They’ll pull an Assata Shakur and hide out in Cuba.
So you say. I disagree, as it was argued by me, elsewhere.
I don't mean to be coy, but I'm not up to it right now. I will say this -- some honest and objective meditation on the subject might go a long way.
Someone obviously has NOT read her books.
clearly.
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