Posted on 01/19/2019 1:59:31 PM PST by huckfillary
“For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors—between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.”
— Ayn Rand
I do not despise Ayn Rand but I do think the Radians do as most intellectuals— pull the straw man out to much.
Take a look at one of Jesus’ simplest, most direct, and commonly quoted statements to the public in Matthew 5:
“Let your light shine before men that in seeing your good work they glorify your father who is in heaven.”
Jesus does not say “Let God’s light shine . . “ In fact, this brief rather seminal instruction says “your” three times. Moreover, this theme ends up irritating the Pharisees to the point of demanding a crucifixion for Jesus.
Jesus did advocate for the individual in far better terms than even Ayn Rand did. I think the excess devotion to Randian thought is largely a bad deflection to secularism. We get a lot more “legalize weed” nonsense as opposed to an ethical framework for what individual freedom can accomplish when not menaced by the state.
Randians need to reconsider their straw man of Christianity.
“People believe what they want, others do too.
That’s the way freedom works. But it ends when one side steps on the other in the name of THEIR beliefs. ANY side.”
Maybe I’m lucky to have grown up in America, but I don’t consider some priest’s chastisement of my sin to be “stepping on me”. He can have his say, and I can walk away. We don’t have the Spanish Inquisition.
The other “side”, however, is fining and arresting people for not allowing sicko men wearing dresses to hang around in women’s rest rooms. They’re using government to do this, and that is “stepping on people”.
Could you see this coming from the end of anti-sodomy laws?
Ayn Rand’s understanding of human nature makes me think that she could have. Only her revulsion to the concept of Morality could keep her from connecting the two.
Given people’s ignorance of history I’m glad she said what she said in modern time.
In fact, she too has been gone for a while, so we’re in desperate need for keeping her words alive today.
She is right in the sense that the world is divided between the City of God and the city of man. Augustine explained each camp quite accurately centuries earlier.
Each person must decide at some point in their life which city they belong to.
Self-love is a basis for the city of man. It is not a third choice.
“The best that can be said about her is that with her popular writing she rallied some at critical time against the Left.”
She sold millions and million of books carefully describing Capitalism, individualism v. the State, and promoted conservative ideals when they were needed badly.
In America you are free to live life exactly as you see fit as long as your choices do not harm the person or property of others. The more you learn about life the more enjoyable will be the living of it.
Evil is evil even when everybody is doing it, good is good even when no one is doing it.
Why was she such an abortion-enthusiast,though? She didn’t think our offspring have their own lives to live?
Why was she such an abortion-enthusiast,though? She didn’t think our offspring have their own lives to live?
“Ayn doesn’t realize that everything we have in from God - the air we breathe, the food we eat and we should put aside our pride and thank God for everything he has given us.”
Ayn-Rand realizes that many people believe what you say you believe, but many people in the world, of which I am one, respectfully disagree.
Ayn Rand did not invent the philosophy which she espoused. One should look to the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle to get a firm basis of where Rand is coming from.
Virtue of Selfishness and it’s premise is man-centric. Even as it is today so evident, the state will not bow to the church and the church will not bow to the state and so where does that leave...Ayn Rand.
I was an ardent liberal in early college, so heart rendered, petitioned for the ACLU. Then I read The Virtue of Selfishness and overnight more closely understood the meaning of existence of man.
Ayn did say to “check your premises “
She does lay out the liberal/leftist playbook we are seeing play out live in Atlas Shrugged.
MAGA!
So how were we created?
The atheistic objectivist never understood the love of God
Interesting novelist lousy philosopher
The state and my neighbor do not own me....on the other hand God has paid my redemption
She being an atheist was talking about statism and people’s religious beliefs
She was a self avowed atheist
“Bill Buckley essentially read her out of the movement.“
Seeing where Buckley’s crew took us, I’ll take Rand.
L
“...No one ever satisfactorily proved to me that Morality can exist without God. Ayn Rand wasn’t able to do it. ...”
What -is- the best argument to make, to show that morality -can’t- exist without God?
I get bombarded with statements from people that ‘one can be moral, without being religious’.
And she's not really a philosopher because she doesn't relish the argumentation that philosophers do. She has a doctrine or a dogma that she defends at all costs, but she doesn't seriously consider that her critics might have a point. She doesn't take objections seriously into account and move her thought forward. She's like a pre-Socratic who says everything is made of fire or water and that's that.
Maybe she's half a philosopher. She provides a doctrine that is right half the time, but she doesn't take into account situations where it may not apply. We go through stages of life. What's right for a child isn't right for a young person and that isn't necessarily right for a parent and householder with responsibilities and that isn't necessarily right for someone approaching the end of life. So while her philosophy is very appealing to the young, it may not reflect what those in the middle or end of life need.
Ironically, she may survive best as something she would have hated - a victim. Rand described very well what Communism did to people, and that reality is present underneath all her writing. But beware: it's said that in her earliest writings, she had some admiration for her tormentors because their energy, idealism, and commitment.
During the Trump campaign, I re-read some of those books and it's eerie how the Democrats are resembling the "looters" that she warned us about all those years ago. In fact, some of the Democrats like Chuck Schumer and that newcomer Ocasio-Cortez seem like they are right off the pages of "Atlas Shrugged" (as the looters).
"The Virtue of Selfishness" was an interesting read as well as an interesting title. My wife spotted that book on my nightstand and immediately jumped to conclusions.
Rand redefined "selfishness" for me. Selfishness is not me wanting to keep for myself what I have earned. To me, selfishness is others wanting (even demanding) what I earned. Those are the selfish people.
As for her staunch atheism - I can look past that.
I don’t think you have been paying attention.
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