"A society without organised government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along."--Ayn Rand |
Posted on 12/29/2001 12:09:43 AM PST by Starmaker
While Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and essays on politics, culture and philosophy, was a great advocate of free market capitalism and a significant anti-communist, she also made mistakes in her thinking which are presently being slavishly parroted by her devout coterie of followers at the Ayn Rand Institute. While Rand publicly championed the individual, she privately insisted, according to former close associates, on a high degree of conformity within her inner circle. This is reflected today in her followers, who call themselves Objectivists, and who tend to spout her dogma and mimic her mannerisms in a fashion that is at times positive and at times unbecoming.
A case in point is the recent article "Why Christmas Should be More Commercial" by Dr. Leonard Peikoff who referrers to himself as the foremost authority on Objectivism and is the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute. While Peikoff revels in the commercial aspects of Christmas, he sneers at "assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously." I would beg to differ. Most of us, to varying degrees, enjoy the commercial aspect of Christmas and gift giving and see no contradiction between this and the religious aspect. In this season this year, which comes on the tail of hijackers crashing planes into buildings, thousands of grieving families, friends, and a grieving nation, and anthrax in the mail, thinking about G-d, and loving thy neighbor contributes greatly to a more significant sense of meaning and purpose in life, certainly more so than a mere commercial transaction. I don´t agree with Peikoff and his extreme atheism, I think people do take these things very seriously.
The Objectivists hold to the irrational theory of evolution which is that man somehow evolved from the primordial ooze. They dismiss as a superstition the more rational idea, in my opinion, that the creation of life, with all of its incredible facets, had to involve a supernatural and divine aspect. They reject the theory of creation not because it is irrational but because the Atheist Ayn Rand rejected it. As an admirer of reason, I find the creation theory to be much more rational while at the same time providing a varied and nuance sense of life, certainly more so than the morally neutral idea that man somehow miraculously evolved out of the mud.
In his Christmas article, Peikoff asserts "America´s tragedy is that its intellectual leaders have typically tried to replace happiness with guilt by insisting that the spiritual meaning of Christmas is religion and self sacrifice for Tiny Tim or his equivalent." Unless I´m missing something, America´s "intellectual leaders" haven´t insisted on religion any time recently but rather an atheistic, morally neutral, scientific socialist culture that claims to be based on "reason." As far as American religion being an advocate of "self sacrifice," this is just nonsense. Self-sacrifice is a policy of the abovementioned intellectual leaders who have no intention of sacrificing anything themselves, only the fruit of the labor of others. Religion tends to advocate voluntary tithing for the needy and private charities.
Peikoff wants to "take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egotistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration." His utopian idea of happiness seems to be a world where man is not fettered by such obstacles as guilt or worry about anything but the here and now. Much of the article venerates earth-worshipping paganism, which is where many Atheists, hungering for meaning and purpose, seem to end up. Ayn Rand and the Objectivists made great contributions to capitalism, freedom and individual rights but, unfortunately, that contribution is somewhat eclipsed by a darker side. Perhaps Rand was more influenced by her own Stalinist high school and College education than she realized. Either way, it´s a shame that such glaring mistakes threaten to discredit such important work.
"A society without organised government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along."--Ayn Rand |
"Anarchy, as a political concept, is a naive floating abstraction:...a society without an organized government would be at the mercy of the first criminal who came along and who would precipitate it into the chaos of gang warfare. But the possibility of human immortality is not the only objection to anarchy: even a society whose every member were fully rational and faultlessly moral, could not runction in a state of anarchy; it is the need of objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements among men that necessitates the establishment of a government."You were saying...
Ayn Rand, Virtue of Selfishness pp 112.
"There is only one basic principle to which an individual must consent if he wishes to live in a free, civilized society: the principle of renouncing the use of physical force and delegating to the government his right of physical self-defense" --Ayn RandRoscoe, please direct me to where you extracted this. I'd like to look over what else was there. Thanks.
"If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door -- or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same prupose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that society into the chaos of gang-rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual tribal warfare of prehistorical savages.
The use of physical force -- even its retaliatory use -- cannot be left at the discretion of individual citizens. Peaceful coexistence is impossible if a man has to live under the constant threat of force to be unleashed against him by any of his neighbors at any moment. Whether his neighbor' intentions are good or bad, whether their judgement is rational or irrational, whether they are motivated by a sense of justice or by ignorance or by prejudice or by malice -- the use of force against one man cannot be left to the arbitrary decision of another."
Ayn Rand - Virtue of Selfishness pp. 108
BTW- My dog is a Calvinist. Incapable of of not urinating on my neighbors flower bed, hand-picked by me from the SPCA after many years of suffering and depravity, unconditionally welcome now in my house at much peril and trepidation to the neighbors. (smile)
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
I do not think the sun is required if light is present. Since light is a requirement for photosynthesis, light first would be logical. Of course, it could be that trees and herbs could survive a whole day without light. LOL
I first began to suspect this when I read an interview where she denied that ‘We the Living’ was in anyway connected to her childhood.
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.