Posted on 11/13/2009 7:51:55 AM PST by cornelis
It’s interesting reading all the pro and anti Rand comments. With most political thinkers people feel free to accept that some of what they said was true, while some errors are mixed up therein. With Rand it seems that people demand all or nothing.
“Funny how so many independent people follow Rand like lemmings.”
Reminds me of independent motorcycle riders -— all dressed in black leather jackets, white shirt, blue jeans, black boots, and a Harley -— a Harley, mind you, not some “other” brand. (Not that Harley’s aren’t nice bikes, as they are, but the lemming issue is clear.)
For the record, I’ve been to Sturgis. (Dressed in black, on a Harley — but with a kippah -— and no, noone ever bothered me, but I did get a lot of photographs taken with me.)
Easier than italicizing it.
At some point you have to ask yourself why so many people did not finishing reading the book. Could it be that the book sucked? She made her point by page 25 and spent the next 1000 pages repeating it. The book was one of the least compelling and most boring reads of my life. Rand fancied herself an intellectual and wrote as if her audience were children. Many of the people I’ve met who claim to have enjoyed the book suffer from obvious inferiority complexes. They think that by bragging of finishing a really big book they will appear to intellectual.
I don’t know what “Christian Nietzchean” is.
“He cant do good for another because he thinks doing good is slavery”
Not really. When reardon made better steel, it benefitted all. So too w/ Galt’s motor.
Chambers' review of Atlas Shrugged is withering. He lays out in detail what's wrong with the book.
But anyone care to refute here excerpt re Christianity contained right there? And I mean factually, rationally refute. Without the use of feelings or faith.
No problem. See my #39. Just to give you a taste, you demand "without the use of 'feelings,'" and yet a "feeling" (happiness) is what Rand calls a "highest moral good."
Her philosophy is fundamentally irrational.
A nihilist of faith?
Buckley should have believed in no form of government power?
That's a bit of dramatic language ... but OTOH, speaking as somebody who's read the book several times, Chambers is essentially correct. Rand clearly doesn't care who dies, if they're not among her Select Few. (The fate of Eddie Willers, for example.)
Exactly.
I’m still waiting for a rational refutation of that statement here, but I think I’ll be waiting a while.
This is why I wonder sometimes if -at the core - Christianity is incompatible with freedom.
Umm, straw man, Ann. First, no one is superior. All are children of God. All have sinned. There is no righteous man, not even one.
Second, God does not want sacrifice from us. He did that already, and it was for all of us, forever. Go and learn what this means, Ann : "I desire mercy, not sacrifice."
Third, it should make us indignant that Jesus had to die on the cross. The godly grief and sorrow that grows out of that indignation should humble us and lead us to the repentance that brings life and the kingdom now. How can we sin knowing what God had to endure for us? How can we be worrying or ungrateful when we know the outrageous price He paid for us? How can we be anything but joyful and thankful? How can we lord it over those still in chains once we know we are free?
It never ceases to amaze me how little supposedly literate people know about what the King of the Universe has been trying to tell us for thousands of years.
Funny how so many independent people follow Rand like lemmings.
Rand has her limitations (notably she did not recognize the soul directly) but to suggest people follow her as a cult is mistaken. Rand is the logical conclusion of the enlightenment, if you depart with Adam Smith, Locke, go to Jefferson/Madison and American Constitution, you will arrive at Rand. It took Rand’s talents and unique history to culminate in the Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged. A Russian emigre fleeing the communist revolution gave her an informed opinion on collectivization. She is the antithesis of collectivization. If you have not read her work, I would recommend that you take the time to do so.
LOL!
Witness was a great book. So was Atlas Shrugged. Both were written by flawed authors, but so what? Chambers picked an unnecessary fight that lives to this day, where he distorted Rand’s message and brought his own judgment into question at least to that extent. Just my opinion.
“a brittle, arid, mean, and ultimately hollow philosophy”
“That pretty much says it all.”
It does indeed, but not the way you think it does. When you can’t argue with something rationally, call it names instead.
That statement is pure cultism
“With Rand it seems that people demand all or nothing.”
Yeah, I notice that too. I think it’s because it shakes the faith of the relgious, so they attaqck disproportionately to convince themselves they haven’t been fed a crock of sh!t all their lives.
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