Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Pelham
Try again little man.

How is the trolling going?

117 posted on 01/15/2012 12:12:40 PM PST by neocon1984
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 98 | View Replies ]


To: neocon1984

Pretty good, I occasionally manage to run across the sort that Murray Rothbard described in his memoir of his time with the Rand inner circle.

When the old witch ordered Murray to divorce his wife because she was Catholic Murray decided that the Randians were too crazy for his tastes.


126 posted on 01/15/2012 6:31:57 PM PST by Pelham
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 117 | View Replies ]

To: neocon1984; Finny; untwist
A selection from Murray Rothbard's impressions of Rand and her circle:

Her Bible

The Biblical nature of Atlas for many Randians is illustrated by the wedding of a Randian couple that took place in New York. At the ceremony, the couple pledged their joint devotion and fealty to Ayn Rand, and then supplemented it by opening Atlas – perhaps at random – to read aloud a passage from the sacred text.

Wit and humor, as might be gathered from this incident, were verboten in the Randian movement. The philosophical rationale was that humor demonstrates that one "is not serious about one’s values." The actual reason, of course, is that no cult can withstand the piercing and sobering effect, the sane perspective, provided by humor. One was permitted to sneer at one’s enemies, but that was the only humor allowed, if humor that be.

Personal enjoyment, indeed, was also frowned upon in the movement and denounced as hedonistic "whim-worship." In particular, nothing could be enjoyed for its own sake – every activity had to serve some indirect, "rational" function. Thus, food was not to be savored, but only eaten joylessly as a necessary means of one’s survival; sex was not to be enjoyed for its own sake, but only to be engaged in grimly as a reflection and reaffirmation of one’s "highest values"; painting or movies only to be enjoyed if one could find "rational values" in doing so. All of these values were not simply to be discovered quietly by each person – the heresy of "subjectivism" – but had to be proven to the rest of the cult. In practice, as will be seen further below, the only safe aesthetic or romantic "values" or objects for the member were those explicitly sanctioned by Ayn Rand or other top disciples.

As in the case of all cults and sects, a particularly vital method for moulding the members and keeping them in line was maintaining their constant and unrelenting activity within the movement...

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

128 posted on 01/15/2012 6:52:58 PM PST by Pelham
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 117 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson