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To: Springfield Reformer
(Stalin) has fulfilled the Objectivist maxim … for himself.

As Ayn Rand said, "You can't eat your cake and have it, too."

You cannot change the essentials of Objectivism to match your own foibles and then attack the straw-man you have just stood up.

John Galt's oath:
"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine."

What you describe is simply a libertine, the anathema to an Objectivist. Stalin forced others to live for his sake which goes totally against Objectivism. An Objectivists would execute Stalin for the crime of putting other individuals to death for his own gain.

In our times civic duty and virtue in the altruistic manor you refer almost never exists. The wealthy patron that donates to the newest worthy cause does so for reasons other than Christian altruism. Charitable giving always selfishly makes the giver feel good and the more money given makes him by degrees famous or provides a good tax break. A multitude of thousands have there names placed on the monument to their giving which is almost always the motivation for their generosity. Their giving selfishly increases their own feeling of self-worth. Lenny Skutniks or even Truett Cathys are few and far between. You may try to convince me that the oafish Ted Turner donated $1 billion from Christian Charity but I doubt that even you could believe that.

If you still hold that Objectivism and Communism or Fascism are alike, you deny the obvious objective truth.

52 posted on 04/24/2011 11:27:33 PM PDT by higgmeister ( In the Shadow of The Big Chicken!)
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To: higgmeister

Whatever. I stand by my analysis. Rand was a follower, and a sanitizer, of Nietzsche. Anton Lavey was a follower, and a plagiarizer, of Rand. You do the math. There is a fundamental evil in purely egoistic “morality,” as reflected not only by the logical incoherency it represents, but also by the company it keeps. And how else could it be? Galt’s oath has no enforcer. It therefore has no meaning. Real practitioners of egoism are never so noble as the characters in fictional books, who are never pressed by local realities like the rest of us. They are paper cutout dolls who can be made to say and do anything the scriptwriter demands of them. You say I am not objective for my lack of faith in Objectivism’s proposed utopia. Really? Sez who?


54 posted on 04/25/2011 10:55:17 AM PDT by Springfield Reformer (Winston Churchill: No Peace Till Victory!)
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