Posted on 04/23/2011 7:42:56 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A more sensible question is whether Rand can be reconciled with Ragnar Redbeard's Might Makes Right and La Vey's Satanic Bible. The answer is a resounding yes, since all three are made of the same sort of stuff.
Here, read this.
Rand was not against charity.
Rand was against compulsion under the guise of charity.
You’ve no idea what you’re talking about.
Paine's point was that it was defamatory to a loving God for men to claim that they murdered innocent men, women and infants at His bequest.
The bottom line is that Paine did believe in God, just not the God of The Bible.
RE: Objectivism holds that there is nothing wrong with charity, so long as one is pursuing one’s own values in providing it.
Then the ATTITUDE is not Christian even if the act looks outwardly Christian. Christ gave of Himself sacrificially because of His love of others and He teaches His followers to do the same.
And as in the incident of the Widow’s mite, Christ looks at your heart.
Interesting read!
Good distinction. Same thing may be said of Eric Hoffer. Have you read Hoffer's "The True Believer"? He discusses this very thing.
There is no other.
btrl
I agree that it is not Christian, but in our modern times it is the best ally we will ever find. The non-religion and anti-opression tenets staunchly oppose Evil Islam. The individual liberty and laissez-faire capitalism principles stalwartly oppose liberalism, socialism and communism and fascism.
In spite of Objectivism rejecting faith, its embracing rational self-interest and personal happiness as the guiding purpose of life grants any sovereign individual tacit license to hold personal beliefs as desired, Nathaniel Branden notwithstanding.
I know that Objectivism markets its conclusions differently than I analyze them. You can pick whichever version suits you. I stand by my analysis, because human nature is involved, and the marketing for every system eventually gives way to the pragmatic and mostly disappointing reality of attempted implementation.
Rational self-interest is just such a problem. The rational application of mutual self-interest often provides some major, common themes that can unify social structure in beneficial ways. Natural Law says exactly the same thing, and said so long before Rand. Objectivism goes off the rails and is inferior to Natural Law because it does not acknowledge any higher duty that may require the cessation of self-interested behavior as measured by some standard of rationality.
The attempts to circumvent this accusation by appeal to such things as genetic altruism, for example, ring hollow. Nietzsche was more honest, if less well understood. In practice, pure self-interest is whatever you can see in front of you at the moment, as it pertains to you, the seeing individual. If Stalin can make a comfortable life for himself by slaughtering millions, why shouldn’t he? He has fulfilled the Objectivist maxim … for himself. Rationally, the others, the dead, the dying, the imprisoned, the sycophantic, do not matter. If Stalin wins for himself, all is well with the universe.
Now, if you are lucky enough to be having a social beer with him, you may attempt to persuade him that he is really acting against himself, and doubtless in your own highly rational mind you could show this is true. But if materiality is all there is, then whoso gets the most for the longest wins, as they see it. Morality founded exclusively on the self sounds like an elegant solution. In reality it becomes a rationalization for narcissism, a stem cell that mutates according to the Kantian limits and distortions of the particular self it infects, producing sometimes a Gandhi, sometimes a Stalin, sometimes a middle-class producer who is tired of the vampirism of the welfare state.
Natural Law, by contrast, sets the table with not only rational self interest but also civic duty and virtue, universal norms that sometime put the ego in tension with the common good. This is the best of all possible worlds, and it has been time-tested and works quite well in the context of fallible human nature. It is the key that unlocks the mystery of why we Americans have succeeded all these centuries. Our Constitution, our Declaration, our Founders, were all based squarely on theistic Natural Law, and not in the empty void proposed by Objectivism’s godless universe.
Objectivism is Rand grasping at straws to reject the inevitable consequences of both Nietzsche’s amorality and Christian morality (which she explicitly rejected) without seeming to resort to theism of any kind, but cherry-picking those Natural Law principles that suited her purpose. Yet it is a cheat, because it contained an embedded “should,” because a belief that we “should” act or think any particular way is an appeal to an Arbiter, which she says she denies. Nietzsche recognizes this and openly exposes the cheat. Rand papers over it, using “Reason” as a stand-in deity. In practice, humans must implement either system. Therefore, the results must be the same, and equally disappointing, for systems that share a common root. Sorry. I’ve lived too long to be beguiled into believing otherwise, people being what they are.
Peace,
SR
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.
bump.
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?
Bingo!
Psychopathic narcissists of the world agree with both of you!
Apparently you believe one should love his neighbor more than himself. Any liberal would agree with that. Thanks to people like you we have a collectivist society.
Everyone already loves himself. When there’s a fire in a building, who stays in to fry?
Jesus is obviously saying - “You already love and take care of yourselves. So, now you should care about others the way you already care about yourselves.”
But his first commandment is to love God. The second part, which is based upon the first, is to also care about others.
This is not sectarian, but univerally applicable.
And your accusation that caring about others is collectivism is insanely laughable. You will not find less of a collectivist than myself.
Your simplistic interpretation misses the point.
God loves himself first of all yet shows mercy to insolent humans.
Besides, aren’t you the Hindu who promotes wanting the government to dictate to people what they can or cannot do in their private lives?
God’s position and conciousness cannot be imitate by human beings.
Moral absolutes are essentially the same in every religion, that is why they are absolutes.
Private life activities like abortion? Porn? Rest stop sodomy?
Libertarianism is the kook anarchy ultra fringe element of the left.
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.