RE: Per Rand, it - the Creator - is nature, nature made us rational. The only way we can live at all is by our mind, and by using our mind we can live exceedingly well.
Well, that’s all relative isn’t it, this “living well” thing?
If I decide that I want to be more like a Nazi because nature made me the way I am, what “objective” natural law tells me this is irrational?
Let’s put it this way to Ayn Rand -— if we came as a result of random collision of matter and atoms, then a random collision of atoms called Nazis just happened to “hit on” a random collision of atoms called “Jews”... why is this not “living exceedingly well” for the Nazis?
Your point is well taken. Lincoln made the same point this way: The fox and the sheep see “freedom” differently.
I’ll try to make the best argument I can on behalf of Rand: whoever might be the Nazis today can’t be sure they will be the Nazis forever. So, at some point, it will be in the interest of the ruling class to establish the rule of law so that people will be secure in their person and property. Thus, Benjamin Franklin said no man’s freedom is secure if any man is a slave. In historical fact, however, not many rulers or slaveowners were persuaded by this logic.
The advance of freedom has occurred mostly by the consolidation of random opportunities. This is why I am not giving up on this country. America isn’t the world’s last, best hope. America is the world’s only hope. If we lose out to the socialists, mankind will return to the dark ages.
Now I will quote Reagan. It is as though God raised up the Americas from the great ocean to be a place of refuge for all the freedom loving people of the world. More so, so that the freedom-loving people could have a place to gather and multiply their strength through the creativity that only free people have, and to kick ass with the slaveholders and the Nazis and the Communists and the other bastards out there. As for the Pope, the last war the Pope blessed was the fascist side of the Spanish civil war, so I’m not holding my breadth waiting for his blessing.