Posted on 04/18/2011 1:59:33 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
With the release this past weekend of Hollywood's version of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," the country is abuzz with paeans to the the philosophy Rand espoused, even from some people who call themselves "conservative" and "Christian." The book has once again gone to the top of the best-sellers' lists.
So, this would be a good time to examine just what Ayn Rand believed.
An old friend was online today urging conservatives to go see the movie, because, and I quote:
...the folks behind it are not contributing to the corruption of our culture...
My reply?
"Well, besides spreading the godless, materialist, selfish Objectivist ideology...
The Randian idea that we can have just government, or maintain liberty, without God, without a moral basis for our laws, is one of the leading corruptions in our culture, old friend."
That's right. To put it bluntly, her Objectivism is godless, self-centered, materialistic, anti-Christian, and anti-American.
Ayn Rand:
"I am against God for the reason that I don't want to destroy reason."
"My morality is based on man's life as the standard of value...that his highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own habits...that each man must live as an end in himself."
An anti-Christian doctrine if there ever was one, premised in the original lie of the serpent in the Garden: "Ye shall be as gods."
To the Christian, God Himself is the standard of value, and man's value is derived from the value God Himself placed on us when He made us in His own image, and then came to earth Himself to redeem us by His supreme sacrificial act. We are not an end in ourselves, but were created to serve God and our fellow man, just as He modeled perfectly for us.
John 13
1Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.
2And supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him;
3Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God;
4He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.
5After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.
6Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet?
7Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.
8Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
9Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.
10Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.
11For he knew who should betray him; therefore said he, Ye are not all clean.
12So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you?
13Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.
14If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet.
15For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
16Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.
17If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.
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Rand's philosophy, like Marx's, is anathema to the Christian faith, and hostile to the vital foundations of Western Civilization.
Anyone who knows anything about Christianity will recognize this in the bolded sections of a summary from of one of her works:
The Virtue of SelfishnessThroughout history, man has been offered the following alternative: be “moral” through a life of sacrifice to others—or be “selfish” through a life of sacrificing others to oneself. In The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand blasts this as a false alternative, holding that a selfish, non-sacrificial way of life is both possible and necessary for man.
The Virtue of Selfishness is a collection of essays presenting Ayn Rand’s radical moral code of rational selfishness and its opposition to the prevailing morality of altruism—i.e., to the duty to sacrifice for the sake of others.
In “The Objectivist Ethics,” Rand gives an outline of her code of rational selfishness, and of her argument establishing it as the only objective, fact-based moral code in human history. In the course of the essay, she raises and answers a fundamental and fascinating question: Why does one even need a morality?
In essays including “The Ethics of Emergencies,” “The ‘Conflicts’ of Men’s Interests,” and “Doesn’t Life Require Compromise?” she raises common ethical questions, shows how altruism has crippled people’s ability to approach them rationally, and explains how her moral code provides a solution to them. In “Man’s Rights” and “The Nature of Government” she applies her ethics to formulate the basic principles of her political philosophy, while rejecting the altruistic doctrines of “rights” to health care, employment, etc.
The Virtue of Selfishness is indispensable reading for anyone who wants to understand the crucial ethical issues at the root at so many of our cultural debates today—who wants to understand the revolutionary ideas that guide the lives of Ayn Rand’s fictional heroes—who wants to lead an existence that is both moral and practical—who wants to discover why, in the words of one of the heroes of Atlas Shrugged, “the purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”
According to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, the firefighters who went up the stairs of the World Trade Center on 9-11-2001 were fools. The men who rushed the cockpit on Flight 93 to stop the plane from being crashed into the Capitol or the White House were idiots. The soldier who gives his life for his buddies or for his country is to be scorned for his ignorance of Ayn Rand's immoral "morality."
And, of course, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on a Roman cross to selflessly, vicariously, pay the price for the sins of humanity is the scandal of all scandals.
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Ayn Rand was a virulent promoter of abortion.
Ayn Rand:
“An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).”
“Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?”
(SOURCE: “Of Living Death,” The Voice of Reason, Ayn Rand pp. 58–59)
Ayn Rand on Pro-Lifers:
“I cannot quite imagine the state of mind of a person who would wish to condemn a fellow human being to such a horror. I cannot project the degree of hatred required to make those women run around in crusades against abortion. Hatred is what they certainly project, not love for the embryos, which is a piece of nonsense no one could experience, but hatred, a virulent hatred for an unnamed object. Judging by the degree of those women’s intensity, I would say that it is an issue of self-esteem and that their fear is metaphysical. Their hatred is directed against human beings as such, against the mind, against reason, against ambition, against success, against love, against any value that brings happiness to human life. In compliance with the dishonesty that dominates today’s intellectual field, they call themselves “pro-life.”
“By what right does anyone claim the power to dispose of the lives of others and to dictate their personal choices?”
(SOURCE: “The Age of Mediocrity,” The Objectivist Forum, Ayn Rand, June 1981, 3.)
“Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a ‘right to life.’ A piece of protoplasm has no rights -— and no life in the human sense of the term.”
“An Embryo is not alive.”
Earlier I was wandering around one of the sites devoted to her, the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. Unsurprisingly, her wicked views towards killing certain individuals, innocent babies, continue to bear evil fruit today.
Here's one of the items I found there:
Abortion: An Absolute Right"If Roe v. Wade is reconsidered, the Supreme Court should affirm abortion as a right that cannot be invaded or compromised."
Ayn Rand rejected the One the founders of our country called "Nature's God." She did away with what they called self-evident Truth. She repudiated the Natural Law He instituted. She arrogantly scoffed at our nation's first premise, that all of us are equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, starting with the right to live. She, and those who continue to follow her, remind me of those that the Apostle Paul described in Romans Chapter One:
18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;19Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
24Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
25Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
28And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
29Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
30Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
32Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
With the growing popularity of her views, why would we wonder that our country is being destroyed? Erode the foundations, and the house will eventually fall down.
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Today another Ayn Rand follower said to me:
Rand may not have believed in God, but she darn sure believed in freedom.
But this is not possible. There is no true freedom without God, or any means to defend it.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."Without the acknowledgment of God, there is no equality. There is no protection for innocent human life. There is no liberty. There is no private property. There are no rights. There is no self-government. There is no America.-- The Declaration of Independence
For only "where the Spirit of the LORD is, THERE is Liberty."
All you're left with are the arbitrary whims of men, and "might makes right."
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There are three great internal existential threats to America, our form of government, our liberty, and our posterity:
If you love God, if you love your country, if you love self-government in liberty, if you care about your posterity, fight them all, with all your might.
John Adams:Don't fall into the destructive trap of mistaking Ayn Rand's licentious views for true liberty. It's a lie."We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other."
Margaret Thatcher:
"Without a moral basis, [a free] society would not long endure."
ping...
Yet Rand is hardly the bitterest foe of traditional Christian principles to be found among atheists.
She was wrong, of course, that God destroys reason. God gives reason a place to begin. God furnishes the objective foundation for which she hankers, but without the need for relativistic arguments to support it.
I am a born again Christian. I am a pro Constitution conservative politically.
I saw Atlas Shrugged Saturday - and I was fully able to take the message of a totalitarian government and what it does to the incentive to create products and services that make the world a better place and separate that from Rand’s beliefs on eternity - which she surely regrets now herself.
The main message of Atlas Shrugged is a brilliant and important one. I don’t care what Rand’s other beliefs were. I’m an adult. I can filter them out. If the Apostle Paul was able to debate nonbelievers on their terms, then believers can take Rand on hers.
You can't debate Rand now. She's gone to meet her Maker.
But there's certainly no shortage of her acolytes to debate, sadly.
Objectivism and its spawn are a moral cancer on the American body politic.
And it's uncertain whether the patient will survive.
Poison is poison, my friend. No matter what bottle it comes in.
Absolutely.
Of all the influences that modern foes of religion in the public square claim, I’ve scarcely ever heard Rand explicitly cited. Much more often it traces to pop psychology (Freud) or an evolutionist point of view (Darwin). Some “epidemiology” is in order if we are to claim Rand is a “cancer on the body politic.” She seems scarcely a wart.
‘I don’t care what Rand’s other beliefs were. I’m an adult. I can filter them out’
YOU ARE RIGHT MR WRIGHT....DISCERNING ADULTS CAN SELECT OUT THE THRUST OF ANN’S BRILLIANT WORKS...REJECTING SOME LIVING BY THE REST....
PSST....don’t get your undies in a bunch LITTLE TOMMY...we’re not liberals here we can handle things.....now quit preachin and go stick yer head in the mud? ty and have a nice day..
“Objectivism and its spawn are a moral cancer on the American body politic.”
****
Christians who want to redistribute wealth and acquire government power to advance their religious beliefs at the expense of others are a moral cancer on the American body politic too.
They are not conservatives...and their motives are every bit as selfish as those they throw stones at. Whether it is a Marxist “for the children/village” or a Christian “for Jesus,” using the government to rob Peter to give to Paul is still looting by second-handers.
Don’t recall “Render unto Caesar” ending with “so Christians can redistribute tax dollars while claiming to do God’s will.” Perhaps that’s in Mike Hucksterbee’s version of the Bible.
Poison is poison, no matter the bottle — I agree with that. There was simply no poison (to speak of) in the film version of Atlas Shrugged Part 1.
So Rand has some poisonous beliefs. Fine. Paying 10 bucks to watch the movie is not an endorsement of every single belief she had. 98% of the message of Atlas Shrugged is a great lesson on totalitarian government and how it evolves.
Why any Christian would strongly object to this movie is just beyond me.
LOL! Yes that mighty force in American politics is bringing this country low!
That made way too much sense.
Thank you. I would argue that they are a much bigger scourge on the body politic than the Objectivist boogieman.
Look closely at those who swoon most deep and sincere at the feet of a tyrant, they wear Christ like a poor shirt.
Another message brought to us by the master of donation requests for Alan Keyes.
They are not conservatives...
They also got Christianity wrong as well: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15
In many respects, allowing for people to achieve their own selfish ends is what enables them to help the less fortunate. I would imagine that many people in this country refuse to be charitable since they know that their tax money is already siphoned off to fill the pockets of those who obtain government assistance.
Exactly why I'll never vote for Huckabee.
There are a number of crypto-marxists out there who Nietzsche described as "underhanded Christians" that use the Bible for their own selfish purposes...
There is a gaping 50mm hole in Ayn Rand's philosophy though...
Morality and any associated ideal is rooted entirely in a presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.
They are not Christians if they have the views you ascribe to them, above. They may call themselves Christians; they are not following the tenets that Christ taught.
Evolutionary theory actually supports Genesis...
Mammalian evolution is only possible with heterosexual relationships.
The so-called "atheists" out there will run away from this logic... Creationists have a puzzling disconnect to the obvious evidence of it in nature...
Neither side will admit nature has it's own laws, and like the Declaration of Independence, it is a manifestation of the Law given to Moses...
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