Just Hanging Around Grazing at Free Republic?
Haven't donated yet?
Sign up to donate monthly
and a sponsoring FReeper will donate $10
Urgent: Save Lazamataz! Donate today
Posted on 04/16/2011 10:49:59 AM PDT by stfassisi
A rather surprisingly negative review from Whittaker Chambers. Apparently the Marxist ideology that he once loved wasn’t completely washed out of his system.
Uncle Scrooge vs Bluto
Actually, he understood that materialism via Ayn Rand style is just as evil as Marxisim
Whittaker Chambers, William F. Buckley, Ronald Reagan, all had Christianity at the center of their worldview. Ayn Rand’s atheistic materialism would have been foreign to them, despite her anti-communism.
The one area where I had a problem with A.S. and Rand was the atheist perspective and condemnation of organized religion. However, when organized religion is not viewed as meaning Christian, but rather Muslim (as in radical) her position takes on an entirely different (and more legitimate?) perspective. And as Whitacre observes, Rand does see things as black and white, and if religion is taken to an extreme (as in radical fundamentalist Islam) her position would hold up.
Whittaker Chambers didn’t like absolutes and preferred relativism to justify the fact he was once a Communist spy.
Just because he flipped shouldn’t make him a darling of the right. Chambers is the flip side of the David Brock coin.
As for Chambers’ particular attack on Ayn Rand, find it interesting that he infers objectivism is similar to Nazi ideology. Loses credibility on that front alone without taking into account the rest.
There’s a simple reason why Chambers didn’t like Rand...blowhard relativist looters don’t produce much except hot air.
If Chambers were alive today, he would be pontificating about the evils of the Tea Party as part of the wine and brie Beltway faux conservative “ruling” class.
In contrast, you will find Rand’s legacy in the Tea Party movement.
What I had been fell from me like dirty rags. The rags that fell from me were not only Communism. What fell was the whole web of the materialist modern mind—the luminous shroud which it has spun about the spirit of man, paralyzing in the name of rationalism the instinct of his soul for God, denying in the name of knowledge the reality of the soul and its birthright in that mystery on which mere knowledge falters and shatters at every step. If I had rejected only Communism, I would have rejected only one political expression of the modern mind, the most logical because the most brutal in enforcing the myth of man’s material perfectibility.
Yikes. Are you on the right forum here? Just kidding.
But I don't agree with you on that. Marxism is the purist evil and Ayn Rand was mostly right.
The main character's silioquy at his trial was the summation of the book, and probably makes a stand alone theme without the rest of the book.
Caveats: This was a book with an array of characters such that not one of the characters had a single redeeming feature.
The hero generally despised the human race. His idea about the proper way to feel and foster 'love' included, no, was in total, forceable rape.
The heroine obviously loved money above all else while she craved love by some definition. In the middle and the end she invited in, encouraged, then 'loved,' make that lusted the man who forceably raped her.
These two were the closest in the book to functional people. Everyone else was so utterly dysfunctional that it was as though Rand was racing herself to the bottom of the barrel. She wanted to see how depraved she could make her characters, hence, humanity.
I had no problem reading the book from start to finish. I would never be tempted to read it a second time.
The majority of the posters here are right, that it is materialism at the heart of Randism that makes it an evil proposition, no matter how much Randites swear at communism.
Can libertarianism be also Christian? Certainly we understand that the socialism of the early Christian communes, and the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount social message, all were about voluntary renunciation of the possessions, and voluntary charity; it is the tragedy of 20c that the line between voluntary charity and top-down egalitarianism was blurred. Surely statism is not preached anywhere in the Gospels (respect for God-fearing authority, cf Romans 13 is). Of course a Christian cannot possibly think that he owns himself -- God does. But leaving that aside, there is nothing un-Christian about loving personal freedom.
But this is where the rub lies. Libertarianism of every kind means primacy of a market over use of uninvited force. So far so good, so long as the market does not become the only force. That is because a market is by definition a machine, and people should not serve a machine, no matter how well built. Here's an example, from real life: a market tells a farmer to sell his land and become a hired worker. But a farmer is free even though poor. A hired worker is not equally free, he is in fact substantially unfree, no matter how big his salary is. So here the machine ate the free man and produced an unfree one. Indeed, it is the destruction of the Metaphysical Village by the Metaphysical City that gave us socialism.
(This thought belongs to the formidable Igor Shafarevitch, whose Socialist Phenomenon should be in every Freeper's browser; the though itself however, was in his interview in Russian and I have a difficulty locating it).
Evil is evil no matter where it comes from.
I doubt that Ayn Rand would have much respect for the typical Tea Party member. Ordinary people were of no value to her.
I’m always for high schoolers reading Rand. After that...
Great stuff on doers and looters, but her foundation - lacks foundation.
Thank you for pointing this out.
"These are proponents of proscriptive taxes. Government ownership, Labor, etc. etc. The mischief here is that the author, dodging into fiction, nevertheless counts on your reading it as political reality."
Exactly Whit! That could never happen.....
My opinion of Rand comes from only a general knowledge of her. From what I understand, Rand seems to oppose Marxism, but her opposition to it can only be superficial.
When the origin of morality is man, its violation and its destruction will have the same origin.
I don’t know what philosophical position Rand took regarding the U.S. Constitution, but it seems that any claim to agree with it would necessarily come from ignorance or dishonesty on her part.
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.