8 Arguments To INSTANTLY DESTROY A Libertarian pic.twitter.com/Bn2rHRz4CA
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 3, 2023
Not bad, but then I listen to Ayn Rand:
Ayn Rand is asked “Who should build the roads?”https://t.co/bGsWZd36yE
— Twan (@EarthChild_Twan) January 4, 2023
Any political philosophy which begins with the premise that we are going to change the way humans have actually behaved throughout recorded history to produce utopia is always impractical at best, an invitation to unending catastrophe at worst. The Founding Fathers began with the premise that men aren’t angels and will not change into angels in this Vale of Tears. What the Libertarians do get right however is that often the demands of the State are not made for the common good, but rather to serve the interests of those in power. The Founding Fathers believed in limited government and we can see how far we have strayed from that ideal.
The short clip of Ann and Mike W. interview lead me to another interview with her.
The topic of love came up.
She opposes Christian love because it can’t be done.
She wasn’t introduced to the lives of the Saints or she just dismissed them as fairy tales. [?]
Sad.
Today’s first reading;
Reading 1 1 Jn 3:11-21
Beloved:
This is the message you have heard from the beginning:
we should love one another,
unlike Cain who belonged to the Evil One
and slaughtered his brother.
Why did he slaughter him?
Because his own works were evil,
and those of his brother righteous.
Do not be amazed, then, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.
We know that we have passed from death to life
because we love our brothers.
Whoever does not love remains in death.
Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer,
and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.
The way we came to know love
was that he laid down his life for us;
so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.
If someone who has worldly means
sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion,
how can the love of God remain in him?
Children, let us love not in word or speech
but in deed and truth.
Now this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth
and reassure our hearts before him
in whatever our hearts condemn,
for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us,
we have confidence in God
Rand was episodically insightful. Not sure about Rand herself, but I’ve run into Rand acolytes online who’ve taken deep draughts of Aristotle. Some of them are quite sophisticated, though few in number. One curio about her and her heirs: they have only a casual interest in topical political questions and are often not fanatical about them.
What was most troublesome about her on a mundane basis was the small society she attempted to form with her acolytes, which blew up in 1968 when she discovered that Nathaniel Branden was having an affair with a a woman not named Ayn Rand. I seem to recall an article (by the late Florence King, IIRC) about how human relations worked in the Rand circle at that time. It was FK’s assessment that these people all had artificial personalities crafted in an attempt to live according to the Rand ethic and when they all stopped speaking to each other, they returned to behaving normally.
She did not have any children (Whittaker Chambers’ surmise was that it was difficult to imagine the author of Atlas Shrugged having any idea of how to interact with a child). She had a husband; she seems to have kept him as a pet as there is little indication over the 50 years she was married to him that he ever earned a wage. (Florence King offered that not having landed one of the supermen she portrayed in her novels, she with her imagination endowed her pleasant and idle husband with such qualities).
Great point, Philip. The Objectivists make the Calvinists seem downright cheerful by comparison, don’t they?
Thank you Art.
Thanks for her background story.
It fits with her views on love. Her husband as a pet would be humorous except that in her case it was true.
Sophisticated beyond measure could, I guess, left her empty in the soul.
Or was it a childhood void of authentic love?
I know that I should do my own research so please don’t feel that I’m expecting you to answer.
You’ve given me Florence King as a place to dig.
Peace.
Art, I do miss Florence King.
“Rand was episodically insightful.”
So of course was Nietzsche, which is why they both should be read, with due caution. As Thersites told a few truths about the Trojan War, these two offer rebukes to the reigning ideas of their own ages: to the Whig liberalism of the 19th century and the progressive spirit of the 20th, respectively.
But (to turn a phrase of Dr. Johnson’s): acutely critiquing the flaws of a bad table does not make one a carpenter.