[quote]Headhunter wrote:
[quote]Severiano wrote:
[quote]jjackkrash wrote:
Atlas Shrugged is an important book and so is The Fountainhead. I don’t see how anyone could think otherwise, even if they ultimately disagreed with the message or didn’t go all-in for Ayn Rand’s brand of objectivism. [/quote]
Eh, I know Rand is the mother of ‘Objectivism’ the thing is there is a morality already tied to it which is categorized as ethical egoism. It’s a misleading title for a Philosophical outlook imo. If you are trying to be objective, it would seem you want to remove ethical egoism from your rule set.
While Ayn Rand’s childhood, and overall life was super rough because the government took so much from her successful father which did a number on her life, there are also examples of unabashed Capitalism that have led to the exact same conditions, only the super wealthy ethical egoists end up with control of everything, and it ended up being that necessarily children of poor ended up having to work (think industrial revolution), which is every bit as bad as Ayn Rands upbringing. In both cases, I think Ethical Egoism was the morality pushing people into poverty whether it’s industrialization or collectivization. When you stop giving a crap about giving people opportunity to live a decent life, shit sucks for everyone except those at the top.
The important lesson I learned from Ayn Rand is that if you lean too far right, or too far left, you take away opportunity and pigeonhole people’s opportunity by buying into the bullshit either way.
Just so happens on these boards, the tendency is neocon, you guys tend to idolize people like Reagan and Rand for their great ideas, but you all conveniently forget the terrible pitfalls of their philosophies, if not the actual history of some of the things they have done.
I think I have a great understanding of where Ayn Rand came from. Her problem is she couldn’t imagine herself in other peoples shoes, only her own. [/quote]
All Ms. Rand actually does is take western ideals of individual liberty to their logical conclusions. Her point is that you are free or you are not. You can’t be free sometimes and a slave at other times.
Look at how Obama shits all over the Constitution. He has used executive orders to crap all over it. Now the lowlife wants to do the same with guns. He hates freedom of the individual.
Free or slave…pick one.
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Someone is always exploited, we live pretty darn well due to capitalist ideas. But other people live pretty darn bad because of how deeply greedy people become. Do you have a cell phone? Do you know some of the materials used for your cell phone were procured from the Congo? Do you know the history between the U.S. and the Congo? Some poor kid laborer, in a mine or a camp is Ayn Rand too. That kid is going to look at the U.S. and capitalism as something that promotes slavery and he will have a legit point. This is why the promotion of ethical egoism is self defeating… There doesn’t seem to be a limit to a single man’s greed, perhaps we could look at Stalin as Ayn Rand’s pinnacle of individual freedom, and power: Stalin, he was free. I took it there and I know I went too far, but it’s to just point out how far one could take it… Stalin was free from government persecution, regulation and goals for his economy, and his individual interest took precedence over everything. He fits the mold… Deal with it…
I hate the idea of banning weapons as well because I know it’s not going after the target group of people. It’s a stupid solution. But boy do individual rights get brought up when it’s convenient…
