Paradise Lost **potential mini spoiler if you intend to read Atlas Shrugged**

[pjclarke]

Nope, you've lost me.

If he cannot pay for what he needs, then he must depend on voluntary charity. That's certainly a fair enough appraisal of Rand's position.

Rand's payments into Medicaire were almost certainly a lot less than her benefits from it (it had only been around for 8 years or so, she was seriously ill with cancer) so by applying for State aid rather than 'depending on charity' how was she not contradicting her own position?

I said no such thing. What I did imply (I'm sure you're being deliberately obtuse, but if not...) was:

Rand writes a book saying "Person A, B and C - you all suck! Big time!"
A: "Your book sucks."
B: "Your book sucks."
C: "Your book sucks."

Anyone could have predicted what they would have said before they said it.

But assuming that Rand did not name-check Dorothy Parker, Whittaker Chambers and Flannery O'Connor personally in the book, the reasons you gave for her disdain were their communism and Roman Catholicisim, (so much quicker and easier than actually engaging with their arguments, huh?) I was musing on whether this made all theists and communists, and by extension, their work products, EVIL?


I've read enough Rand to dissuade me from wasting any more time by reading further, her 'philosophy' seems to me little more than a shallow justification for selfishness, elitism and personal greed, wrapped up in just enough sophistry to fool the average sixth-former. Nothing here has pursuaded me otherwise. YMMV.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Robin Hood with lasers, whoop de whoop...

Hahah. No lasers (As far as I recall). BUT!

I seized the boats that sailed under the flag of the idea which I am fighting: the idea that need is a sacred idol requiring human sacrifices—that the need of some men is the knife of a guillotine hanging over others—that all of us must live with our work, our hopes, our plans, our efforts at the mercy of the moment when that knife will descend upon us—and that the extent of our ability is the extent of our danger, so that success will bring our heads down on the block, while failure will give us the right to pull the cord.
This is the horror which Robin Hood immortalized as an ideal of righteousness. It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor.
He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don't have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does.
He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, has demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. It is this foulest of creatures—the double-parasite who lives on the sores, of the poor and the blood of the rich—whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal. And this has brought us to a world where the more a man produces, the closer he comes to the loss of all his rights, until, if his ability is great enough, he becomes a rightless creature delivered as prey to any claimant—while in order to be placed above rights, above principles, above morality, placed where anything is permitted to him, even plunder and murder, all a man has to do is to be in need. Do you wonder why the world is collapsing around us?
That is what I am fighting, Mr. Rearden. Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive."

-- Ragnar Daneskjold

[Old Greg]

Hahah. No lasers (As far as I recall). BUT!

-- Ragnar Daneskjold

Do you find that stirring?

[pjclarke]

the need of some men is the knife of a guillotine hanging over others—that all of us must live with our work, our hopes, our plans, our efforts at the mercy of the moment when that knife will descend upon us—and that the extent of our ability is the extent of our danger, so that success will bring our heads down on the block, while failure will give us the right to pull the cord.

Clearly, my reading comprehension is indeed at fault. I've read that sentence three times and I still haven't got the faintest idea what the f**K he's trying to say.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Rand's payments into Medicaire were almost certainly a lot less than her benefits from it

That's the nature of insurance. Secondly, I'm sure she paid a lot more in taxes than just that marked for health care. She was very objectionable to wards the US involvement in WW2, and Vietnam. How much of her money spent on those endeavours alone was she entitled to reclaim?

the reasons you gave for her disdain were their communism and Roman Catholicisim, (so much quicker and easier than actually engaging with their arguments, huh?)

Er... yes. Again - have you actually read any of her work? She would describe both faith and collectivism as evil traits. Catholicism & Communism are the among the most snining examples of both.

I was musing on whether this made all theists and communists, <snip/>, EVIL?

Yes.

and by extension, their work products

How can a product be evil? Evil is an adjective that may only be applied to a moral agent.

her 'philosophy' seems to me little more than a shallow justification for selfishness.

She wrote a whole book titled "the virtue of selfishness". So not that shallow.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Clearly, my reading comprehension is indeed at fault. I've read that sentence three times and I still haven't got the faintest idea what the f**K he's trying to say.

If you'd read the book you'd know that he's referring to the fact that in the US at that time (in the story) individual prosperity was seen as immoral, and that the producers in society were expected to live for the provision of those that needed them. The greater the extent of a man's ability & productivity, the less he owned himself. The 'looters' & the 'moochers' would condemn a man for his success in producing the very wealth that less successful men need him to produce in order to survive & prosper.
The better a man performed the more likely it was that his efforts would be nationalised.

[DodgyAgent]

Clearly, my reading comprehension is indeed at fault. I've read that sentence three times and I still haven't got the faintest idea what the f**K he's trying to say.

More like you don't want to be seen to understand. Even I , a thick recruitment consultant, understand it.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Do you find that stirring?

Er.. no. it's not supposed to be.

[darmstadt]

Maybe everyone should treat the book as what it is, a science fiction fantasy novel or as Ayn Rand pointed out 'a love story.' Alternatively we could all lead our lives based on 'The Story of O'

[OwlHoot]

Never really got into Ayn Rand, because what little I know of her philosophy and outlook seems rather extreme, muddle-headed, and generally disagreeable.

My impression is that her doctrinaire stances, and apparently crazed hostility to this that and the other, was basically a counter-reaction to her personal and detrimental involvement with communism in her youth.