RoR: Forum

Mike,

It seems to me that you deny the possibility of an honest disagreement here.

No, I would have used more harsh language if that were the case. Just because there were no honest disagreements with Objectivism before 1979, does not mean that there were none that came after that. I didn't say that critics are dishonest, only almost all of them. In the 1980s, for example, there was an honest critique of Objectivism given by Eric Mack in the book: The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand.

Ed

Post 21

Sunday, August 19, 2012 - 7:17am

Steve:

"... but the hypocrisy involved in the reporting and the commentating are rather obvious."

Well, it is to anyone who has actually read and understood Rand. But it is obvious that the purpose for the misrepresentation is 'stop-loss.' It may not be obvious at all to those who haven't read Rand and who will be waved off by the biased and broken Cliff Notes version of Rand.

Religious zealots like O'Donnel react in horror and with obvious venom because for them her writings, even 30 years after her death, are an existential threat to their agenda. What is most remarkable about that conflict is that she is not alive to defend their slander of her position and yet she more than manages to hold them off...even while thirty years dead.

That has got to drive them insane.

Meanwhile, they are all lathered up over folks reading Rand and under the radar comes the tsunami of The Hunger Games-- their best strategy against which was to completely ignore the significance of or snicker at when it is suggested that it might have a less than subtle theme of anti-totalitarian, anti-concentrated federal power of the connected few with access to federal guns over the many paying for them...

Post 22

Sunday, August 19, 2012 - 9:14am

Fred,

The most venomous attacks against Rand have been from the religious right, and here is O'Donnell attacking from left.... but on religious grounds. And, I remember the time I spent trying to edit Rand's article on Wikipedia, and how it was a group of editors with a strong religious background who were the most persistent in trying to eradicate her from the site.
------------

I hope that Paul Ryan has the integrity not to throw Rand under the bus. He should defend her views on Capitalism and her staunch opposition to collective forms of government, and just say that he is a Catholic and does not agree with Rand's positions on religion and God. After that, he should just deflect all other questions where they try to make him a radical by asking specifics about Rand's views.
------------

I think the politicians need to do a better job at firing back at reporters who expose their own bias - to start asking them pointed questions. I'm hoping that Newt Gingrich's examples will start to take hold.
------------

The good news is that times have changed - Rand's name is coming up in a presidential election!

Post 23

Sunday, August 19, 2012 - 9:59am

Steve,

The good news is that times have changed - Rand's name is coming up in a presidential election!

Well ... it's about time!

:-)

Seriously though, what a panoramic view of the matter! Good insight (and foresight and hindsight) on your part. I was talking to my dad the other day. My dad doesn't follow politics. He didn't know that a certain congressman from his state has entered the political race for executive branch administration. He didn't even recognize the name when I told it to him. But, even in this illustrated state of virtual political ignorance, my dad had the gumption to opine:

I think the libertarian candidate is going to win.

I am not making this up! How long have you been waiting for political insiders to include libertarianism in the public dialogue of public office? Yet, here and now, we have this guy who admits of not paying attention to politics-- this political "outsider" -- and somehow he comes up with a guess about the election, a guess which includes libertarianism??

Steve, as you related in another thread: Times, they are a changin'!

:-)

Ed

Post 24

Monday, August 20, 2012 - 3:45pm

The hits just keep on coming.

Post 25

Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - 9:38am

Hmmmm.

Rand's name keeps coming up now in the context of a national election. She's been dead 30 years. Much of what she wrote is more than 50 years old...

The Left accepts, as an absolute, that Rand is an Albotross around the neck of anyone who claims to admire her work, at least in their circles. They bring her up as a de facto accusation. They are convinced that they have convinced the Great Middle that Rand is poison incarnate.

They are attempting to de facto smear Ryan with the accusation of 'Randian' or even 'once Randian,' makes little difference.

Their calculus is as follows: 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'Fountanhead' are kind of thick. 'We the Living' kind of fringe, and 'Anthem' although short and to the point isn't going to be easily found if they don't point it out and they are not about to. Her non-fiction collection of essays are easy to demagogue and misrepresent because of their controversial titles; not just Virtue of Selfishness, but Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, because they accept as an absolute that Capitalism is Evil incarnate.

The sum of all that is, they have calculated that even though they are giving her free press and raising curiosity, they can head off most of those who have never read her with their mangled Cliff Notes version/re-interpretation of her words and keep them from actually making the effort to read her on their own.

Their calculus is they will win more then they lose in that battle, that more who don't know Rand will settle for what they are fed by the Left than will actually make the effort to read her.

Their abject fear and hatred of Rand is telling; she nailed their Jell-o to the wall, to the point they can only snarl and hiss whenever she is around, like vampires at a cross.

...and she's been dead for 30 years!

Meanwhile....maybe the kids won't notice The Hunger Games?

The Left has a lot of snickering and snarling to do, if they are going to successfully cling to the Table Top of History. So much of what drives the Left is pure existential terror, and Rand is the witch who haunts most of their terror filled nightmares, because she nailed them cold.

regards,
Fred

Post 26

Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - 11:27am

That is not the message I get from most media coverage of the Ryan-Rand connection. The usual line is that he is not really an Objectivist, which is true. It is tacitly respectful of Rand, saying that Ryan has betrayed or misunderstood her ideas. You could say that this is insincere, since these people never had a good word for her until so having became a way to attack Ryan politically, but for the most part it's not an attack on Rand.

(Why this preoccupation with Hunger Games? A few posters to Objectivist forums got a libertarian message from it, but that's as far as it went. At least as many took the movie as an attack on the wealthy, and most took it simply as entertainment. In any event, looking back some months later I see no sign of mass political conversion.)

Post 27

Thursday, August 30, 2012 - 1:00pm

"We had help from Medicare..."

We had help from Medicare, and it was there, just like it's there for my Mom today. Medicare is a promise, and we will honor it. A Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare, for my Mom's generation, for my generation, and for my kids and yours.

Mitt and I also go to different churches. But in any church, the best kind of preaching is done by example. And I've been watching that example. The man who will accept your nomination tomorrow is prayerful and faithful and honorable. Not only a defender of marriage, he offers an example of marriage at its best.

NPR transcript of Paul Ryan's Convention Speech of August 29, 2012

Post 28

Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - 3:47pm