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'I Think Ayn Rand Has a Counterfeit Form of Christianity'

By on 12.9.12 @ 11:26AM

Here's something for your Sunday: Father Robert Sirico's short sermon on Ayn Rand's misguided "moral passion" and John Galt's "false gospel."

View all comments (79) |

7-08| 12.9.12 @ 12:54PM

Wrong guy to ask. It has taken civilization half a century to wrench the dictatorial control and suppression by servitude from the theologists.
Sorry padre, we ain't giving it back, and the secular statists anin't gonna get it either.

Ryan| 12.10.12 @ 8:39AM

What's a "theologist?"

7-08| 12.10.12 @ 9:47AM

Theology – a religious based belief system.
*ist – one who follows.
Ann Rand- author.
Atlas Shrugged - book.
Ryan - idiot.

Le Cracquere| 12.10.12 @ 11:54AM

I believe you'll find that the word for "a religiously based belief system" is, tautological or not, "religion." "Theology" is more usually defined as the application of reason to matters religious. And the suffix "-ist" is commonly taken to mean a practitioner of the root word, rather than a follower. So I'm not really sure what you could possibly mean by "theologist," other than as an underbred synonym for "theologian."

And I know a lot of theologians who'll be disappointed to learn that they were ever in "dictatorial control" of much of anything, and missed it.

Ryan| 12.10.12 @ 12:40PM

I concur. There's not exactly uniform theology within Christianity, either...

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 2:00PM

Few theologians are themselves consistent---for any length of time, anyway.

There's a reason why God is a mystery.

JD| 12.10.12 @ 4:32PM

There is no less consistency among individual theologians than among individual philosophers or individual scientists. No more hypocrisy, either.

If you compare the statements of one theologian to another, find differences, and declare them to be inconsistencies, then you're just being dishonest. Two people disagreeing doesn't mean either is being inconsistent.

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 8:10AM

You ought to read more theologians, JD.

JD| 12.11.12 @ 4:46PM

To what end? To condemn all who might be labeled "theologian" for the flaws of the worst of them?

Perhaps you should read more philosophers or "scientists"?

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 6:47PM

I read plenty of each; I'm rereading Hobbes' Leviathan at the moment (Nietsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is next up) and just finished Feynman's "Six Easy and Not-So-Easy Pieces". Reading catholically helps me avoid some of the mistakes you've been making here.

The trouble even great theologians like Hans Ur Balthasar have is that what consistency they gain tends to be through oversimplification. How else could it be? The mind of God cannot be contained in the skull of the merely human. Perhaps this was why Christ himself found it necessary to go into the wilderness.

Anthony| 12.9.12 @ 2:38PM

Nice to know there are still Catholic priests that have some vestige of intelligence left. However, despite his articulate analysis,the good Father Sirico pushes his analogy a bit too far.
Ayn Rand saw the welfare state and the demise of America decades ago. Her gospel has proven to be prescient.

Bob K| 12.9.12 @ 4:10PM

Her gospel is prescient? She was just another very wordy, damn near unreadable, self promoting, latecoming critic of the social welfare state in a crowd of dozens! She made no difference and never will.

Rudyard Kipling explained it best in a short poem way back in 1919 in his "Gods of the Copybook Headings."

CJW| 12.10.12 @ 6:06PM

Anthony
Did you know that Father Sirico's brother is Tony Sirico, who played Paulie on the Sopranos.

arcturus6| 12.9.12 @ 8:45PM

I do not pretend to argue with Father Sirico on the religious aspect of Rand's philosophy, but I find her ideas very refreshing and suggest that one of the most basic wrongs of American society today is the fact that we have neutered the greatness of this nation with the "progressive" nonsense of the welfare state. Apparently fewer and fewer are recognizant of fact that marxists have aquired enough power in the national legislature, executive and judicial branches to wield their infectious evil on American society and I believe this is what Ayn Rand was warning us about.

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 10:48AM

She was of course correct and indeed prophetic on that score. She misdiagnosed the cause, which was not in fact altruistic love for one's brothers and sisters but rather the simple corruption, envy, and power hunger which has been the death knell of every free nation throughout history. She was on the right path with her notion of "looters"---they are the barbarians within.

JD| 12.11.12 @ 1:56PM

No, she was more right than wrong on the cause. Many people do very strongly believe that their Leftism makes them more noble than the Right.

Sure, there those who are self-deluded on that score - they tell themselves, and honestly believe, that they are being noble when subconsciously their own personal benefit is a major factor. And there are those who truly are just bad.

But the key to Rand's writing is a breaking of the Leftist idea that intentions equal results. She underscores the point, as often as possible, that simply believing that you have good motives doesn't make Leftism any less evil.

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 6:48PM

Rand didn't stop her criticism with the Left. She was a dogged opponent of the Church.

JD| 12.10.12 @ 12:01AM

Rand hated Christianity as she hated socialism because she associated Christianity with socialism.

She believed the leftists who said "Jesus was a socialist", associated "love your neighbor" with misguided collectivist altruism, and saw "original sin" as an imposed, inevitable never-ending debt to society (and the church-government) just the way the secular Left uses "you didn't build that".

In all of these things, she misunderstands the church, but is correct to condemn the concepts she believes that the church represents.

As for this video's comparison of Galt to Jesus, that's just ridicule from someone who doesn't like Rand. Galt is not an essential to her ideology, nor a "savior". He's just a vehicle for delivering her message.

JP| 12.10.12 @ 8:30AM

But does Rand cherry pick from the 3000 years of Western Philosophy keeping what she liked and discarding those ideas she didn't? Yes, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were themselves athiests. But, their study of Nature in no way led to the kind of rabid hatred of religion. Plato believed "myths" were natural, and it was only an elite who could live beyond the images of the cave (ie religion). This much we know from the Dialogues of Socrates (as written by Plato and others).

Enlightment Thinker themselves were athieists for the most part. And they took their cue from Socrates and used Nature as a templete. And thier discoveries varied, but none of them discovered the radical individualism that Rand and her followers found. Rand herself essientially created the cult of the Self by borrowing from such diverse thinkers as Aristotle and Rousseau. Objectivism like the many other offshoots of Enlightenment was Reason's last hurrah. Theoretically, Rand could never square the circle. Like other post-moderns she had to go "Beyond Good and Evil" and force a sqaure peg into a round hole. For there is nothing in Nature that points to the kind of radical individualsim she believed in. Rousseau wasn't so niave; despite his cult of the Noble Savage he fell back on a social system that still took religion seriously (he was in agreement with Jefferson in the establishment of a Civic Religion).

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 9:26AM

Most of the people you list were not in fact atheists. You might want to read some of them.

JP| 12.10.12 @ 9:58AM

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were athieists in that they didn't believe in the Pagan Gods of Anthens. Rousseau, certainly was an athieist, and Jefferson at best was a Dieist.

C. Vernon Crisler | 12.10.12 @ 11:05AM

Where is your evidence that Rousseau was an atheist?

JP| 12.10.12 @ 12:09PM

Rousseau essientially got himself in trouble with religious authorities where ever he traveled. The Calvanists in Switzerland had him arrested; Fredrich the Great, a Lutheran, kicked him out of Prussia, as well as various parishes in France and the Benelux kicked him out for his writing concerning religion.

Rousseau wasn't stupid. He eventually rejoined Calvanism in order to re-settle in Geneva. But, like Plato and Socrates Rousseau believed in only one God - Nature. And like Plato he didn't have a problem of religion within the context of Nature. As a matter of fact he thought a Humaine Religion or Civic Religion was preferrable to no religion at all. This doesn't make him religious. The late thinker Alan Bloom (who translated both Plato and Rousseau) had similar beliefs. Both Rousseau and Plato (as well as Socrates) were not enemies of religion. But, they weren't necessairily friends either. To all 3 (Plato, Rousseau, and Socrates) Nature trumped Revealation everytime.

C. Vernon Crisler | 12.10.12 @ 2:22PM

Rousseau was a creationist and a believer in the Flood. He considered himself a Christian philosopher:

"It has not even entered into the heads of most of our writers to doubt whether the state of nature ever existed; but it is clear from the Holy Scriptures that the first man, having received his understanding and commandments immediately from God, was not himself in such a state; and that, if we give such credit to the writings of Moses as every Christian philosopher ought to give, we must deny that, even before the deluge, men were ever in the pure state of nature….” (A Dissertation on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind, Introduction to the First Part.)

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 8:11AM

Not fair---quoting the man himself rather than JP's undocumented opinion of him.

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 11:57AM

I don't believe in the pagan gods of Athens. Am I an atheist?

JP| 12.10.12 @ 12:10PM

Read Allegory of the Cave by Plato.

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 1:25PM

I am intimately familiar with it, having read much philosophy beyond this introductory parable. Your definition of atheism is eccentric and I suspect held by no one but yourself.

JP| 12.10.12 @ 6:49PM

Rousseau like Hume was a man of Reason. He studied Nature not from a theological perspective but from a perspective of Reason. Like Kant, Rousseau attempted to keep the Transcendents - but he only did it from a perspective of Reason. For him Nature sufficed. This is not Revelation but Reason. Try reading other critics of Enlightenment ( Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Weber). Additionally read the writings of Leo Strauss and Alan Bloom. My definition is in no way eccentric.

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 6:49PM

JP, you make claim after claim without evidence and don't even acknowledge quotes from the men themselves.

Seriously, have you done anything but take a Philosophy 101 course in college? Because you demonstrate little beyond what Cliff's Notes hastily read might lead one to believe.

JP| 12.10.12 @ 10:02AM

And I've Read Rousseau's Emilie and Social Contract, as well as Plato's Republic and Symposium. I've read portions of Aristotle's Ethics and parts of Politics.

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 10:16AM

You have not read enough. Socrates was accused of impiety; what was his last request and why?

Aristotle himself provided the description of God as "unmoved mover" in the Metaphysics.

Was it not Rousseau who said, "I believe therefore that a will moves the universe and animates nature...This ‘being’ which wills and is powerful, this being active in itself, this being, whatever it may be, which moves the universe and orders all things, I call God"?

You mistake Enlightenment-era skepticism and Classical-era curiosity for outright atheism. Is it perhaps because you are an atheist? Is there anything more common than atheists in their pretension to reason to retroactively recruit dead men of letters in order to argue from authority?

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 6:50PM

And of course no response.

C. Vernon Crisler | 12.10.12 @ 11:10AM

What evidence is there that Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle were atheists? Rand herself was an atheist who based her philosophy on a combination of Aristotle and Nietzsche and early 20th century pro-business literature.

Pecos Pete| 12.10.12 @ 7:22AM

Lots of people in the USA will be doing okay in their own valley, be it so humble. Not so with those who live in urban statist areas. You can argue all you want about Rand's books, her forecast of statist intentions and the results thereof were reasonably accurate.

Ryan| 12.10.12 @ 8:46AM

I think Rand had one thing right Biblically - "asking nobody to live for me" - responsibility for self is evident throughout scripture - but I think she was wrong in her "not living for anyone" - which is the call to those changed by the true Gospel, but NOT by government fiat, which is what the left seems to want to honor...

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 9:28AM

"Not living for anyone" rather cripples a free country. Did Rand actually believe only the insane would sacrifice their lives for their fellow citizens? Was Leonidas---the very epitome of a Randian hero otherwise---a fool to her?

Simon Templar| 12.10.12 @ 11:28AM

Rand basically did not believe that people should sacrifice themselves for the good of the collective, or the state, without consideration of the individual. She was objecting to the 'communistic' concepts that the individual was to subject his self interest and self to the interest of the state or society. This did not include charity, benevolence, patriotism, or an individual deciding to sacrifice himself to defend his family, nation, or community. That is because these actions are consistent with free will and the INDIVIDUAL deciding on these actions, not an external force.
Christianity has three basic commandments that are greater than all...LOVE the SELF, LOVE thy Neighbor, and Love thy God. Both the concepts of modern communism or modern progressive altruism and the concepts of materialism and selfishness are distortions of those commandments. Just another way to think about this...

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 11:58AM

And what if the individual chooses to sacrifice themselves for the collective?

Ryan| 12.10.12 @ 12:42PM

Then, it's a choice - not government force. At least in Atlas Shrugged, Rand does seem to be against any form of self-sacrifice for others. Christianity preaches something similar - that Christ enables us to be charitable to the others.

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 1:26PM

But are they fools?

Rand would claim no doubt there is something selfish in their sacrifice but it's hard to see what that is.

Rand being a narcissist could see nothing but selfish motives all around her.

Simon Templar| 12.10.12 @ 2:08PM

This is because people confuse self interest with selfishness. They are not the same. A human being can not act without acting in their self interest. You eat, you sleep, you clean yourself, you breath, you educate yourself, you do everything in your self interest. You are commanded to love yourself or act in your self interest. The act of salvation, which is not collective, is acting purely in your self interest. People come together to act in their mutual interest every day. Our founders came together to form a more perfect union for what?
Selfishness is acting for yourself with no consideration for others self interest, a higher principle, or your self interest. Selfishness could be said as not acting in your ultimate self interest.
Self interest is acting for oneself with consideration to others or a higher principle.
Rand's characters respected other's self interest and acted in ways that involved a great deal of self sacrifice but that which involved supporting a higher principle that they believed all men should subscribe to and follow that protected the right of every individual to act in his self interest, individuality, and pursuit of expression of his or her talents or self expression.

JD| 12.10.12 @ 2:38PM

"Rand would claim no doubt there is something selfish in their sacrifice but it's hard to see what that is."

I don't find it "hard to see what that is."

I appreciate the depression one feels when the world around him grows increasingly stupid. I feel it too! I often feel as though there is nothing I could do to make myself feel better more than to combat this atmosphere. Being a prophet of conservatism is thus the most selfish thing I could do!

Simon Templar| 12.10.12 @ 1:49PM

Both characters in Atlas Shrug and the Fountainhead sacrificed their careers, lives, and businesses for a higher principle and for the benefit of others freedoms and liberties and took a stand against forces that wanted them to conform and sacrifice themselves. Being charitable is not equated with sacrificing yourself, your individuality, your individualism, or your life. Christ did not expect you to be a slave to others but rather a free man who chooses to help others. Nor did her expect one to not act in ones self interest but rather expected people to stop being selfish. There is a difference.
It is not true that Rand objected any form of self sacrifice.

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 1:56PM

They did not sacrifice for anyone but themselves.

Which is rather the point.

Well, why don't you quote Rand in favor of self-sacrifice?

Simon Templar| 12.10.12 @ 2:18PM

Yes, that is correct, they suffered rejection, oppression, harassment, and poverty and sacrificed their financial success so as to not become a slave to others demands, ideas,theft, force, and needs. If they were purely selfish they would take the bribes, conform, go along to get along, suppress their own individuality, sell out, take the contract, follow and bend to the corruption, and to hell with everybody else, a higher principle, or anything but their prurient interest. No, in reality they acted not only on their behalf but for others as well so that they could enjoy the same freedoms.

JD| 12.10.12 @ 2:28PM

Rand did not emphasize self-sacrifice. She realized, as modern conservatives do, that building for yourself need not come at the expense of others, and may in fact benefit others.

Rand chose not merely to point this out, but more than that, to throw it in Leftists' faces. She was the antidote to the timid Republican candidates of today, who almost apologize for conservatism as they advocate it. Rand loved to call herself "selfish" because she could argue that selfishness was good for people.

She did not explicitly state how selfishness could equate to self-sacrifice, because "self-sacrifice" was the lie that collectivists used to sell their poison. Rand wanted nothing to do with the term. However, one can see from her books how the "selfish" benefited those around them.

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 8:12AM

Self-sacrifice is what keeps you free and safe, JD---the sacrifice of people less selfish than yourself.

JD| 12.11.12 @ 1:12PM

You are not listening to anyone besides yourself.

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 6:51PM

Then why do I keep batting away your silly arguments?

JD| 12.10.12 @ 12:49PM

See my posts below for an answer to that, Teflon93.

JD| 12.10.12 @ 12:41PM

I think you have to look a little deeper than the "Don't live for anyone" bumper sticker statement. Whether Rand meant it in the way I'm about to describe is up for debate, but I think she probably did.

John Galt, in Atlas, spent time trying to inform others and rescue others. He did so nearly at the cost of his life. He didn't need to do any of these things. He could have lived in privacy, working only for himself. He could have participated in the collectivism as a ruler and achieved great power. Yet he did none of those things.

Why? Doesn't seem very selfish.

The answer is simple. He valued his principles, so he found burdens preferable to abandoning principle. That was selfish. He valued certain people, so he found saving them preferable to losing them. Selfishly.

Galt was able to help others without contradicting selfishness. That, to me, is one of Rand's greatest Truths. She took the word "selfish", which collectivists use as an epithet, and turned it on its head. She deliberately used the word in order to mock those who hate it.

JD| 12.10.12 @ 12:48PM

We conservatives understand that the Left is wrong when it says that no one profits except at another's expense. Rand did too - she just shoved it in the Left's faces when she actually EMPHASIZED that the productivity that benefits all could be done selfishly. Given her experiences, I can hardly blame her for being so angry with the evil that is Leftism.

Many philosophers throughout history have advanced the notion that there is no such thing as a selfless act. That all actions are selfish - even giving away all one owns is done when a person values the good feeling he gets from it more than the stuff being given away. Must giving one's life be selfless? People commit suicide selfishly all the time - when it benefits no one else at all. Sometimes they even kill others in their suicides? Why then can't we believe that to give one's life for someone that one values could be selfish?

Christian scholars have similarly argued that sinful man is incapable of selflessness, and that the only way one can be truly selfish is after embracing the Gospel and acting out of gratitude for God's grace. Remember "All our righteous acts are like filthy rags"?

Rand was the epitome of a smart person who saw Biblical Law without any Gospel whatsoever. Understanding this about her causes her positions to make great sense.

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 1:57PM

The notion that man cannot act selflessly is as fringe as it gets, including within the Calvinist circles you allude to. Even then they typically mean man cannot be selfless on his own---he needs God's grace to rise above his own selfishness.

Which of course is not Rand's point at all.

JD| 12.10.12 @ 2:22PM

"Even then they typically mean man cannot be selfless on his own---he needs God's grace to rise above his own selfishness."

That is exactly my point. I stated it in my second-last paragraph. In my last paragraph, I added that Rand lacked Gospel, which directly explains her lack of an exception to complete selfishness.

As I said, her positions make perfect sense once you understand that she doesn't believe in God or Gospel. In fact, they align perfectly with Christian understanding of a world without Gospel.

That I why I believe Rand is very useful. She is useful in debunking collectivism, useful in understanding Biblical law and its outcomes, and useful in preaching conservatism to people who, like Rand, lack Gospel.

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 8:13AM

Her usefulness is not in question, is it?

Ryan| 12.11.12 @ 8:45AM

John Piper's Desiring God is a lot about this - that we are ALL Hedonists, but that God wants us to find our greatest pleasure in Him.

Simon Templar| 12.10.12 @ 2:27PM

JD, very good.
And you are correct in why she used the word, selfishness. I recently watched a documentary on her life and work. She once got into a big, loud argument with a critic and liberal about the word and blurted out and admitted she used the word for shock value and purposefully to make a point and knock her opponents off balance. She admitted it was intended to mock them.
Unfortunately, it had other less advantageous consequences that have led to a great deal of misunderstanding.

JD| 12.10.12 @ 2:35PM

I don't dwell on the perceived downsides of using the word "selfishness". The Left, in its great dishonesty, has made many good ideas into pariahs. They're always rewriting the dictionary. If we concede that "selfishness" is bad and adopt "industriousness", then next they'll turn "industriousness" into an epithet.

The Left has too many conservatives apologizing for their beliefs instead of advocating them proudly. I support Rand's boldness as a stark alternative to this.

Simon Templar| 12.10.12 @ 3:07PM

I did not say you dwelled on anything nor do I think you are dwelling on the downsides. I was only attempting to support your claim on how she was using the word and her boldness to use it in the context she did. Yes, you are absolutely correct about the left's manipulation of words, the dictionary, and all the rest. Yes, we need to stop apologizing for everything and bowing down to their PC, historical revisionism, and their narratives. I have been saying this for decades.

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 9:24AM

There wasn't any love in Rand. The Soviets stole what love she had from her; her acolytes in response pretend love doesn't exist.

She always went around pursuing these hero archetypes she'd deified within her own mind and was inevitably disappointed in their unreality. It destroyed her effectiveness. At this very moment when the statists' war against liberty has reached its nadir, the most fervent of Rand's followers cannot set aside their hatred of God to fight Mammon. You see it in the comments here, where otherwise-reasonable people wax paranoid over "theocracy" while the State crushes religion in complete violation of the 1st Amendment. They do not see. They cannot, blinded by hatred as they are.

That hatred is Rand's legacy. It forever limits her appeal to teenagers and perpetual teenagers, the only minds for whom hatred is a superior motivator to love.

JD| 12.10.12 @ 12:59PM

"It forever limits her appeal to teenagers and perpetual teenagers, the only minds for whom hatred is a superior motivator to love."

Then she shall appeal also to the Party of Hate, otherwise known as the political Left.

Which means she has value.

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 1:27PM

Oh, I don't doubt she has value. She opposed the chains of the State---as should we all.

The trouble is many drawn to her banner see these chains everywhere and are thus made blind to the shackles around their ankles.

JD| 12.10.12 @ 2:32PM

I don't know what you mean by that, unless you're referring to Randian people's expending energy fighting the church instead of the state.

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 8:16AM

That is precisely what I mean.

It is not the Church enslaving men, nor will men be free without the Church helping to loose the State's shackles.

Libertarians seem to believe that the individual can resist the State alone. The fact is the only successful competitor to the power of the State in human history has been the Church.

It's not hard to see why---individuals are greatly outnumbered by the State.

Simon Templar| 12.10.12 @ 11:12AM

Here we go again. Another article about Ayn Rand, another attack, another defense, another dismissal.
I wish we could spend as much or more time and focus ripping apart and microscopically analyzing hordes of liberal and progressive writers and mouthpieces than we do with tearing down those who are our political allies. Maybe a little focus on how we can save this Republic and wrestle back the GOP party from those progressives.
I do not live to defend Ayn Rand or tear her down either.
What I do know is that there are plenty of people who think they know her and her political and social philosophy but do not.
I know many like to use her and her books to defend their own hypocrisies and agendas including the priest in the video.
I know there are plenty who would like to dismiss and suppress the concepts of individualism, liberty, and small government that she espoused along with some of her other more controversial beliefs and observations.
We seem to love these fruitless debates and discussions while Rome burns and many of her predictions are indeed coming true before our eyes right now.
So, now Rand has a counterfeit form of Christianity. I think Christianity, particularly the catholic church, has a form of counterfeit Christianity. Does anyone but me see the irony in this?

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 11:59AM

Are the Objectivists allies? Are libertarians?

They spend all of their time attacking traditional conservatives, apparently for the sin of greatly outnumbering them.

What energy do they have left to attack the Democrats or the RINOs?

Simon Templar| 12.10.12 @ 2:44PM

I understand and agree with your concerns, Tef.
Please do not get me wrong, I am not an Objectivist nor do I believe that modern Libertarians make good allies at this point. Rand is not someone who I hold up as a messiah or an example of someone that did not have some flaws both in her personal life and in her work. Her understanding of our christian-judeo heritage and how it played into the formation of the USA itself, our constitution, and our history in positive ways was not sound but reactionary. I am just one of those people who do not find it productive to throw the baby out with the bath water nor lose focus on what is really important.
I also do not like all this navel gazing and these articles that are merely distractions and opportunities for someone to push one agenda or another by misquoting people and unnecessarily demonizing them..
She had some very interesting predictions, warnings, and observations that have great value. Was she perfect, did she makes mistakes, did she sometimes even misrepresent her own ideas and say things which only led to more confusion? Yeah. Was she a bit of a narcissist, perhaps. But what is most important, the overall message or the messenger? The ideas or the person?

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 8:18AM

Oh, I think it's pretty clear Rand had Narcissistic Personality Disorder; one need only look at her pursuit of idealized self and her horrendous treatment of her husband (announcing to his face she intended to have an affair with her future lover in the room, etc). She turned it into a philosophy.

Yes, she was right about the State. But then again every conservative thinker has been.

Simon Templar| 12.11.12 @ 12:18PM

Not going to argue those points as I am well aware of them and once again have attempted to make my points and understand where you are coming from and what you are attempting to communicate.
The thing is, however, that not every conservative has written a series of successful books made into movies, nor have they sold tens of millions of copies over 50 years and have people like ourselves arguing about her impact, her ideas, and her human flaws.

I am going to be blunt, because I think it necessary and it should be said once and for all. Perhaps someone out there will get it.

We, conservatives must stop looking for a conservative messiah that is without sin, stop tearing to shreds people who are carrying torches for our shared ideas, stop helping liberals tear down those spokespeople, start defending our people because they defend their own with all their flaws and worse, and finally smartly utilize these people to advance our message, ideas, and cause. As long as we keep doing these circular firing squads, we will definitively lose and continue to lose. As I mentioned before, modern Libertarians do this on a daily basis, they tear down their natural allies and indirectly support the enemy. Of course, they do so at their ultimate peril.

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 6:55PM

We can do better than a dead atheist narcissist, can't we?

Libertarians' trouble is they will accept all manner of ideological impurity so long as it comes from the Left. It is what makes them weak allies at best and keeps their numbers tiny when they should be huge. Hating God doesn't much help---when precisely did libertarianism merge with atheism?

TeaPartyNow| 12.10.12 @ 1:35PM

The basis of jesus is that the human heart needs a tyrant before it can be whole. It needs to be ruled, as a slave is ruled because it is a dirty sinner. Jesus is ideologically opposed to freedom itself. Self worth, self reliance, equality, these things are opposed by jesus & his followers.

The right has lost more political power by opposing the religious freedom to believers other than the bible than any other issue. The right constantly disallows the freedom of religion for anyone other than their very narrow judea-chistian insanity. This is just a part of the right wings hate for the American Peoples' freedom of religion.

Morality, & natures god are imperative to self government. But when you are wholly intolerant of others like the right wing, you kill far more than you save. It's never freedom with the right. Always jesus. The rest of us hate you back too. & the right ends up losing power systemically.

Teflon93 | 12.10.12 @ 1:59PM

Ahem, freedom is God-given, as is free will, thereby rather disproving the notion that God is a tyrant. He clearly could have created mindless slaves had He so willed it---or nothing at all, for that matter.

JD| 12.10.12 @ 2:31PM

To institute atheism as a state religion is the opposite of religious freedom.

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 8:20AM

This is rather the sticking point with libertarians these days. They so hate religion that they root for the State to crush religious freedom.

But then modern-day libertarians consist of at least 50% those who are really liberals who want to smoke marijuana without getting busted, so perhaps it is this half to blame.

Simon Templar| 12.10.12 @ 2:58PM

Apparently you never heard the phrase, 'a slave to sin' or 'I have come to free the captives....'
Your ignorance and hatred of Christianity is rather apparent. Once in a while, I read a comment like yours and I am astounded at the level of ignorance, convoluted thinking, falsehoods, and just plain stupidity that it contains. Of course, we live in an age where idiots like yourself get a free soap box on thousands of internet web sites and can spew just about anything they like without accountability, intellectual honesty, or any sense that they have read anything about which they speak about.
By the way, you ARE NOT representative of the TEA Party, you are just an useful idiot troll out here to spew a bunch of confusion, nonsense, and chaos.

ChesterBelloc| 12.10.12 @ 5:16PM

You are nearly as big a hater as Rand. You still have a ways to go yet. I'm amazed that you can drag your carcass off the floor and release the edge of rug from your jaws...

wombat1| 12.11.12 @ 7:57AM

Half the Catholic clergy have been peddling their own " counterfeit form of Christianity" ever since Vatican II. Anybody remember 'liberation theology'? The Church, too , is deeply infected with the bug of progressivism.

Look at the last election : Obama made it clear that if your faith got in the way of his Grand Vision, too bad. But the Cardinal still invited him to the Al Smith dinner, didn't he?

And we're not even starting to discuss the little rogue adventures like money laundering through the Vatican bank or using the Church's reputation and credit to cover for pedo-priests.

But hey, what's the loss of a few sheep so long as the sheperd keeps his job and gets a seat at the Kennedy Center?

Teflon93 | 12.11.12 @ 8:22AM

Not so much lately. The liberal priests and bishops are dying off and the new orthodoxy has arisen; this is why the bishops are fighting Obamacare instead of embracing it.

It is also why Latin has returned to the Mass and the clowns and guitars are being sent packing.

More Blog Posts by Wlady Pleszczynski

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