But I shall always, as long as I retain political/philosophical awareness, congratulate Ayn Rand for this one observation, one that we shall all do well do repeat daily, lest we allow ourselves to be seduced by the Siren’s song: The world is perishing from an “excess” (or “orgy”) of self-sacrifice.

I am a slightly Right Hegelian; I am convinced that Objective Spirit as it manifests in Sittlichkeit is real and rational; but Hegel would never have denied or denegrated the reality of the rights of subjectivity. These “bourgeois” rights (if you will) are those that Ayn Rand uncompromisingly defends; and while today much philosophy has been developed in defense of the “Third Way,” any state that does not acknowledge the rights Rand declaimed must cower as a useful idiot servile to tyranny.

This may be descriptively true, but it isn’t a normative justification. When government goes after conduct purely on the basis of morality– especially phony morality based on prejudice and justified by reference to an invisible man in the sky– government is acting without any real legitimacy.

What that the Libertarian does seeks to use the government’s power to stop people from doing things based on their supposed immorality?

You just want to call anyone who criticizes your religious beliefs as a bigot.

I also note that the dif­fer­ences between your argu­ments against reli­gion and those used by Com­mu­nists to jus­tify reli­gious per­se­cu­tion are cosmetic.

This is truly stupid. You are essentially arguing that because communists critized religion and also oppressed religious people, anyone who criticizes religion seeks to oppress religious people.

The First Amendment fully protects your right to your religious beliefs, as well it should. If anyone ever tries to punish you or jail you for your religious belief, I will defend your right to practice it. Indeed, I sometimes come to the defense of homophobes who are targeted for politically incorrect beliefs about gays and lesbians, even though I think that homophobia is an awful form of bigotry and prejudice.

The First Amendment does not, however, protect your religion from being exposed as the fraud and delusion that it is.

Whining “bigot” every time someone criticizes a belief, as I said, is basically proof that the belief is false and that you know it. Because nobody worries that much about criticism if their beliefs are on solid ground. You think evolutionary biologists call creationists bigots? If your beliefs are that fragile, you basically know that they are wishful thinking but don’t have the guts to admit it.

Heinlein was influenced by Rand. I doubt if he got his libertarianism from her, but he was certainly encouraged by her appeal and success to put more explicit moralizing and theorizing into his own works after he read Atlas Shrugged.

There has never been and never will be a government that did not enforce a moral perspective. Libertarianism understood as value-free government and market mechanics understood as value-free economics fit together hand-in-glove in their uselessness. Morality is necessary and unavoidable in every act.

The point is that an insti­tu­tion that tries to use the government’s power to enforce it’s moral beliefs is anti-libertarian.

That makes the Libertarian Party anti-libertarian.

Now go along, pick up a dic­tio­nary, and look up “big­otry”. See if that sen­tence I just typed falls within the definition.

Obviously. Since you are not only applying a double standard to condemn religion on grounds that apply just as well to the Libertarian Party, you show no signs of being able to notice the fact.

I also note that the differences between your arguments against religion and those used by Communists to justify religious persecution are cosmetic.

“It’s enter­tain­ing to watch the true Objec­tivist, one who approaches Rand’s work in accor­dance with her claim that it is an inte­grated philo­soph­i­cal sys­tem, try to stretch Rand’s def­i­n­i­tion of art (“Art is a selec­tive re-creation of real­ity accord­ing to an artist’s meta­phys­i­cal value-judgments”) to cover the music played by a sym­phony orchestra.”

it is quite simple, Bob Dylan or Bach one is a nihilist at best the other wrote beautiful music. Granted most was for the Church but the arrangements and the procession of the music shows great intellectual capacity.

Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone hardly measures up to Minuet in G. Each piece comes from the very nature of the artist. One rolls in the gutter the other soars.

Rand was certainly a passionate advocate for her ideas and she did not suffer fools easily. But the claim that she was intolerant or dogmatic and that she did not engage opposing viewpoints or give credit to others’ ideas is frankly idiotic and quite easy to dispell if one is actually interested in consulting evidence, rather than second-hand claims. Rand kept almost everything she wrote during her life, most of which has now been published. Those who are interested in whether Ilya’s view is accurate can consult The Letters of Ayn Rand, edited by Michael Berliner. The book was published in 1995. Perhaps Ilya was no longer in highschool at the time and did not have a chance to reconsider his views in light of this volume. But even a quick skim of the book reveals his view to be wildly innaccurate.

Was Rand “intolerant” and dismissive of opposing views? Well, read the 60 pages of letters to philosopher John Hospers in which she engages his views on virtually every aspect of her philosophy. Or read the letter she wrote to W.T. Stace, Princeton philosophy professor and author (p. 603).

Did Rand “hate” and dismiss conservatives? Read the 7 page letter she wrote to Barry Goldwater (p. 565) after reading The Conscience of a Conservative, wherein she attempts to convince him to adopt a more consistent approach to ideas in general and capitalism in particular. At one point, she criticizes National Review, as she puts it, “not because it is a religious magazine, but because it pretends that it is not. There are religious magazines which one can respect, even while disagreeing with their views.” (p. 571) Are these the words of a dogmatist?

Did she hate and dismiss liberals? Take a look at the letter she wrote to liberal writer Martin Larson about an article he wrote about her ethics, in which she states up front “Whether we agree philosophically or not, I thank you for your consideration and your courtesy.” She then spends 7 pages explaining her philosophical disagreements with him on a wide range of political and moral issues. At one point, she responds to Larson’s view that free markets cause depressions by referring him to books by Carl Snyder, Henry Hazlitt, Hans Sennholz, and “the works by the great economist Ludwig von Mises.” (p. 582). Is this what people mean when they accuse Rand of being intolerant and dismissive of the intellectual contributions of others?

For another example of Rand’s alleged intolerance and dogmatism, read the letter she wrote a Catholic priest that begins, “Thank you for your letter. No, I have no desire to ‘tear it up in disgust’ nor to ‘have a good laugh at an enemy.’ I found it profoundly interesting and I sincerely appreciate it.” She then spends nearly three pages very respectfully discussing his views on religion.

I obviously can’t give more than a sense of what Ayn Rand’s letters convey about her as a person or a thinker, to say nothing of the many other works of hers that have been published. Nor can I or anyone else possibly rebut the claim that she was “intolerant” or “dogmatic.” The book is over 600 pages long and contains hundreds of letters to critics, fans, friends, and family that span Ayn Rand’s entire career. Go read it and determine for yourself whether Ilya’s or Jennifer Burns’s assessments of Rand are accurate.

We really have a serious problem with conservative Christians (many of whose predecessors were actually bigoted against blacks and Jews and many of whom are still bigoted against gays and lesbians) thinking anyone who criticizes their fragile faith is a bigot.

Seriously guys, this is an issue where you really need to remove the log from your own eye before you worry about the motes in liberals’ eyes.

But to speak of “broad free­doms” and demand that cer­tain cit­i­zens can not par­ticip­i­ate in the legis­tisla­tive process with­out con­form­ing to your stan­dards of what their rea­sons should be is a big­oted double-standard.

Seriously, you really should refrain from using words that you don’t know the meaning of.

The point is that an institution that tries to use the government’s power to enforce it’s moral beliefs is anti-libertarian. Now go along, pick up a dictionary, and look up “bigotry”. See if that sentence I just typed falls within the definition.

Really, if you guys’ faith were at all persuasive, you wouldn’t whine “bigot! bigot!” every time someone criticized it.

You have missed the point.

You have missed the point.

If all a reli­gion con­sti­tutes is a vol­un­tary asso­ci­a­tion of indi­vid­u­als, you would have a point.

And so I do.

But:

1. Many mem­bers of a reli­gion are forced to be in the group, either by their par­ents or com­mu­nity pres­sure.

That is not “force” in any sense that could be meant in “a soci­ety where peo­ple have broad free­doms, per­haps bounded by the harm prin­ci­ple.” The parents’ and community’s actions are fully permissable under that rule, and it is a bigoted double-standard to argue against such broad freedoms in the name of broad freedoms.

2. Many reli­gions ARE entan­gled with the state / offi­cially estab­lished.

Moot point.

3. Many reli­gions push for the state to enact leg­is­la­tion pro­hibit­ing things that they believe God prohibited.

And you are perfectly free to push the state to enact legislation prohibiting things that fall afoul of your standards. Religion would appear to one of them.

But to speak of “broad freedoms” and demand that certain citizens can not participiate in the legistislative process without conforming to your standards of what their reasons should be is a bigoted double-standard.

Those things make reli­gions much dif­fer­ent from purely vol­un­tary associations.

Bosh. Especially since many associations, not just religions, would fall afoul of them. If you want to fight for broad freedoms, don’t try to tell us that you want to micromanage what associations we belong to because you don’t consider them purely voluntary.

Twirlip, I don’t care how many times religious believers say it, CRITICISM OF RELIGION IS NOT BIGOTED. It isn’t bigoted to say that the leaders of Christianity put Galileo under house arrest. They did! It isn’t bigoted to say that the ideas of the enlightenment destroyed the theoretical underpinnings of Christianity. It did!

Every time a religious believer calls a critic a bigot, they are just admitting that their faith is false. Because no true faith would be so fragile that any criticism would offend the believer.

Seriously, the idea that the scientific, cultural, and philosophical advances of the last 500 years have been very unkind to the Christian religion didn’t originate with me, and it wasn’t the creation of people who hated Christians. It is the natural conclusion if one isn’t into wishful thinking.

Slav­ery, long endorsed by Chris­t­ian lead­ers, was con­demned.

I considered challenging you on this and making you eat it, but what would be the point? You are what you are, and are happy to be it. Feel free to wallow in your ignorance if that’s what turns you on. I’m an openminded sort.

Twirlip:

You have an agenda.

Esper, my “agenda” is to try to hammer a few simple facts into your remarkably thick and uninformed skull.

For a guy warbling on about enlightenment, you do a remakably good impression of a willfully ignorant bigot.

It’s sort of like the peo­ple who want to blame slav­ery on lib­er­al­ism, or the peo­ple who want to blame the Civil War on the North, or the peo­ple who want to blame the Great Depres­sion on the Fed­eral Reserve.

Now, why do I suspect that your knowledge of all these topics is of a piece with your grasp of European history, based on a few half-digested scraps of information you picked up in a magazine article or the internet?

You have an agenda. It’s sort of like the people who want to blame slavery on liberalism, or the people who want to blame the Civil War on the North, or the people who want to blame the Great Depression on the Federal Reserve. You want to credit Christianity with something it doesn’t deserve credit for.

Before the Reformation, the Church basically equalled Christianity in the West. After the Reformation, it still equalled most of it. So when the Church put Galileo under house arrest, I don’t think it’s much of a response to say “but he was a Catholic!”. Descartes self-censored because of what he saw happen to Galileo.

More important, the actual ideas propagated in the enlightenment were the death-knell for traditional Christianity. Free exercise of religion meant established churches were either disestablished or had less power. Slavery, long endorsed by Christian leaders, was condemned. Indigenous persons who did not want to convert to Christianity at the barrel of the conqueror’s gun had human rights. Priests and other privileged classes no longer had rights over commoners. Human rights were discoverable by man and could be generated through human reason, and didn’t have to come from God or religious text or authority. (Parallel to this, science made the key discoveries in establishing that we were not special, did not have any particular importance in the universe, and were not a creation separate and apart from other life forms.)

So if you want to go ahead and call a movement that largely discredited the Christian religion as well as its most powerful authorities a “Christian” movement, that’s your prerogative, I guess. But the enlightenment was, in fact, profoundly secular, even if some of its key players were nominally Christians.

con­cep­tions of human rights were sec­u­lar ideas very much opposed by Chris­t­ian author­i­ties, whether it was Locke, Kant, Spin­oza, Hume, DesCartes, etc. Many of these philoso­phers were per­se­cuted by the Church

If by “many” you mean “none”, sure. Though I understand that Spin­oza did receive some push-back from within the Jewish community in Holland.

Many of these philoso­phers were per­se­cuted by the Church, as were many more explic­itly Chris­t­ian expos­i­tors of enlight­en­ment ideas (such as Mar­tin Luther).

There’s your problem, or one of them. You think that “the Church” and “Christianity” are the same thing. (We’ll omit to discuss for now your convicton that “religion” means “the Christian Church”. How parochial of you).

Galileo was a devout Catholic by the way, and Coper­ni­cus was a priest! Your “enlightenment” was driven in large measure by the same religious people you dislike. All the great universities of Western Europe were founded by Christians, in some cases by the Church itself. The Sorbonne, for example, was founded by a prient named Robert de Sorbon in 1257.

There’s a rea­son the time when Chris­t­ian cler­ics ruled the West is referred to as the “Dark Ages”.

Your knowledge of European history seems to have been gleaned from a comic book. The “Dark Ages” are not defined as “the time when Christian clerics ruled Europe”.

I don’t know what you mean by “explicitly Christian”. The ideas expressed by enlightenment philosophers who influenced Western (and we are talking about the West here, not strictly the US) conceptions of human rights were secular ideas very much opposed by Christian authorities, whether it was Locke, Kant, Spinoza, Hume, DesCartes, etc. Many of these philosophers were persecuted by the Church, as were many more explicitly Christian expositors of enlightenment ideas (such as Martin Luther). And, of course, in the backdrop of the enlightenment was a great expansion of human knowledge that religious authorities fought tooth and nail, i.e., Galileo, Copernicus, etc.

There’s a reason the time when Christian clerics ruled the West is referred to as the “Dark Ages”. And it isn’t because the enlightenment spread Christian ideas.

Enlight­en­ment phi­los­o­phy was in no sense Chris­t­ian, and indeed, many Enlight­en­ment philoso­phers were per­se­cuted by the Church.

Did you not take in the words staring out at you?

The Scot­tish Enlight­en­ment was an explic­itly Chris­t­ian move­ment, and it had a lot more impact on the US than did any­thing going on in France.

Maybe bolding it will help.

Enlightenment philosophy was in no sense Christian, and indeed, many Enlightenment philosophers were persecuted by the Church.

You have missed the point. If all a religion constitutes is a voluntary association of individuals, you would have a point.

But:

1. Many members of a religion are forced to be in the group, either by their parents or community pressure.
2. Many religions ARE entangled with the state / officially established.
3. Many religions push for the state to enact legislation prohibiting things that they believe God prohibited.

Those things make religions much different from purely voluntary associations.

This is a really weird discussion because the real catalyst of actual equal rights in Western societies was the Enlightenment

Meh. The Scottish Enlightenment was an explicitly Christian movement, and it had a lot more impact on the US than did anything going on in France.

Individual judgment? Sure. Collective judgment? No way.

There is no libertarian way to prevent people from agreeing with each and ordering their actions similarly and acting together.

And as I pointed out above, religion is authoritarian, not libertarian, even when it isn’t in the form of a state-established church.

If you use a definition of “authoritarian” so absurdly broad that your statements about religion are also “authoritarian”. If religions contain prohibitions against “sexual freedom, collection of interest, profit maximization, borrowing and lending, greed, avarice, and keeping and flaunting one’s wealth, etc.” and are so authoritarian, why, your prohibitions on such prohibitions are likewise authoritarian. You don’t need them enforced by the state.

As for claiming that they are individual, not collective — if “you are pursuing a society where people have broad freedoms”, how are you doing it all by your lonesome? Because if people agree with you and act with you, it is collective.

M. Simon: Koblog says:In an atheistic evolutionary existence inadvertently the result of an explosion, who are you to tell me “thou shalt not initiate force against another”?Self interest tells you that. Because you do not wish force initiated on you. Or if you are of a religious bent: The Golden Rule. Or another: reciprocity works. Or if you are a Randian: self interest.(didn’t I already mention that – yes, I did) i.e. you will be better off in a place where anticipatory reciprocity is practiced than where it is not. Or you might frame it: civilization is based on trust. So you act civilized anticipating others will see the advantage. And if they don’t you may (yourself or through others) apply sanctions.It amazes me that people can ignore their every day behavior or fail to see the obvious. Knowing this I might be tempted to the buccaneering life if the results were not so obviously to my disadvantage. i.e. to what principle do I appeal to when the bigger buccaneer arrives? Reciprocity at work.

Recpirocity works, but reciprocity + selective violations of reciprocity when you are unlikely to suffer significant consequences for doing so works better.

Furthermore, Somin fails to grasp that political philosophy depends on morality and epistemology, so of course misses the point of AR’s animosity to both libertarianism and conservatism. AR states her reasons, among other places, quite clearly in “Philosophical Detection” in _Philosophy: Who Needs It_.

This is a really weird discussion because the real catalyst of actual equal rights in Western societies was the Enlightenment, which conservative Christians hate (but which Ayn Rand probably thought was a pretty good development).

This point was made much more forcibly by Hayek (and to a lesser extent, many of the classical economists) than by Rand.

There is no shame in “reinventing the wheel”, so long as you are not claiming credit for the original discovery, or if you have added something like chrome hubcaps to the design. I’m simply describing my own intellectual journey, not that anyone would care. But, Rand started me on the path. For that, she has my appreciation. I think that is more or less the point of Ms. Somin’s column. Whatever her ouevres’ faults, Rand’s works appeal to the young, and introduce them to the path of enlightenment.

D.R.M.: It’s entertaining to watch the true Objectivist, one who approaches Rand’s work in accordance with her claim that it is an integrated philosophical system, try to stretch Rand’s definition of art (”Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments”) to cover the music played by a symphony orchestra.

Very true. If you restrict Rand’s theory of aesthetics to literature and drama (and perhaps the visual arts as well), I would tend to agree with the definition much more often than not. But even here, there are obvious exceptions, such as landscapes — which, contra most people, she dismissed from the category of art because they had nothing to say about the human condition. And she could not stretch her point to encompass music. I find great value in what Rand had to say about Art…as long as it’s properly bracketed.

There is no argument here…either one engages in fact-filled ideas, and is cognizant of consequences…or they live in a bizarre, utopian world of self-imposed “victimology”… in which its always “them” (the poor victim of which nothing is ever asked or required, and who never takes responsibility for their own behavior and failed lives)…vs “us” (people who live responsible lives, take care of themselves and others without being forced by a police state to do so…who are successful, and don’t spend their entire lives whining).

In your esteemed professional career, did anyone bother to point out to you that this type of ‘argument’ is a logical fallacy, the fallacy of bifurcation (aside from the other forensic failings)?

Do you poor pitiful little whiners get it now?

Yes. I think so. On objection criteria, and on the facts presenteds, it seems you’re a first class jerk. Is that a fair assessment of the objective reality?

Cheers,

In an atheistic evolutionary existence inadvertently the result of an explosion, who are you to tell me “thou shalt not initiate force against another”?

Self interest tells you that. Because you do not wish force initiated on you.

And?

What’s the connection?

And should I not swat mosquitoes while I am at it? If I am allowed to swat mosquitoes because they might initiate force against me, why am I not allowed to use force to defend my interests against anyone else who might interfere?

Name me a Christian society before 1700 in which equality before the law was actually practised. Include “benefit of clergy” in your analysis.

Name me a society anywhere in which equality before the law was actually practised. Include “hate crime” as actually enforced in your analysis.

Burke: For example, Burns claims that Rand became a lover of capitalism after and because the communists nationalized her parents’ business. In fact, she had hated communists long before that.

She was 15 when her parent’s business was nationalized. How much earlier did she develop her hatred of communism?

I’ve read reviews of Burns’ book that contain remarks she made about Rand. It’s obvious that he did not understand her philosophy at all and really did not get her facts right.

For example, Burns claims that Rand became a lover of capitalism after and because the communists nationalized her parents’ business. In fact, she had hated communists long before that.