Some of the Wealthy Asking to Be Taxed

[Sharky]

Re: Some of the Wealthy Asking to Be Taxed

Well, I hope it can be now. Sometimes tone is lost when debates happen via text. The result can be taken the wrong way - that was never intended.

I believe that you are sincere in your thoughts, and that you do not personally, directly, wish me harm.

Perhaps some day you will be able to see how much of the rest of what you said relies on the ability of government to initiate the use of force against me -- and as long as you support those policies, you are also indirectly wishing me and others like me ill will.

[Sharky]

Re: Some of the Wealthy Asking to Be Taxed

You can literally type into google "criticisms of objectivism" and get all the info. you need to know why its so horrible.

Got a good laugh out of that one. So the existence of some articles on the web is proof that Objectivism has been "debunked"? There are about 77,000 pages that match the search criteria you gave. There are also about 6.9M pages that match "criticisms of christianity." Does that mean Christianity is 100 times as "debunked" as Objectivism? Majority rule and all, right?

And Rand herself was likely seriously mentally disturbed, given that she often held up a sociopathic child murder as her ideal Objectivist and even wrote him into some of her fiction.

Ad hominem. This isn't a "defend Objectivism" or "defend Ayn Rand" thread, so I won't respond to your other bizarre claims -- but the one above is particularly egregious.

You are guilty of major context-dropping. Rand did not idolize a serial killer, but abstracted an apparent individualist character trait of Hickman’s for the purpose of creating a profile for a potential novel (which was never written). She abhorred the depravity of his behavior, and said so.

Just as admiration for the intelligence of a master thief doesn’t imply idolization of the actor or his crime nor invalidate the virtue of intelligence, so it was with Rand in regard to Hickman.

At the age of 23, she made some notes for a novel. It never got very far. She used the public antagonism to Hickman as a springboard for the novel's character. But she wrote, in these very notes made at the time about Hickman:

“[My hero is] very far from him, of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me.”

Context is always crucial, and it’s right there in its entirety in "Journals of Ayn Rand". One should take care when using isolated bits from never-intended-for-publication private journals and twisting something ridiculous out of it. The totality of her published writing is an unequivocal condemnation of the initiation of physical force in human relationships, which she regarded as an unmitigated evil. How does that jibe with idolizing a killer? It doesn't.

[mesyn191]

Re: Some of the Wealthy Asking to Be Taxed

Ad hominem.

Not at all. The link I posted gives all the context necessary.

At the age of 23, she made some notes for a novel. It never got very far. She used the public antagonism to Hickman as a springboard for the novel's character. But she wrote, in these very notes made at the time about Hickman:

“[My hero is] very far from him, of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me.”

Except she also wrote:

Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should." (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22; emphasis hers.)
...
In her early notes for The Fountainhead: "One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one's way to get the best for oneself. Fine!" (Journals, p. 78.)
...
Of The Fountainhead's hero, Howard Roark: He "has learned long ago, with his first consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world." (Journals, p. 93.)
...
In the original version of her first novel We the Living: "What are your masses [of humanity] but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?" (This declaration is made by the heroine Kira, Rand's stand-in; it is quoted in The Ideas of Ayn Randby Ronald Merrill, pp. 38 - 39; the passage was altered when the book was reissued years after its original publication.)

You cannot seperate the degeneracy from the innate sociopathy of the man. He did what he did because he no capacity for morality. She understood this clearly and loved what she saw. This is also why her philosophy is horrible.