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TheFirTree View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote TheFirTree Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March/13/2010 at 5:24am
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dnurse64 View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote dnurse64 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: March/13/2010 at 6:50am
Originally posted by TheFirTree TheFirTree wrote:

At least the link finally worked...

Gore Vidal just makes me laugh, the King of the catty put down...He's very funny on the Kennedy family too...


He sure is catty! He took a lot of those quotes out of context. I can tell he's going for a certain "colorful" style of journalism. He wasn't fair but he was interesting. Just like you said, "she provokes strong reactions."

As I stated, I have a problem with Rand redefining words such as altruism and sacrifice in order to make several valid points with her philosophy. It didn't work for me plus it gave her detractors more ammunition to use against her. However, this practice attracted a lot of attention to get her "word" out. No pun intended.

This is the one "detractor" quote I could extract that wasn't too catty:


For one thing, it is gratuitous to advise any human being to look out for himself. You can be sure that he will. It is far more difficult to persuade him to help his neighbor to build a dam or to defend a town or to give food he has accumulated to the victims of a famine. But since we must live together, dependent upon one another for many things and services, altruism is necessary to survival. To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religion and philosophy. That it is right to help someone less fortunate is an idea which ahs figured in most systems of conduct since the beginning of the race. We often fail.

I have concerns about how much the government should be involved in this task, that gets blurry. I don't want the government telling me I need to go volunteer next weekend in a community program to build a house for a homeless family. However, if my church asks for my help in the same task, that is fine. I can decide if I can or not. And to be fair to Rand, she wasn't against helping others but resented it being a obligation or duty that could be demanded and make "slaves" of people to duty. She didn't see it as a virtue. This has a lot to do with her background of coming from a communist dictatorship too.

My worldview is best represented in C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity." He gets to the basics of what all Christain faiths believe in or agree with. Many of these are at odds with Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. I count "Mere Christianity" as one of the most important books in my life.





I'm inclined to believe in parallel worlds filled with dark bound Snow and Odd adventures.

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