I've Been Reading

For the last couple of weeks while sitting in the guard shack I have been reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. As I have said before I respect Ayn Rand's intelligence and consistency, but have limited respect for her philosophy. I believe it is morally superior to socialism but still not the best we can do. Part of my disagreement with her might be semantics as I do not believe that wanting what is legitimately yours can be properly called selfishness. Selfishness is demanding what isn't yours or what you haven't earned. I think it's selfish for a welfare recipient to have so little goodwill toward those whose taxes fill their bellies. I think it's selfish to demand $25+ an hour to do next to nothing without a lot of goodwill toward the employer. If you work hard at difficult and exacting work and deserve it, well that's different. (I admittedly do not work very hard in the guardshack but I am not getting outlandish pay either.) I think most people are willing to share but most people also don't like being threatened or guilt-tripped into giving.

One thing I note in her book is the, almost comic-book, quality of her characters. Like another writer I don't always agree with but enjoy the writing of, Robert Heinlein, her main characters are super-intelligent, almost Nietzshceistic, over-achievers. I see a sequence of flow to individualism from the truth to the absurd with Heinlein closest to the truth, Rand a bit further out, and Nietzsche being all the way out at the point where the extreme left and right become the indistinguishable. The characters are just unrealistic. There are great men and women but supermen of the sort who appear in these novels are a myth. All men have weaknesses and often the greatest of men have the greatest weaknesses. (Also I note that Heinlein's supermen still had a sense of humor while Rand's work has very little real humor - unless you count sarcasm as humor; maybe Rand, for her intelligence, failed to understand humor.)

I did enjoy the scenes where the "looters" were talking amongst themselves and, speaking in private, how ruthless, cold-blooded and uncaring they really were. As one Dr. Ferris (one of the looters) said "We are after power and we mean it." Most modern leftists know that their policies will never work but they don't care; it's nothing but a path to power for them. If the state has total power and they are the state then they have what they want. The state controls all and they control the state.

Another disturbing thing is her reference to Robin Hood. Now the historical Robin Hood was nothing but a common bandit around whom air of romance was developed. Now the mythical Robin Hood was, in my opinion, a right-wing hero. You see in those days the rich and the government were one and the same and they got rich through excessive taxation. The Robin Hood of the romantic legends brought about the first tax refund by stealing from the taxman and giving it back to the tax-payer. Of course that's not how the historical Robin Hood functioned, but that's another story.

My biggest concern is her arrogant Atheism. Without God it is impossible to set moral absolutes. You may speak of what is good for the masses but why should I give a rip about the masses? You may speak of earning everything you have, as Rand does, but why should I if I can do it some other way? You can speak of the survival of humanity as the root of morality -as Heinlein does - but why should I care about what happens to humanity after I die? Morality requires a foundation otherwise it becomes meaningless. I recognize all of these things because there is Something bigger than me, or all of humanity, that has set an end and purpose to it all; you can choose to ignore or reject God but that has a terrible price. You can seek a moral foundation but without God there really isn't one.

I furthermore wonder if she realized how close she was to the Protestant Work Ethic which was born of Christian principles.