Objectivist Round Up

This week's edition of the Objectivist Round Up is being hosted by Rational Jenn. Lots of good posts listed. Be sure to check it out.

A special nod to Paul McKeever who nicely refutes a rather bone-headed comparison of Ayn Rand and Thrasymachus.

That didn't take long...

NR continues its crusade against Ayn Rand.

I'm too angry to say anything else at the moment.

Update: A little calmer now.

I knew that NR would eventually respond to the Go Galt phenomenon by trying to smear Ayn Rand. In fact, I predicted it. On March 8, at this blog, I wrote:

I’m expecting any day now for someone at NRO to remind their conservative
brethren that Ayn Rand was a heretic, and was excommunicated from the right by
W.F. Buckley himself, lo these many years.

So I'm not surprised that it was done. I'm just a little surprised at the thoroughness and the vindicativeness of it. A lot of the nastiness is of the same sort that I've been reading on leftist blogs. The leftists like to reassure each other that Ayn Rand is for adolescents only. Mature people know that one must set aside childish things like reason, individuality and freedom. That is what Rand called the Argument from Intimidation. I was a bit astonished at being called an adolescent by people who get their moral philosophy from the Bible.

Which brings up the one plaint, not usually made by the left, that the hatchet-wielders at NRO were almost unanimous on.

Alas, Rand’s “truth” leaves no room for God--or for disagreement. --Jonathan
Bean

...devoid of faith, hope and love... --Bradley J. Birzer

Ayn Rand makes for an entertaining novelist but a poor deity. --Daniel J. Flynn

On Christianity, Rand is a non-believer. And her fictional heroes are also
non-believers. Therefore, her central protagonists in Atlas Shrugged
and The Fountainhead were very entrepreneurial but avoided charity. In
real life, most entrepreneurs wanted to make a lasting mark with their
philanthropy. John D. Rockefeller, for example, was the wealthiest entrepreneur
of the late 1800s and was the largest donator to Christian and other social
causes in American history. --Burton Folsom Jr.

A friend who lost everything in the financial crisis took it as an opportunity
to come to both Christ and Ayn Rand. Knowing me as a fan of both, he asked how I
reconciled them, considering that Rand was an atheist. --Andrew Leigh

In other words, Rand must be wrong because she's an atheist. A news flash for them: Rand's atheism is a feature of her philosophy, not a bug.

If, at the base of a complex chain of reasoning, all one can offer is: because God said so, that's no argument at all. Conservatives have been beaten from pillar to post, because that was all they had to offer in the public debate. Ayn Rand offered a rational defense of capitalism grounded in verifiable moral principles. Conservatives have rejected it, because it would mean giving up the notion that there is a guy upstairs looking out for them, promising them that they don't have to worry about death, because they're going to live forever. In other words, it would mean giving up childish things.

Objectivist Round Up

I've been browsing the current edition of the Objectivist Round Up hosted by Amy Mossoff at The Little Things. I particularly recommend Burgess Laughlin's review of The Independent Scholar's Handbook, Doug A.'s takedown of an assinine segment by Colbert, and Rational Jenn's explanation of how to get children to solve their own conflicts. Check out the whole thing.