Another Rand Rant

[robinturner]

To all those followers of Ayn Rand, George Bush and those parts of Nietzsche you were able to understand ...

Please admit that you are snivelling cowards.

Being a coward is not bad. On a lot of topics, I'm pretty cowardly. I find people in general rather scary. The prospect of a visit to my psychopathic mother-in-law raises my heartbeat. When I drive in Turkish traffic, I have to keep tight control of my anal sphincter. I'm ashamed of it, but I admit it.

What I don't do is construct a philosophy or political ideology based on my fears. I don't think "The world is a vicious, cruel place, and I have to look out for myself because no one else will, and if other people fall by the wayside, then that's just too bad." I don't get so paranoid about my own security that I fill my home with firearms and lobby for the right of citizens to own anti-tank weapons, or worry so much about my economic security that I resent my taxes going to help the unemployed or developing countries.

Yes, the world is a vicious, cruel place, partly because Nature does not care overly much for our health, but mainly because we have made it so. In our fear, we transform self-preservation into callousness, and sanction the deaths of millions through war and starvation in order to nurture the egos we have constructed for ourselves. And the funny thing is that many of us can't face the fact that we are doing it, and spin pretty philosophies to make it seem perfectly right and natural.

Comments

[arya.livejournal.com]

I'm (loosely) an objectivist, and a strong proponent of the 2nd Amendment.

Basically, it is because I believe the 2nd Amendment to be the citizen's guarantee against the US government becoming as tyrannical as the British government at the time of our country's birth.

And before you accuse me of paranoia, let me remind you that I live in the only country ever to drop a nuclear weapon on not one, but TWO major cities, populated by countless innocent civilians... that I live in a country whose current industry owes much of its success to the slave labor of the Chinese and Africans... that I live in a country who interned its *own citizens* in concentration camps in desert substandard living conditions.

[thedward.livejournal.com]

How does the 2nd ammendment guarantee against tyranny? Do you believe a revolution armed with the sorts of weapons likely to be owned by private citizens could be successful against the might of the military industrial complex? Note that I am not arguing against the 2nd ammendment, I just don't see it as terribly relevant towards preventing tyranny in this day and age.

[epanastatis.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for arya because I am in no way an objectivist--quite the opposite--but I do think privately owned weapons are necessary to any revolutionary perspective. As a rule, in any militarily powerful country the state is going to be better armed than any insurrectionary body. That's why a split in the armed forces is, as a rule, necessary for a successful revolution. But that split is not going to happen unless soldiers are inspired to breach military discipline, and that is only likely to happen if the revolutionary organization or social class is bold enough to risk its life defending itself with whatever weapons it can get its hands on. Soldiers know that their superiors mean business, so if they're ideologically disposed to change sides they need to be sure that the other side also means business.

[thedward.livejournal.com]

Hmm. That makes sense. Thanks! :)

[solri.livejournal.com]

How loose is your objectivism? Or perhaps I should say, what is it that you agree and disagree with in Objectivism.