Dangerous, by what standard?
Mark Skousen on Atlas Shrugged:
At a time of rampant collectivism, Ayn Rand renewed the promise of liberty. But her ethics are dangerous.
By what standard does Skousen make his judgment? He accuses her of:
- an inversion of the Christian values --correct: faith corrupts reason and promotes force, self-abasement and self-sacrifice make life on Earth impossible, humility negates pride
- defense of greed and selfishness --correct: the pursuit of one's own values and happiness is her central ethical advice
- diatribes against religion and [self-sacrifice] --correct
- criticism of the Judeo-Christian virtues --repetitive, and correct
- {John] Galt crystallizes the Randian motto:
I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for mine.
No sacrifice, no altruism, no feelings, just pure egotistical selfishness, which Rand declares to be supreme logic and reason. --correct: she rejects sacrifice as a virtue and denies that emotion is a cognitive method - sex scenes are narcissistic, mechanical, and violent --oooooh, hahaha: speak for yourself, Skousen; she held that sex is an expression of man's sense of his own value! Sex is to love what action is to thought, possession to evaluation, body to soul.
If the above is dangerous, make the most of it!
Further, that Skousen is a dishonest and incompetent critic is made evident by the following egregious errors:
- claiming that
In fact, no children appear in Rand's magnum opus.
Dagny, Francisco, and Eddie are described numerous times in their childhood. And on page 785 (centennial edition) Dagnyoften saw them wandering down the trail of the valley -- two fearless beings, aged seven and four
--these children are further shown as being adventurous, happy, as they ought to be. - spelling Hank Rearden's name as "Reardon"
- claiming that her metaphysics is "materialist" like that of Marxism; she actually demolished and rejected the idealism-materialism dichotomy
- asserting that the Objectivist theory of selfishness
ignores the interest of others
-- when it is the only theory that respects the self-interest of all by rejecting sacrifice for or by others!
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