But Pez, remember, "One must never fail to pronounce moral judgment." jlallen was just doing what his private, non-religious moral code required him to do. While looking for something else, I stumbled on a bit more information that makes the above quote ever more ironic here.
The Wonder That Is Me nytimes.com
The journals' central lesson is that one should never underestimate the importance of pomposity. ''I think I represent the proper integration of a complete human being,'' Rand wrote to herself in 1946, while planning ''Atlas Shrugged.'' And though bits of her philosophy changed over time, her awesome regard for her own genius remained the animating heart of her work.
From the beginning of her career, when she was a screenwriter of silent films for Cecil B. DeMille, to her death in 1982, she was a combatant in her own version of class warfare: ''The actual performance of men in society is a constant, fierce, undefined struggle between the genius and the parasite. . . . The genius must have his freedom and his independence. . . . But he is crippled, hobbled, tied, held back constantly by the encroachments and restrictions of the parasites who get their unearned sustenance from him.'' The pesky parasites, in her view, had invented religion (''the great poison of mankind''), family life (''dull, petty, purposeless''), compassion and generosity to skim off the fruits of the great achievers like Rand herself.
Of course, jlallen has denied, more or less, having Randian values. What, exactly, the values informing his essential moral judgements are, I don't really want to know at this point.
Cheers, Dan. |
