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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (26972)	8/25/2009 9:58:48 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 28931

Help anyone you want to. I help out all kinds of people. I would never insist you help my drunk out of work bum friends. Who I help is my business and I would never impose my personal compassion for others on others and certainly don't want yours foisted on me. I resent being an innocent victim of what you feel is right and good. And by the way the government isn't Santa Claus and charity begins wherever you decide to put it. Koan spouted "We will insist on compassion." You don't insist on compassion you perform it so get busy and pass the bong to Wharf Rat and do something.

To: koan who wrote (26972)	8/27/2009 1:02:49 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 28931

"We as a society will decide for you, thank you very much. You don't want to help the crippled starving women. Well, too bad. We will insist on compassion." I think I must comment here... Two misconceptions: ONE: That the philosophy of Ayn Rand condemns compassion, and TWO: that compassion can be forced. Let us start at the beginning. All civilized nations have in some fashion or another adopted the ethos that INDIVIDUALS have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Implied or rather implicit in this principle is that mere need is not a genuine claim against a person. Where is the principle of liberty if people may be forcibly deprived of (property) and thereafter ALL rights by infinite claims of need?? So Rand noticed that indeed society acted as though Constitutional rights were non-existent and did indeed (through her Institutions of Church--and "groups" exercising coercion and public control)--act to make someones "need" a CLAIM. Now a mere claim of need is an obligation...something that may be forced, or in omission punished--so that it does indeed negate fundamental Constitutional rights. Now Rand defined the source of such rights somewhat differently that Jefferson and company but she simply ferreted out what they already knew when she said that no mans need is a claim against my rights. Now people somehow think that such a rational philosophy is anathema to compassion but there is absolutely no connection between coercing the pretense of altruistic compassion (and it is merely a pretense if it is not done freely and as a held value) and the (I repeat myself) unforced and uncoerced compassion and love and cooperation people may freely give one another without an unnatural benefit accruing to the undeserved or those who preach that need is a claim IN ORDER to realize personal benefit. Did the characters in Rand novels repudiate compassion? Hardly! Her characters are passionate and compassionate. When Dagny is injured and requires assistance she is not left to crawl along in pain. Rather, she is carried...and it goes on and on. Now these characters are fictional. They are idealized representations. Rand was an idealist. So just as Plato's Republic is fictional and idealized so is Galt's Gulch. Rand tried to live as an idealized person. She was a product of a gifted intellect and horrific events in her life. She had many flaws and they are all the more evident because she left humanity in order to live as an idealized representation of her philosophy. That is ok for the Mona Lisa but it will twist a human being like a pretzel. Perhaps if a person could be a perfect triangle or circle or square--perhaps we could appreciate the precise logic of Rand's profound thinking. But lacking that possibility we can at least refrain from trivializing it and we can at least understand why her books give inspiration and meaning to millions as they face the realities of social and government controls that are usually as corrupt and self serving as the nefarious characters in her novels. And as we watch the heroism of characters such as Francisco and Galt be supplanted by the mindless admiration of the Sopranos and the sociopathic winners of reality tv shows... Now to point two: "We will insist on compassion". Well, no you won't! Because you CAN NOT. You will insist on OBEDIENCE--which is quite another matter, isn't it??