[MD] Intellectual activity

[david buchanan]

Craig, Platt and other Ayn Randers:

Craig said:
Locke's arguments are rather dated.  Ayn Rand & Robert Nozick (especially, 
"Anarchy, State, and Utopia") give more modern arguments for private 
property.

dmb says:
I've often wondered if there is any important difference between "property 
rights" and "thou shalt not steal". Since ownership is so very common, 
well-known and accepted in Western culture, I can't help but wonder what the 
right's emphasis on "property rights" is really all about.

Anyway, I wanted to point out that Randy conservatives are often at odds 
with other segments of the conservative coalition. William F. Buckley 
condemned her as a materialist and an atheist, for example. In returning the 
favor, she said his magazine, National Review, was "the worst and most 
dangerous magazine in America". (Nash, page 158.)

"But not all conservatives were pleased by ATLAS SHRUGGED, and in a 
devastating review late in 1957, Whittaker Chambers declred war on Ayn Rand. 
To Chambers the book was a literary and philosophical nightmare. Its plot 
was 'preposterous', its characterization 'primitive' and caricatured, and 
much of its effect 'sophomoric'. It was not, in fact, a novel at all, but a 
'Message': the anti-religous gospel  of 'philosophic materialism', in which 
'Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of a godless world'.  
(Nash, page 157)

I used to be pretty Randy myself. I thought she was pretty exciting when I 
was 19. It was liberating and bold and all that, but for the sake of our 
discussions here I'd point out that she most definately won't fly. In the 
first place, the MOQ says that money is a measure of SOCIAL good. This is 
not to be confused with intellectual quality. and speaking of intellectual 
quality, her Objectivism would be considered a prime example of SOM. I mean, 
to echo Chambers' critique, she is only asking us to choose one kind of 
materialism over the other while Pirsig is saying that materialism is the 
problem. He's offering something that neither the capitalist nor the 
socialist ever figured out...

Pirsig says, (Lila, Chapter 17) "The conservatives [i.e. read capitalists] 
who keep trumpeting about the virtues of free enterprise are normally just 
supporting their own self-interest. They are just doing the usual cover-up 
for the rich in their age-old exploitation of the poor." and " When they 
call it freedom, that's not right. ' Freedom' doesn't mean anything. 
Freedom's just an escape from somenthing negative. The real reason it's so 
hallowed is that when people talk about it they mean Dynamic Quality. That's 
what neither the the socialists nor the capitalists ever got figured out. 
>From a static point of view socialism is more moral than capitalism. Its a 
higher form of evolution. It is an intellectually guided society, not just a 
society based on mindless traditions." And "It is not that Victorian social 
economic patterns are more moral than socialist intellectual economic 
patterns. Quite the opposite. They are LESS moral as static patterns go."

Thanks.
dmb

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