Happy Thanksgiving kids!

1. Nobody is perfect.
2. It’s an understatement (and a knock on her) to say that she was “at least” anti-communist. Communism pretty much shaped her philosophy - she lived it, saw its effects, and, like a lot of people who got out of Russia during those years, HATES it and make it their life work to oppose it.
3. What’s wrong with atheists?

To be serious about the last point: Ms. Rand declined to go a step further. That does not make her wrong, nor you right, nor the other way around. Any religion that teaches its adherents that they are worthless scum will be a scourge upon the Earth. Many religions are collectivism imposed by threat of eternal damnation. Look at Islam. It teaches that its followers are bad, that they can only redeem themselves by serving another, that women are worthless and only there to be exploited, and a host of other horrors. In order for any religion to at least do some good in the world, it must teach that the individual has worth.

Now, I could be wrong, but I recall that you are a Christian. I could also be wrong, but I think that the Bible says something about man being created in God’s image.

Is that truly inconsistent with what Ayn Rand was saying? Is that not just another step on her analysis, one which she declined to take? She says that need is not a claim upon others, nor a license to enslave; she posits (brilliantly) non-religious reasons why a collectivist system does not work. Reducing to absurdity, she posits that man MUST be of value for himself. Christians teach the same exact thing. They teach that individual humans are extraordinarily valuable beings - from being made in the image of God, to having Jesus die for each of us, to the sanctity of life.

Same concepts. She arrives at them from a different place, building them from the ground up. She is under no obligation to pretend that Christianity is the only justification for those reasons, nor that principles which exist in the Christian tradition cannot be justified but on the Bible - that they have no correlation to the world we live in.

It’s always a pleasure to spend time here, and I would do so more often if She Who Must Be Obeyed, my wife, wasn’t so insistent on having everything perfect for the Holidays. Oh, and that running a farm thing takes up far too much time in this season. Still, it’s nice to know there’s a certain winner here when I have the odd free moment.

the Grit

When “the common good” of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.

Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others - misfortune is not a mortgage on achievement - failure is not a mortgage on success - suffering is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence - man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone’s altar nor for anyone’s cause - life is not one huge hospital.

And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.

This god, this one word:

“I.”

See what I mean? She could think and write things that inspired me, then with one quote, make me feel very uncomfortable.
I forgive her though, she was unique, and shaped by her experiences, and at least she was a vehement anti-communist.

Yes, God is real smart that way. Though, the 10% in the Bible is what is referred to as the tithe. I know it might upset some Christians, but you are correct, He requires it of all Christians, not just the rich ones. In other words, God expects someone with an annual gross income of $75,000 to tithe 10% of that, or $7,500. AND he expects someone who earns a gross income of $20,000 to tithe $2,000 of that income. Offerings are actually what is given over the required tithe.

It’s also important to note that liberals only want to make a show of trying to help the poor without actually solving their problems since if that happened the ex-poor would vote Republican.

Offering real solutions to the poor would indeed be devastating to the DemonRATS.

It’s always such a pleasure when you stop in.