In 1838, Abraham Lincoln said:
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?—Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!—All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
I think of that as I contemplate a weird defense (and not the only one) I have gotten for the godless, pro-abortion zealot Ayn Rand in my previous blog entry, especially as I read about how Westernized nations like South Korea, and post-Christian cultures like Western Europe (and, of course, we in the States) are busy aborting ourselves out of existence. My correspondent wrote:
You’ve revealed your ignorance of both Rand and communism.
In the 20th-Century communist governments murdered 100 million civilians.
By contrast, Rand devoted her life to fighting for freedom - the individual’s right to life, liberty, and property. She taught that once a government banishes the use of violence and physical coercion from private relations, capitalism is the spontaneous system of peaceful trade that develops between free and equal individuals. She considered this ideal. Is this what you consider so evil? And how does it compare to the slaughter of 100 million innocents?
Shame on you for daring to compare an eccentric writer with whom you obviously disagree to the bloody nightmare that has been the history of communism. Disgusting.
If, say, a terrorist group were to set off a bomb that killed 1.4 million people, we would regard it as a catastrophe and the greatest assault our nation has ever endured. Had the Soviet Union attacked us and inflicted such casualties, we would have gone to war with them. And rightly so.
But because intellectual architects of this mass murder are ideologues dispensing a few bromides agreeable to our political allegiances with a particularly selfish species of libertarianism, we are supposed to overlook the fact that their philosophy directly aids and abets the quiet private murder of more people than the gulags consumed?
Yes, I’m fully aware that there are species of libertarianism that comport with Catholic faith. But don’t kid me that Rand’s was one of them. Until we in the West stop making excuses for our suicide and start confronting it, we will continue to talk as though being on the right side of the fight against communism confers sanctity and fail to recognize that western worship of the imperial autonomous self is quite as capable of damning souls and slaughtering bodies by the millions.
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Ayn Rand isn’t a philosopher. This much is clear from her writings. The only reason people accept her as a “philosopher” is because either they want to justify their wickedness, they want a hero in spite of her contrasts with their own personal opinions, they want to defend a human value at all costs, or they want to seem intellectual and modernist.
A good example of this self-deception is Jay Naylor. He’s a pornographic artist. He accepts Rand as a “philosopher” because he wants to justify his selfishness and he wants to seem intellectual and modernist to his fans. He is so “devoted” to Rand that he plagerizes her work, taking whole sentences from her writings - sometimes even paraphrasing them - and putting them into the mouths of his characters. It’s pathetic, but it’s an example of how pathetic a person can become if they follow Rand’s “philosophy”.
A comment on the objection to objecting to Rand, I think one there is one thing history showed us: uncontrolled capitalism was part of the spark-plug that made Communism possible. The rich got richer, but at a great abuse of workers (women and child labor, 12-year old boys losing hands in factories). Marx was right in that. His skewed philosophical analysis and “solution” were terribly wrong, but you can’t say capitalism is the cure-all. Also, the Roaring 20’s with all its economic glitter and consumeristic abuse was likewise part of the cause of what happened in the 30s. Money can’t buy you love or happiness.
Some of the other “philosophical” predecesors of “will/freedom at all costs” that libertarians share have names like Nietzche (a major root of Naziism), Sartre (whose writings led many to commit suicide), Mills (utilitarian reduction of man to pleasure). Rand is in, well, not so good company!
In case what I said would indicate I agree with Rand, Marxism, or anything in those circles, you can be assured that I most adamantly don’t! Only that any form of economy or politics can be abused. Freedom can never be separated from right reason or be absolutized (as an excuse for doing what you want).
Point well taken. The stuff behind both an “abortion culture” and Communism are the same. As long as pleasure or “the Party” is fulfilled, everything else is game: making a whistle-blower disappear, or making the child that certain actions conceived disappear.
I find it unfortunate that some of my fellow libertarians get so confused and miss the point that life begins at the moment of conception and that there is no other possible way to define the beginning of life, and because of this misunderstanding instead of giving as much freedom as is reasonably possible the dock all the freedom of that child.
Murray Rothbard left Ayn Rand when she forbade him to mary a Christian (her real name wsa Alice Rosenberg) and the Libertarian Party (which he founded) when it went agsinst the churches and synagogues (which he understood as the essential foundations of a democracy).
Bravo. How can the communist murder of cilvilians compare to over 4,000 children being murdered every day of the year for over 70 years?
I don’t think it’s a matter of comparison or saying that the slaughter by the Commies was somehow unimportant compared to our own body count. Rather, it’s a matter of recognizing that our tendency to exalt our own ideology as salvific stands condemned along with all other merely human tradition when it attempt to take the place of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Yes it is strange bedfellows. Yes the USA dropped “the bomb”, only to prevent more US losses. Are you that stupid that you fail to realize all organizations have some failures in the eyes of some people. Our “holy, one, and universal church” is very guilty of these same sins from starting wars to the bad popes many hundreds of years ago. Don’t weep and keep harping on the past, think what we can do to bring peace for our grandchildren’s world! God bless.
Don’t weep and keep harping on the past, think what we can do to bring peace for our grandchildren’s world!
It’s not harping on the past. Rather, it is using the past when we have achieved enough distance from the events to be critical and illuminate truths as applicable guides for the present. Dropping the bomb was morally wrong and a consequentialist act. Yet this very day not only do we continue to see people defending the bomb, we see that same consequentialism in arguments excusing or even championing abortion and cruel treatment of prisoners. Peace for our grandchildren requires moral clarity among other things and that clarity can be gotten from both past and present.
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