Ayn Rand: Hypocrite

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
No, it isn't. For no other reason than SS is a legal act, codified within our society, and one that is approved of by the overwhelming majority of citizens and successfully defended by various courts.

Since Ayn Rand's complaint was moral rather than legal---she never took any legal action on the SSA, or shirked any legal obligations she had to it---I don't see how that makes a difference that's relevant to your charges of hypocrisy.

Comparing the morality of voluntarily deciding to submit to the Social Contract in your country, to being forcibly raped, is a false comparison.

If one espouses that the ideal person wouldn't do something, and then turns around and does that thing, you don't think that's a sign of hypocrisy?

Quote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
You're batting pretty low today with these analogies. Your argument isn't so great to begin with but you don't have to stab it in the back like this by picking terrible examples for the point you try to make.

If you don't like my batting, why your choice to keep pitching? You have no valid complaint against me---only yourself to blame that this keeps going on!

I keep pitching, Thomas, for the same reason that Pitchers in actual baseball do - I like striking people out!

Seriously, the Superman analogy was a real dud Laughing

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Comparing the morality of voluntarily deciding to submit to the Social Contract in your country, to being forcibly raped, is a false comparison.

That's not the comparison. The analogy to voluntarily submitting to te Social contract is for the woman to voluntarily stay at home at night, or to go with a chaperone---both of which are legal. By contrast, the analogy to being forcibly raped is Ayn Rand being forcibly made to pay taxes. Your objection that one act is legal and the other is not is immaterial. Law-givers, even if elected by democratic majorities, can do a lot of horrible things to people. Ask any surviving Native American.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

If one espouses that the ideal person wouldn't do something, and then turns around and does that thing, you don't think that's a sign of hypocrisy?

No. Superman aside, I admire plenty of movie heroes and novel heroes without emulating them. I don't think that makes me a hypocrite. If ever there was a false comparison, it's comparing reality to fiction and complaining that reality isn't as good.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I keep pitching, Thomas, for the same reason that Pitchers in actual baseball do - I like striking people out!

Ayn Rand would totally be into you for saying this. She liked self-confident men a lot. Your wife A. better watch out!

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Quote:

Ayn Rand would totally be into you for saying this. She liked self-confident men a lot. Your wife A. better watch out!

It's me that has to watch out - without A2K to keep my rhetoric sharp, she would eat me for lunch.

She's the only woman I've ever met who can argue me into a corner. Which of course is why I'm completely in love.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

She's the only woman I've ever met who can argue me into a corner. Which of course is why I'm completely in love.

In love with whom: A or Ayn Rand?

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
She's the only woman I've ever met who can argue me into a corner. Which of course is why I'm completely in love.

In love with whom: A or Ayn Rand?

Why are you trying to get me in trouble? Laughing

My WIFE of course

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Just playing. Smile

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@Cycloptichorn,

Ayn Rand is a hypocrite because she doesn't practise what she preaches. Remember tyrants and dictators whose dictum was "Do as I say not as I do".

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I said that reading Ayn Rand was a sort of rite of passage for teenagers. I had a great deal of difficulty getting started with The Fountainhead because I detested the first sentence: Howard Roark laughed. The only way I could read the book was to begin on page two.

I also found "Scarlet O'Hara was not beautiful" and "He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet . . ." obstacles to their respective novels. When I entered NPR's first 3 minute story contest, I wrote a story about a muse with drunken writer as a project and used those three sentences.

1 Reply

@plainoldme,

I guess for guys a novel starting of with a rape scene is no big deal but for the female gender it could be traumatic. Ayn Rand specializes in her hero(e)s raping her heroines.

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@talk72000,

Do you think she had a fantasy about being ravished?

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@plainoldme,

She came from Russia. Never know what she went thru but most certainly screwed as she just hates those Communists.

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@talk72000,

She despised the communists, and adored the United States.

I don't believe it. Finally, there is going to be a movie based on "Atlas Shrugged". I just hope that they don't screw it up like they did with "The Fountainhead".

Apparently, there are going to be no famous names in the film, which I think is a good thing.

http://www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/?gclid=CPmO8qzpjKcCFUJm7AodhT-mfg

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@Phoenix32890,

I find it fascinating that the producers of the movie chose to premiere the film on April 15th. Ayn Rand would have loved that!

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@Phoenix32890,

Good thing Angelina Jolie pulled out. It would have ruined her image being raped by John Galt. The movie is about 1920ish America and maybe passé.

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I suppose if you consider Ayn Rand herself to be the personification of all that is right in the world, this topic has relevance, but if you find that what she wrote resonates, it doesn't at all.

One of the links in this thread relates how one or two women who, apparently, emulated Rand characters more than she did, died paupers for principle.

They're more deserving of personal heroic status than Rand, but then how many people did they inspire?

There are far worse things than hypocrisy, and the hypocrites on the Right and the Left are legion.

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

Ayn Rand glorifies two rapists.

1 Reply

@talk72000,

I don't know that to be true, but if it is, it's a good reason not consider her heroic. It's not a reason, however, to not consider her characters heroic, or her ideology corrupt.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Both Howard Roark the hero of Fountainhead and John Galt of Atlas Shrugged rape the heroines and they (women) seem to love it.

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@talk72000,

Are you aware that women were often told in the case of rape to sit still and enjoy it?

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Ayn Rand had a romantic image of men that is rather out of tune with today's sensibilities. She adored them, and believed that, bottom line, no matter how accomplished a woman, she needed a man to look up to. She was into "heroes".

For instance, she was against the idea of a woman becoming President of the US. She thought that it was not in a woman's best interest to be in a position where she was at the top spot. She did believe though, that women could run companies, which in that era was a rather radical thought.

I read "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" when I was 24. I never perceived the sex scenes as rape scenes. I thought of those scenes as old fashioned ultra romanticism, where the man literally swept the woman off her feet. Remember, the books were written before the sexual revolution.

For her time, she was definitely a feminist. For today's younger folks, especially women, her sex scenes are probably not in tune with current thoughts about man/woman relationships.

2 Replies

Ayn Rand: Hypocrite

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