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People care about books not only for their truths but also for the lies that influence others. The former should be lauded while the latter needs to be combatt
by briancaw2 13y ago
People care about books not only for their truths but also for the lies that influence others. The former should be lauded while the latter needs to be combatted.
- pandaman 13y agoI don't see every other liberal blogger going on and on against the whole host of lying books (e.g. astrology, esoteric etc). And please don't tell me they are not influential. Much more people know their astrological sign and how bad is to hurt one's Karma than people who know who is John Galt.
- briancaw2 13y agoWhen you say liberal you are referring to a political leaning. Rand's growing influence is on politics. If people started electing astrological evangelist preachers to government positions and it resulted in policies that they disagreed with, then people would spend a lot more time combatting the phony astrology that the movement is based on. That focus wouldn't make astrology any truer.
- pandaman 13y agoThanks, this is the point I am trying to make. If you are opposing an ideology then have balls to attack the ideology straight on. I don't see people often attacking Marxism on the basis that Karl Marx was hiding from child support obligations and that Lenin had syphilis. Yet it's par for the course to dismiss whatever ideology Rand is representing just by attacking her character.
- briancaw2 13y agoIf the point you're trying to make is that attacking a person's character is a poor substitute for an argument against their beliefs, then point taken. But you weren't doing a very good job getting that point across.
- 6d0debc071 13y agoSyphilis and child support payments aren't communicable by economic ideology in the same sort of way that lifestyles are by moral dictates. Without taking a side either way of the AR thing - taking advice on how to live your life from people whose character you detest seems like it might be a bad call. Living your life in the manner they approve of, at least if they did so themselves, stands a good chance of making you more like them.
- pandaman 13y agoI don't think I understood. In the first paragraph you are saying that Marx's and Lenin's lifestyle choices are not going to affect their followers but in the second paragraph you are saying that following an ideology is going to make you like the ideology's leaders. I don't think both of these can be true simultaneously so I guess I did not get what are you saying right.
- 6d0debc071 13y agoYou've dropped several conditionals that I placed in there. The general theme is that things like macro economic theories place fewer constraints on individual action than moral ideologies - and that, provided that the person expounding the moral ideology claims to follow it themselves, your perception of their character counts as evidence for whether it's a good idea for you to accept it or not.
- pandaman 13y agoAh, you believe that Marxism is a macro economic theory? Understood.