Still Running Off at the Keyboard

ON A RANDIAN ROLL

I have a few disconnected websites that I'd like to touch on briefly.

ATLAS SHRUGGED at Illuminati News

The book is said to be "A blueprint for ushering in the New World Order." According to the unknown author, "it is little known habit of the elite to place a copy of this book...on their coffee tables. If you are one of 'them' you will be able to quickly identify that these people...are 'in the know'."

According to one source, Rand was alleged to be a mistress to Philippe Rothschild, who instructed her to write the book in order to show that through the raising of oil prices, then destroying the oil fields and shutting down the coal mines, the illuminati would take over the world....till they had destroyed the economy of the entire world...

As we watch the price of gasoline slowly destroy the American economy while the oil companies reap record profits, this is a rather unsettling claim.

The Morality of Homosexuality Explored at The Atlas Foundation

Here we learn that Ayn Rand

said that homosexuality is a manifestation of psychological "flaws, corruptions, errors, [and] unfortunate premises" and that it is both "immoral" and "disgusting"

Before you breathe a sigh of relief, however, note that Atlas turns this rejection into acceptance by a walk around the mulberry bush:

Objectivism holds that sex is morally important, but not for the traditionally cited reasons...Objectivism holds that sex is morally important because it can promote one's life and happiness. Sex is not merely a hedonic process that produces immediate sensory pleasure. Sex, "[t]o a rational man…is an expression of self-esteem—a celebration of himself and of existence"...sex is properly a physical expression of romantic love, "his response to his own highest values in the person of another—an integrated response of mind and body, of love and sexual desire"... Celebration of one's own life and of existence is essential to promoting one's happiness; thus, it is moral to make choices that allow oneself this celebration and immoral to deny or negate it.

(That word "celebration" that shows up all over the Catholic landscape is used by the Objectivists to justify homosexuality. And we have a homosexuality problem in the Church. Hmmmmm.)

The website continues:

Current psychobiological research indicates that Rand's conception of sex roles is, in part, mistaken. Biological factors such as genetics and prenatal development play substantial roles in determining sexual orientation...to the extent that homosexuality is not a product of choice, it is not a moral issue. As Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged..."a sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality"...

There you go. All wrapped up and tied with a pretty bow.

Objectivism and Religion

Ayn Rand is noteworthy for her atheism and uncompromising opposition to religion.

Though she was born in Russia of Jewish parents, she did not write about either Eastern Orthodoxy or Judaism. She did write two essays about Roman Catholicism. One concerned Pope Paul's Humane Vitae, and the other concerned his Populorum Progressio.

...this attention given the Roman Catholic Church is noteworthy. Rand went so far as to blame the existence of American laws against abortion (which she opposed) on the Roman Catholic Church....

Rand's focus on Catholicism likely stems from a belief that Catholicism is the principal opponent of reason and capitalism. ...

she believed that it was untrue in all its manifestations and that its consequences were disastrous. ...

According to her one-time associate Barbara Branden, [Was this the wife of the man with whom she committed adultery?] Rand became an atheist at age thirteen. Branden records Rand writing in her diary at that age: "Today I decided to be an atheist." Branden then reports her as later explaining, "I had decided that the concept of God is degrading to men. Since they say that God is perfect, man can never be that perfect, then man is low and imperfect and there is something above him – which is wrong." [Branden, PAR, p. 35.] Branden continues that Rand's "second reason" is that "no proof of the existence of God exists."

Ah yes, where have we heard that before: "You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know..." (Genesis 3:4)