My question for the forum is: Do you think you’re over doing it when you call people of another political philosophy evil?
The reason I’m asking is because whenever I hear the liberal side mock Objectivism I don’t hear them saying “Those evil Capitalist!” For the most part their just showing Objectivists saying crazy things. It kind of sucks because I agree with what I’m hearing from Objectivism right up until it starts talking about morality. I do not think Liberal or Socialist means Evil Nazi and I’m having trouble seeing how you make the connection.
I’ll also tell you how this came up and why I’m posing here. I listen to two Podcasts primarily; The Atheist Experience(AE) [Which is done by more Liberal Minded people] and Rational Public Radio (RPR)[which is politics from an Objectivist standpoint].
I love RPR, it’s entertaining and I agree with them on matters of Capitalism, but when they start calling Liberals Nazi’s I kind of cringe because to me it makes them sound stupid. As far as I’m concerned morally the evil people are the literal Rapists, Murderers, Pedophiles etc and I don’t agree with putting someone I disagree with politically down on that level.
A while back AE; which is usually just about Atheism Vs Believers did an entire show on why their disagreements with Objectivism. Right off the bat they started with a letter sent to them by an Objectivist telling them they should read Atlas Shrugged, incorporate Ayn Rands idea’s onto the show and simplify them so the lowly commoner can understand it. One of the hosts jokingly stated ‘He just insulted all of you.’ I actually agree that the one who wrote the letter came off as arrogant, funny and weird, since my last encounter with Objectivism was reading Terry Goodkind’s novel; the guy came off just as arrogant, funny and weird.
Anyway the show went on reading a few letters from Objectivists then tackled Ayn Rand’s philosophy. We all [them included] agree with the obvious ones; Existance exists, A is A; they call them them “No duh” assertions and assume Ayn Rand did this do disassociate with the believes. They start to have misgivings when Ayn Rand speaks about how the universe is supposed to work ‘Selfishness Vs Altruism.’ I’ll post all my links at the end as it isn’t the point of the post.
During the show they bring up two things from the Novel I want to ask about here: (1) Ellsworth Toohey and (2) The train wreck. Their opinion of Rands opinion is that an evil person has to be Altruistic and that Altruism is the source for all evil in the world; I disagree with that statement because Evil can come in both Altruism and Selfishness; a Rape isn’t altruistic is it? The second part I take issue with is the way the train wreck was written, I agree with the hosts that Rand saying “This is why he deserved to die and this is why she deserved to die” is wrong.
So now I’m stuck in a position where I agree with both you guys and the ‘Evil/Nazi/Pedophile/Rapist/Communist Liberals as your forum, RPR, Terry Goodkind and Ayn Rand seem to be labelling them. I am not of a mindset where I think a Liberal or even a Socialist deserves to be in the same boat I place a serial killer or a rapist. So I end up laughing and thinking ‘Objectivists don’t know what Morality is! Are they even sure what a Nazi is?’ So my real question is: Should I take you seriously? When RPR calls union members Nazi’s should I take them seriously?
The Atheist Experience on Objectivism:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8584428047418862218#
Rational Public Radio:
http://www.rationalpublicradio.com/rational-public-radio-podcast/
