Equiv

C.S. Lewis is represented in the modern day christian apologetics with such books as "Handbook of Christian Apologetics" by Peter Kreeft, who constantly cite him in the book. The book is a strange mix of frustration (they use lots of false dilemmas and intimidation such as "either the world was entirely insane or jesus is telling the truth, which is most likely?") and don't seem to understand that Randian Objectivism exists (they spend 99% of the time refuting skepticism and subjectivism). Kreeft's book has an entire chapter in the back of this book called "Objectivism" (he obviously in context means it in the little 'o' usage) that is essentially a lesson plan for some weird mix of Randian-Thomism, as nearly as I can describe it. It seems bizarrely familiar in some places as though Kreeft were cribbing from Objectivism, as the major technique in this chapter is make sure that christian apologetics do not engage in the stolen concept fallacy, and understand the importance of the hierarchy of concepts as a basic debate technique (something I was delighted to see, since I have read of few that realize the importance of these). The major arguments against subjectivism consist mainly in the use of self-refutation (skepticism applies to itself, or 'how do you know you know? I know because I wouldn't otherwise know to know" comeback to the validity of the senses. All in all, fascinating and frustrating and little creepy to see, but in a few debates I had over philosophy, these apologetics would end up agreeing with me more often than anyone else entirely due to the fact we were the only ones that knew of these fallacies and avoided them, or used them against our opponents. Anyone else ever had that experience?

The Objectivist George Reisman authored a massive tome named "Capitalism" that is his synthesis of Classical Economics and Austrian Economics and Objectivism. He uses both efficiency and moral arguments.

Bastiat's book "On Economic Sophisms" has a lot of discussion about the hoax of machines causing unemployment. I believe Ayn Rand admired his works. Two excerpts: "... man's inventions do not lessen his opportunities for employment, as the facts in general attest, since there are more of both among the English and the French than among the Hurons and the Cherokees; and, in that case, I am on the wrong track, though I know neither where nor when I lost my way. I should be committing the crime of treason to humanity if I were to introduce my mistake into the legislation of my country." and: "We do not deny that in the course of the transformation [of society toward using more machinery] a certain amount of labor will have been displaced; but we cannot agree that it will have been destroyed or even lessened. "