Ayn Rand aritcle on Fox News

[necrovore]

I spotted this article: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/five-reasons-ayn-rand-loved-united-states-america-right-live-ones-own-judgment

It's positive and covers the basics for somebody who might have never heard of Ayn Rand before.

I did not know that there was any news outlet that would still publish such a thing. (Many are too Leftist or too Christian.)

[Boydstun]

Pretty nice.

One misrepresentation: "But the core of her belief system is quite simple: Individuals are inherently "heroic," while governments only restrict human freedom, potential and happiness."

No. The core of her philosophy, even the human-value part of it, is not anything political. And within the political, it is false that Rand held that all governments "only restrict human freedom, potential and happiness." That is someone else's political view, not Rand's. On this point the author was doing the usual of distorting Rand's views to suit his own or his boss.

[necrovore]

I wonder if these errors might be a matter of imprecise phrasing. Maybe I am being too generous.

Not all individuals are inherently heroic -- but heroism, when it exists, is an attribute of the individual.

Governments -- when they overstep their proper bounds -- do only end up restricting human freedom, potential, and happiness. However, a government that does not overstep its proper bounds can be helpful in securing human freedom, potential, and happiness.

[Added later] I suppose I missed the big picture, though. You are right that the core of her philosophy is not political.

Edited July 19, 2023 by necrovore

[InfraBeat]

4 hours ago, necrovore said:

I wonder if these errors might be a matter of imprecise phrasing. Maybe I am being too generous.

You are. The error Boydstun mentioned is fundamental, egregious and flagrant. Only someone who is not paying attention to what Rand actually wrote and said would publish such a fundamental, egregious and flagrant misrepresentation.

[tadmjones]

To be fair , a fundamental error could likely occur from someone not paying requisite attention to a subject , but egregious and flagrant imply motivation to antagonize. It reads more like a positive though not full throated endorsement, a “puff” piece highlighting someone well known for their admiration of the Founders.

This author has penned several articles that feature “Meet the American who..” themes.

Edited July 19, 2023 by tadmjones

[InfraBeat]

2 hours ago, tadmjones said:

egregious and flagrant imply motivation to antagonize

No they don't.

[tadmjones]

The first definition I found for flagrant  says “conspicuously bad, offensive or reprehensible “  

That’s pretty consistent with the way I “hear it “ and use it which as far as I can see is also consistent with meaning to imply intent.

[InfraBeat]

4 hours ago, tadmjones said:

The first definition I found for flagrant  says “conspicuously bad, offensive or reprehensible “  

“conspicuously bad, offensive OR reprehensible“ [emphasis added]

So, I get to pick one or more of the three. I pick 'conspicuously bad', which is what I meant. Something can be conspicuously bad but not motivated to antagonize.

Also, I would lean toward reprehensible, but probably not all the way. Anyway, something can be reprehensible but not motivated to antagonize.

And something can be offensive but not motivated to antagonize.

And something can be all three - conspicuously bad, offensive or reprehensible - but not be motivated to antagonize.

And from Merriam-Webster: ": so bad as to be impossible to overlook : OUTRAGEOUS [example] a flagrant lie"

Something can be so bad as to be impossible to overlook but not intended to antagonize. And something can be outrageous but not intended to antagonize.

The example itself ("a flagrant lie") is an instance where something may be so bad as to be impossible to overlook and/or outrageous but not intended to antagonize. Altogether, an utterance may be conspicuously bad, offensive, reprehensible, so bad as to be impossible to overlook and outrageous but not intended to antagonize. 

4 hours ago, tadmjones said:

That’s pretty consistent with the way I “hear it “ and use it which as far as I can see is also consistent with meaning to imply intent.

It is consistent for something to be both flagrant and intended to antagonize. And it is consistent for something to be both flagrant and not intended to antagonize. Being flagrant does not imply being intended to antagonize.

Edited July 19, 2023 by InfraBeat

[tadmjones]

So you were just being hyperbolic, noted.

[InfraBeat]

5 hours ago, tadmjones said:

So you were just being hyperbolic, noted.

No, that is a complete non sequitur. I can't fathom how you would infer from anything I wrote that I was being hyperbolic. Meanwhile, at least you know now that 'flagrant' does not imply 'meant to antagonize'.

Edited July 20, 2023 by InfraBeat

[tadmjones]

On 7/19/2023 at 1:46 AM, InfraBeat said:

You are. The error Boydstun mentioned is fundamental, egregious and flagrant. Only someone who is not paying attention to what Rand actually wrote and said would publish such a fundamental, egregious and flagrant misrepresentation.

"Only someone who is not paying attention to what Rand actually wrote and said would publish such a fundamental misrepresentation" conveys the author's error , why did you qualify the misrepresentation if not to antagonize a good faith and reasoned approach at critique of the piece?

Edited July 20, 2023 by tadmjones
added text

[InfraBeat]

34 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

why did you qualify the misrepresentation if not to antagonize a good faith and reasoned approach at critique of the piece?

Oh, I see. You meant that I meant to antagonize.

"antagonize: to incur or provoke the hostility of"

Who do you claim I am motivated to incur or provoke their hostility? The writer? No, it's quite unlikely the writer would ever know of my post, and if he did, then he wouldn't necessarily be provoked to hostility. You? No, when I said what I said about the article, I was not motivated to provoke your hostility? Other readers of this forum? Again, no. And why would I even want to antagonize the writer or others reading this thread?

Moreover, in full generality, I said what I said to express my view, not to antagonize anyone and not to avoid antagonizing anyone (if one is antagonized, then that is their choice, even though I merely stated my view). 

And, that motivation could be presumed of anyone writing their views, unless they otherwise clearly write something intended to antagonize beyond merely stating their views. 

So instead of first considering the most plausible explanation - that I meant to state my view, at face value - you jumped to the ridiculous, implausible conclusion that I meant to antagonize.

Whether the article is in good faith or reasoned, the writer did not do a reasonable amount of research to see that Rand would never say that governments only restrict human freedom, potential and happiness, and especially it is not a "CORE" belief of hers. [emphasis added] He flagrantly made that up while failing to even read a chapter of Rand on the subject.  Rand is extremely clear that the role of governments is to protect freedoms, and some governments do that (albeit imperfectly or while also restricting other freedoms), which IS a core belief of hers. That instance in the article is an example of shoddy, hacky, and misleadingly glib writing. 

Edited July 20, 2023 by InfraBeat

[tadmjones]

I made the claim based on your choice of egregious and flagrant and my apprehension of their use in this specific instance. You've said yourself that it is both consistent to infer motivation from those , while at the time consistent to not infer motivation, I suppose I was just being consistent.

[InfraBeat]

1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

I suppose I was just being consistent.

Consistent, but wrong and a non sequitur.

"Jim has blue eyes" is consistent with "Jim weighs less than 150 pounds". But it is a non sequitur to infer from "Jim has blues eyes" that "Jim weighs less than 150 pounds".

I said the passage is egregious and flagrant (actually, it occurs to me now that that is fairly redundant). The fact that I said the passage is egregious and flagrant is consistent with the proposition that I am an expert Pinochle player though I am not. You chose to go past the given (that I said the passage is egregious and flagrant) to the false, implausible and ridiculous claim that I was motivated to antagonize.

Edited July 20, 2023 by InfraBeat

[tadmjones]

okay.

[necrovore]

Looks like they brought out another one: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/five-ways-ayn-rand-predicted-americas-political-crises-parents-spurned-rise-cancel-culture

 

[Boydstun]

"The promise of centralized education took money out of local communities, funded a massive bureaucracy and gave back pennies on the dollar but with the authority to influence local policy through federal purse strings."

He's got the United States confused with some other country. Here there was no such promise or vision of centralized education. There was the policy and practice of holding schools to the US Civil Rights Act if they receive federal funds. 

How K-12 Education is Funded

Massive Resistance history here in my state.

Virginia Avoidance of Desegregation – History that some parents want suppressed and other parents want sounded loud and clear. (And some of we non-parents who financially support these schools take these opposite sides also.)

Edited July 25, 2023 by Boydstun

[DavidOdden]

Under the premise that you lead with your main conclusion, Byrne makes a significant error in saying that the US is being “weakened by an erosive array of social, economic and political forces”. This is a good example of the concrete-boundness that characterizes the disease of Disintegration. The cause is philosophy, which leads to social, economic and political results, as well as legal and education, and any number of other concrete manifestations. Also, “erosive” is a bit of a floating abstraction (what does “erosive array of forces” even mean? Does he mean “array of erosive forces?”).

“The deterioration of traditional cultural norms and the social upheaval that’s followed — from the living room to classroom the boardroom — is no surprise to Ayn Rand scholars”. Well, I for one am surprised, first because those unspecified traditional cultural norms were, in part, rotten, and were badly in need of deterioration. OMG the traditional norm of heterosexual mono-racial religious marriage with women playing the role of baby-makers and housekeepers has deteriorated, America is doomed! So the underpinnings of the article are rotten, and cannot be repaired by a later add-on quote “She understood that culture, society and politics are shaped by philosophy and when she saw the philosophical trends of the 1940s and 1950s she knew where it would eventually lead”.

Let’s see now how the analysis fares w.r.t. education. Again, the conclusion to be proven here is “Centralized educational bureaucracy has reached deeply into local education in recent decades — to the quantifiable detriment of the system and the nation’s schoolchildren”. The vaguely-hinted-at idea here is that a uniform federal education system is plainly inferior to an erosive array of disparate state level education systems. This is an instantiation of the states-right premise that, for some mystical reason, government action at the state level is automatically better than government action at the national level. Which I suppose would be because it is better for each smaller group of individuals defining a state will better protect individual rights because the group is small. So, it’s not the level / size of government that counts, it’s the fact of government at all that counts.

But actually, the problem is not just about government messing things up, it is about bad philosophy messing things up. Private education can be as bad or worse than public education. The worst institutions of higher education are, in my opinion, private and not governmental. It’s not that they are bad in the sense that they can’t teach that 2+2 = 5, it’s that they very effectively teach evil ideas, especially wokeism. The direct consequence of this training is – that’s where grade school teachers come from. This year’s corrupted college student at a private university becomes next year’s school teacher (private or public, elementary or high school, it doesn’t matter), and next decade’s administrators and eventually operators of the school who sets policy.

I don’t think the article is terrible, it is just disappointing in a predictable way. How about that religion thing? What is the main cultural vehicle for the promulgation of altruism?

[EC]

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned changing the proper name Objectivism to "objectivism" in the first article (I didn't read the second). But what all of you are discussing is actually the common practice of media trying to make an issue "palpable" to their "core audience" instead of showing something as it actually is. It's not actual news or completely unbiased and *objective* that is ever conveyed but a form of mass marketing that dresses up and changes facts for a usually political purpose. David Odden is correct that it's source is disintegration and concrete-bound thought that doesn't apply valid principles.

[necrovore]

The only value in articles like this is that they may prompt people to investigate Objectivism when they otherwise might never have heard of it (or when they have heard only bad things about it).

[EC]

I quote Peikoff with one addition added in parentheses which also applies to the "libertarians" and not just the so-called "potential allies" involved in these types of mass-media inaccurate puff-pieces.

"The real enemy (or "friends") of these men is not Ayn Rand; it is reality. But Ayn Rand is the messenger who brings them the hated message, which, somehow, they must escape or dilute (some of them, I think, never even get it). The message is that they must conform to reality 24 hours a day and all the way down."

Edited July 28, 2023 by EC
bad spelling

[necrovore]

Another puff piece today: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/five-ways-ayn-rand-can-save-america-empowered-individuals-not-government-key-national-salvation