Ayn Rand rising ...

[Jason M. Hendler]

Ayn Rand rising:

Link

Rand, Malthus and even Nietzsche are being rediscovered, because they are necessary to plot our way through this morass.

[dagwood55]

I have found that those asking, "Where is John Galt?" are often more like the moochers that drove him into exile than they are like John Galt.

Of course, Rand was nuts. Have you read her "critical" essays? What a load of crap... quoting her own fictional characters to prove her philosophy.

But I must admire her ability to exploit the Barnum Priniciple and sell books to the weak-minded. Very lucrative, that.

[Jason M. Hendler]

Dag,

In what way do you find those asking "Where is Galt?" more like moochers? I ask because I suspect you don't understand the concepts.

Crazy? - just more of the same old slanders used against some of the most important thinkers in history. Leftists will always call the likes of Rand, Malthus et al crazy, sexually deviant and bitter loners. At least some portion of the population sees through this.

The Barnum Principle is just as applicable to Marx, Hitler and Darwin. Rand's viewpoint is non-obvious, but becomes clear to any wealth creator who is looted and slandered as greedy.

[dagwood55]

"Crazy," as applied to Ayn Rand, is not slander, it's the simple truth. Check out her personal life, especially with respect to Nathaniel Branden. As I said, I've read her so-called "critical essays" and she proved every facet of Objectivism by quoting people she had made up and put into ridiculous situations. As for her novels, Rand simply wrote science fiction that lacked any sort of technological advance. It was on par with stuff Heinlein wrote but he had the advantage f being able to envision different technologies and how we might use them (although he had his limits there, too).

And the adherents to Objectivism that I have met, in the flesh, are losers. They have a chip on their shoulder about the government and any kind of collective action holding us down or back or whatever but they're actually recipients of government largesse that they fail to acknowledge. The most obnoxious are the ones that come into school looking for more and more and more for their kid and taking shots at idle government workers on the way out.

If I'm ever going to have a better opinion of Objectivism, it will only come after it gets a better class of members.

[Jason M. Hendler]

Dag,

Did Rand write anything about public / private education? Not sure what Objectivists think society's responsibility is to educate, but I suspect she approves of some form of education. I personally don't care for the leftist indoctrination that occurs. Students should be learning how to sustain themselves.

[Jason M. Hendler]

MICHAEL BARONE - Tuesday's Biggest Loser: the Union Agenda

Link

The Gallup organization reports that Americans are less pro-union than they have been at any time since it first started asking the question in 1936.

[dagwood55]

"Did Rand write anything about public / private education? Not sure what Objectivists think society's responsibility is to educate, but I suspect she approves of some form of education."

Are you kidding? I don't recall the details. I laughed off her work 35 years ago when I learned that "scholarship" doesn't include making sh!t up (I learned this in high school - I attended a good one - and this lesson was reinforced in college).

"I personally don't care for the leftist indoctrination that occurs. Students should be learning how to sustain themselves."

What "leftist indoctrination" is that? I find this to be a typical remark from someone who hates "liberalism" and thinks teachers are universally "liberal" but who hasn't actually been in a classroom for years. The real deal on schools is that teacher's don't have time to indoctrinate anybody with leftist ideals; they're too busy trying to get the students to actually learn how to read, write and calculate and the job is made more difficult because a large number of very selfish parents have completely abdicated their responsibilities for raising their own children and a good fraction of the remainder are focussed on their child's sports career. And that's just the lucky teachers who work in schools where most of the kids actually have two parents.

[Altazi]

Originally Posted by dagwood55

"I personally don't care for the leftist indoctrination that occurs. Students should be learning how to sustain themselves."

What "leftist indoctrination" is that? I find this to be a typical remark from someone who hates "liberalism" and thinks teachers are universally "liberal" but who hasn't actually been in a classroom for years. The real deal on schools is that teacher's don't have time to indoctrinate anybody with leftist ideals; they're too busy trying to get the students to actually learn how to read, write and calculate and the job is made more difficult because a large number of very selfish parents have completely abdicated their responsibilities for raising their own children and a good fraction of the remainder are focussed on their child's sports career. And that's just the lucky teachers who work in schools where most of the kids actually have two parents.

It seems obvious that one firmly on the left side of the spectrum such as yourself would be unaware of the left-leaning bias in education. The vast majority of educrats, administrators, curriculum coordinators, teachers' unions, and teachers are liberals.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,557983,00.html
http://www.chacha.com/question/what-...rs-are-liberal
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/orig...iberal_or.html

Show me how this can't help but bias the education the students receive. Some bias is in the form of true indoctrination - teaching global warming as fact, when the science isn't settled - but the rest is subtle, but omnipresent.

My wife works at a school, and is required to belong to a union. She regularly gets union newsletters telling her how to vote on candidates and issues. They have never opined in favor of a conservative issue or candidate.

[dagwood55]

And does she then tell the students how to vote?

Your links are a laugh. So teacher identify as Democratic... so what? Most of the country identified as Democratic (but often voted otherwise) until fairly recently. Does that mean they're indoctrinating anyone?

I find it telling that university professors are overwhelmingly liberal. The more you think, I guess, the more liberal you get. Makes sense to me. Leaves an opening, though, for idiots who don't happen to bel liberals to whine about unfair treatmen when they get rightfully canned. Of course liberals who get rightfully canned often whine, too, their whining usually just takes a different tack.

You might as well continue your survey of university professors... the last time I looked at this, the hard sciences faculty also leaned liberal. That's how people get indoctrinated with such "liberal" ideas as evolution and quantum theory.

[pdt]

I hated all those left-leaning reading teachers making me read LEFT to right and all those left-leaning math teachers making me...add left to right? Don't get me started on chemistry and physics teachers...and gym teachers, those are the ones that really turned me liberal...all that square dancing in middle school, I'm pretty sure they made us go counter-clockwise, that's left, right?

There are many things that could be better about our education system, but making it more "centrist" is not high on the list. Personally, I think the lack of economics and comparative religion in high school are big gaps. Of course, if economics were taught it would probably just be the same baloney I was taught in college, but even more watered down. I'm guessing both the left and the right would probably fall over themselves to be the first to protest a comparative religion class. That would be fun to watch, at least for a few minutes.