Rand saw Robin Hood as a looter (a thief of the producers) to give to the moochers (the people who drained the system of its resources and put nothing back). \u201cTo steal from the rich and give to the poor.\u201d Classic redistribution of wealth scenario.
\n
\nWhat I don\u2019t get is how she misread the story. If you remember, Richard the Lionhearted had gone off to the Crusades, leaving his brother, John, in charge of the place. John and his pet nobles began to impose heavy taxes against the people, against which they had no defense and then, no livelihood. What Robin Hood did was to steal from the tax leviers and entourages (the looters and moochers) to give back to the tax payers (the producers).
\n
\nNot sure where or how she missed this.<\/div>\n
2. Galt\u2019s Gulch couldn\u2019t run without the regular joes.<\/strong><\/p>\nIf I remember correctly, throughout
Atlas Shrugged<\/em>, the regular joe worker isn\u2019t given enough credit for his contribution. Now, it\u2019s been a while since I read it, but there are none in Galt\u2019s Gulch. No matter how technologically advanced a society is, you need people to manufacture your commodities, to clean up after you (sewer and garbage), and to run the power plants so you can have read at night and get the interwebz. I get no sense that she made an accommodation for this matter of fact.<\/div>\n3. Rand\u2019s atheism.<\/strong><\/p>\nOh, I don\u2019t care if she believed in God or goats, but deep in my soul, I believe that objectivism is more suited to theism than atheism. Forgive me for not fleshing this out further because my thoughts on it aren\u2019t coherent at the moment.<\/div>\n
4. The lack of charity.<\/strong><\/p>\nI\u2019m not as generous as I\u2019d like to be, but Suze Orman says it best: \u201cTake care of yourself first, then take care of others.\u201d In any case, I have a deep and abiding respect for
private <\/em>charity. The following is from an AP story from June 25, 2007:<\/div>\n\n\u201cIt tells you something about American culture that is unlike any other country,\u201d said Claire Gaudiani, a professor at NYU\u2019s Heyman Center for Philanthropy and author of \u201cThe Greater Good: How Philanthropy Drives the American Economy and Can Save Capitalism.\u201d Gaudiani said the willingness of Americans to give cuts across income levels, and their investments go to developing ideas, inventions and people to the benefit of the overall economy.<\/p>\n
Gaudiani said Americans give twice as much as the next most charitable country, according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation. In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. ranked first at 1.7 percent. No. 2 Britain gave 0.73 percent, while France, with a 0.14 percent rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My church has a long and storied history of giving and taking care of others, starting with its abolitionist efforts, then feeding the Native Americans who were driven off their lands by the US government (with which they could identify most poignantly). We have a welfare program. We have emergency plans that whip into action when disaster strikes.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s incumbent upon those of us who profess to follow Christ\u2019s teachings to be charitable and take care of our neighbors:<\/p>\n
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction \u2026 James 1:27<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That said, you can see where I\u2019d disagree with this:<\/p>\n
My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue. [From Playboy<\/em>\u2019s 1964 interview with Ayn Rand]<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI do believe it\u2019s a moral duty and primary virtue. I just don\u2019t believe it should be mandatory<\/em><\/strong> (i.e., taxation for the purpose of redistribution of wealth).<\/p>\nI disagree with her in specificity more than I agree, but she makes her case strongly and I can distill the core principles I agree with and discard the rest\u2014and value her on that basis.<\/p>\n
My love for her thought is simply the principles of excellence, self-sufficiency, keeping what one earns without the government taking it to give to someone else, producing and earning.<\/p>\n
And, oh, the sex. Hawt.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Haven\u2019t talked about politics much, have I? Yeah. There\u2019s a reason for that: I\u2019m pretty burnt out. Barack Obama: Untried newbie left-wing liberal with a yen to reach into my pocketbook. Yawn John McCain: Moderate liberal who gave us McCain-Feingold attempting to pull the wool over the conservatives\u2019 eyes. Yawn (Don\u2019t get me wrong. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[548,87,108,547],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","category-money","category-politics","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17109,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/17109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}