Needed to be said.

Ultimately, that is one of life's greatest questions is it not: Did we exist before this life, what is the purpose of this life, and what happens after we die?

If one wants fulfilling answers to either of these, Libertarianism is going to leave them wanting. If one is satisfied with one's direction in life and being concerned with being able to direct one's own affairs with a minimum of outside influence, Libertarianism fits that bill to a T.

I would also note that Glenn Beck does not describe himself as a Libertarian (capital T) but that he identifies with many libertarian principles such as the right to self-determination, limited government, etc. He stops short of a 100% Libertarian (such as John Stossel) who favors legalization of drugs and prostitution and other fairly liberal social policies. In that I would agree with SkySoldier that a 100% Libertarian is not going to jive with a 100% Judeo-Christian belief. Can they come close? Sure - a lot closer than either will come to a Progressive.

I don't disagree with you - you make excellent points, I just point out a glaring flaw in Rand's philosophy that directly stems from her antagonism towards and disdain for religion, which in my opinion is unjustified and more than a little shortsighted. How does one objectively value the productive role of a child? I ask this seriously as a parent of nine. Estimates according to the USDA place the costs of childrearing at $17,000 per annum for just the first child. Extend this to 18 years (adulthood) and you get quite a tidy sum - enough that it would be ridiculous to expect recompense over even a lifetime of productivity without creating slaves of the children. If monetary value comparison is insufficient, to what other measure do we turn? Christianity provides a very simple solution: charity and one's relationship to God as His children. Objectivism rejects such concepts simply because they originate in religion and must then turn to lengthy rationalization, which just comes up short to me.

I also point out the case of a severely autistic or Down Syndrome individual, like my 52-yr old uncle. Rand can not account for such under her objectivist philosophies because these individuals are of such high maintenance as to render them incapable of successfully engaging in society at a level of creativity or productivity to offset their development and maintenance costs - potentially ever. Do they own themselves? As perpetual "moochers" are they entitled to the fruits of the productive? Is there an entitlement owed by the productive to those of such limited cognition and ability? If so, where is the line drawn between the capable non-producer and the incapable non-producer? If not, what do we do with them?

I pose the questions only because that is how one refines a philosophy - by looking at as many cases as possible and attempting to come up with a ruleset that encompasses every case. If a philosophy stumbles upon a case for which its rules create a direct contradiction, this suggests an imperfection or incompleteness in the philosophy which should be addressed.

Virtues of selfishness is a great book. I have read it twice and will likely read it again.

Did Christ teach altruism or did it get added in later? Was it altruism that allows Christ to be a perfect being, or was it selfishness? Your view of Christ and mine are likely very different.

As far as a rational reason to think god exists, just open your eyes look around you. The evidence is all around you. As to gods exact nature that is something that can be debated, but a creator who made the building blocks that life is built on is an axiom unless you wish to entertain the notion that creation can occur without a mind behind it. Such a notion is nonobjective, some mind was behind the creation of things. Could it still be around, sure. Could that mind have died out like is proposed in the fictional TV show Stargate. Sure. It is irrational to think that some type of creator does not exist.

Organized individuals aren't.

See? It's opinions like this with no rational underpinning at all, that is destroying the GOP. The "Bible and its prophecies" are nothing but a line of bullshit and the sooner you break from this nonsense the sooner real conservatives can make progress.

Is anything that is organized collectivists then?

How do you even vaguely converge the altruism that Christ demanded of his followers with the virtue of selfishness? The inability of Republicans to understand that these ideas are mutually exclusive is the reason the GOP is failing in every state.

I might equally ask you what possible rational reason do you have to think that a 'god' exists?

It depends on the religion. One cannot follow the rules of Christ and also be a Libertarian and practice the virtues of selfishness. Rand herself makes this as clear as glass. Christianity is an altruistic religion, Catholic or Protestant makes no difference. Christ's words are what they are and either you follow them or you don't. It is the inability to converge these incompatible philosophies of Christ and Rand that is the reason for the failure of the Republican Party in the USA. Dump Christ and go with Rand or mark my words there will be a NEW CONSERVATIVE party in the USA by 2016.

I agree with you. I am a Scientologist myself, and I see no problem between that and Objectivism, even though Scientology recognizes the existence of a supreme being of some type. Objectivism is a philosophy of life and a political movement, and not meant to to an end-all in itself. I'm sure Miss Rand would be the first to agree.

Interesting point is that when I took the Objectivism philosophy course given by Dr. Piekoff in the 1970s, he defined "consciousness" as "that which is conscious of being conscious". Four years later when I read an intro book on Scientology, Hubbard originally used the term "awareness of awareness unit" as his scientific name for what traditionally we call a "soul", and he defined it as "that which is aware of being aware". Interesting parallel, eh?

He later shortened the term to "thetan" which was derived from the Greek letter theta which stood for life itself independent of the body. Hubbard then went on to say that the thetan is the actual person, then the mind and body are components the thetan uses to operate in the physical universe.

In any case, I agree with you that religion is very compatible with Objectivism. Whether religion is compatible with Libertarianism is quite another matter.

You people are something else. No wonder libertarianism isn't mainstream. I'm a Christian and I hesitate to say I'm libertarian precisely because of what I see here. If you *truly* believed that a free person can do what he wants without the government getting involved, than who cares if an individual is a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, or whatever else they want to be? You leave me alone, I leave you alone. Goodness sakes, people. Stop trying to be the smartest person in the room and let's band together to get the government out of our lives and quit arguing about all this petty stuff. You guys make the GOP look like one big happy family.

yes

What you should have said is that you are a theist and not an Objectivist. Theism is an irrational belief in an undefined, unidentified something which acted in ways unknowable at some unspecified time. Faith and reason are opposites and cannot be integrated. The universe is eternal and requires no creator. Existence and identity are axioms and are presumed in the act of explanation. Please be honest and say that you reject Objectivism at the most fundamental level.

Christianity is not a political philosophy. It is God's people that join together to worship Him and know that by their belief in Jesus Christ that they will have eternal life. To ignore the Bible and its prophecies is the choice that each person must make. God gave us free will and we can either choose to accept His path to eternal life or one can choose to believe that he/she is equal to every other living thing on this planet that was just an accident. What you believe your business.

Since the author admits to sharing the same religion as Glenn Beck (Mormonism) then I'd ask what "god" they yield to and what works must they do to reach their so-called celestial kingdom and become a god? For this reason and others Libertarianism is NOT compatible with Judeo-Christianity because it fits more with a humanist theology... self serving.

Rand spoke at great length about the responsibilities of being a parent. Where does Objectivism fail in regards to child-rearing? A child's most valuable productive role in a family is to gain knowledge and consciously think rationally. A two year old still struggles with the mastery of rational thinking over emotions. I am not a doctor so I am unsure where it changes but I would say somewhere in one's teens. I think it is rational and healthy for parents to encourage their children in productive, capitalistic pursuits prior to leaving the home and starting their own life.

Rand would have been greatly improved to have discussed her theories with CS Lewis. One of my particular favorites is "The Problem of Pain". I completely agree with her that it is pointless to believe in something irrational and non-definable, but I reject her overly broad characterization of organized religion - especially Christianity - as such. In order to be able to make such a pronouncement, she would be claiming her own omnipotence (all-knowing power), would she not? Is that not the height of self-deceit - to assert that someone else can know nothing simply because one says so?

No one is required to believe in Christianity or any other religion just as they are not required to believe in Rand's philosophies, but that does not mean that they are exclusive to each other, though I am aware Rand believes so. Nor does it support the assertion that one can not contain certain truths and the other also. Religion merely offers answers to questions of life that Rand's philosophies do not address. Does religion require faith in things that are but may not be immediately obvious at first? Absolutely and intentionally. Can these things eventually be empirically proven and substantiated? Yes, but only after believing that they MAY be first. Believing that they are not is self-fulfilling prophecy. But I digress.

You really need to read the entire comment. I intentionally took the statement to the extreme to illustrate the inherent absurdity in the statement in the first place.

Of course murder for hire is immoral, but Rand's defense of such on the principle of owning one's self completely fails to address a particularly meaningful part of the equation: WHEN we become our own masters. If we do not truly exist prior to birth, would not our parents have claim on our output and creativity until such a time as we had repaid them for their expenses in raising us? Would not this initially qualify as charity - anathema to Rand - since children consume far more in resources than they produce? That conundrum is answered quite easily by religion, but which Rand's philosophy stumbles over.

It is this type of reasoning that leads me to conclude that Rand's philosophical views which intentionally discount and exclude religion are limited and flawed. Christianity asserts that the reason for being self-aware in the first place is because we existed prior to this life - that parents are caretakers. Does that mean that Rand's economic theories are to be discarded? Certainly not. Only that her open disdain for organized religion colors her objectivity and prevents her from placing such in context of the greater whole.

To your statement that idolatry has been going on since the dawn of time. Please recognize that mysticism has been going on since the dawn of time. The definition of praying to a "false" God as Christianity teaches is merely a subset of mysticism in general. Ayn Rand on point:
"Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as “instinct,” “intuition,” “revelation,” or any form of “just knowing.”
Reason is the perception of reality, and rests on a single axiom: the Law of Identity.
Mysticism is the claim to the perception of some other reality—other than the one in which we live—whose definition is only that it is not natural, it is supernatural, and is to be perceived by some form of unnatural or supernatural means." Philosophy:Who Needs It?

"I would also point out that your example of the murderer-for-hire is actually entirely consistent with capitalism." this is an outrageous statement. Either you are ignorant about capitalism or you are purposely mis-characterizing. Capitalism is based on natural rights, which the most fundamental part is that you own yourself. Thus the murder-for-hire transaction is completely immoral because it violates the natural right of owning oneself.
If you want to criticize Rand publicly, you should at least know what she actually said. I would start with Capitalism The Unknown Ideal. Then come back to have this discussion. I'll be here. Here is a link.
http://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Signet-...

just so

If the pursuit and acquisition of wealth is the defining property of the worth of a man as Rand claims, then money becomes the idol of worship of Rand's philosophy. Idolatry has existed since the dawn of man, it is merely the identification of objects as the targets of veneration in philosophy, where the Christian ethos claims to venerate a being rather than an object.

Question: how does one value "man's life" as in Rand's claim if the only tool she acknowledges is money? If religious morality does not enter into the picture at some point, would not then a man's value terminate at death - regardless of his productivity during life? Without a valuation that supercedes monetary assets, death ultimately renders all actions in life moot, does it not?

Rand's observations about capitalism being the best method for wealth creation in society are accurate, but her denial of a moral responsibility to guide in the acquisition of wealth is completely undermined by the actions of the characters she chooses to employ. Her characters refuse to murder or steal or lie to accomplish their goals. Why? If wealth acquisition is the end game, why are these off limits?

In reality, Rand does acknowledge that there is morality which accompanies the pursuit of wealth, she just doesn't want to label or acknowledge it as such. (It's also the reason why Galt's interminable speech at the end of the book goes on longer than a politician's bloviation during an acceptance speech.) Thus to me, her philosophy is incomplete. She identifies some truths, but lacks the larger context.

I would also point out that your example of the murderer-for-hire is actually entirely consistent with capitalism. It is the morality of the transaction that is at question: the value to both parties clearly exists - it just comes at the expense of a third. But that's what happens when I choose one washing machine brand over another, is it not? Of course I take the example to the absurd end, but I do it to show that the example is bad - there is nothing in capitalism that guarantees no harm to a third party during a transaction. It is rather a matter of valuing one product or service over another, but it does come at a cost to the one not chosen, does it not? Is that not the concept of a superior product or service? The reason none of Rand's characters employ murder isn't because they wouldn't like to get rid of the idiots, but simply because they believe that on a level playing field their superior products/services would prevail and elimination of the competition in any way other than in the marketplace would not be a true measure of the value of their products/services - a just recompense of their opponents' inferior production.

Amen Brother

KYFHO