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[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
In what at first glance seems to be nothing more than just a saccharine, sentimental display of performed outrage and feigning victimhood, Zohran Mamdani, the New York City Mayoral candidate slated to become the Big Apple’s first Muslim mayor, instead pitched a dangerous performance that can only be described as a subtle incitement to elicit Muslim rage and resentment against the United States of America.
In an address to his constituents on Friday, October 24, Mamdani listed a tearful bevy of indignities that Muslims faced in America in the wake of the Islamic attack against the United States on September 11, 2001. He emotionally recalled how his late aunt was fearful of wearing her hijab on the New York subway for fear of reprisals. He was happy his mosque was not burnt to the ground, but he complained that to be a Muslim in New York was to suffer endless indignities.
He bemoaned the fact that not every Muslim in New York was treated the same as every other New Yorker. He claimed that Muslims lived in the shadows, that they had been asked to settle for less, and forced to settle for whatever little they received. Specifically addressing his fellow Muslims in the audience, he asked them if they would remain in the shadows or step into the light.
In what can only be described as hyperbolic defiance, he listed the number of days remaining until the Mayoral election and then stated: I will not change who I am, how I eat, or practice the faith I am proud to call my own.”
And further: “I will be a Muslim man each of those days.”
Let us begin with the last the last proclamation, that he will be a Muslim man for each of those days. What is the fundamental intention of a mayoral candidate who is supposed to be representing the residents of New York City regardless of their race, religious creed, ethnicity, or any personal identity they align with in making such a declaration? What is his message? Before we explore the dark side of Mr. Mamdani’s agenda, consider for a moment the outrage that would follow if a white candidate addressed his constituents and said, “In the remaining days leading up to the election I will be a white man each of those days”; or a Jewish candidate announcing “I intend to be a Jewish man for the remainder of my candidacy.” What if President Obama had run on a platform in which he emphasized past injustices against black people and announced that as a Presidential candidate he would be a black man each of the remaining months or days until his candidacy came to an end? Consider the most extreme version of any scenario: a gay mayoral candidate announcing I will be a homosexual man each of those days remaining until the election.
Reasonable folks know what their responses would be in the scenarios outlined. They would sense the pestilential odor of tribal politics, the concomitant political and moral divisiveness that is explicit in the statements, and they would properly reject such candidates as identitarian political hacks at best.
In his defense, Mamdani was responding to what he experienced as anti-Muslim comments exchanged between his mayoral rival, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, and WAMC radio host, Sid Rosenberg. During the radio interview on Friday, October 24, Cuomo questioned Mamdani’s ability to govern and wondered how he would lead and respond if another 9/11 attack occurred on American soil. Rosenberg suggested that Mamdani would be cheering. Cuomo laughed at the comment and responded, “That’s another problem,” then continued to question Mamdani’s ability to lead in times of crisis.
Politics is a cruel bloodsport. If Mamdani thought the attack was baseless and unfair, then the best manner in which to defend himself would have been to assert his American identity, his patriotism, and his commitment to defending America and the values and foundational principles that secure the republic.
But that is not what he did. He traded moral principle for manufactured discontent in his Muslim supporters. One senses he was only too happy to be criticized so that he could use the opportunity to arouse the disgruntled sentiments of Muslim Americans and immigrants, and to incite rage in those who had not any.
America has never demanded that Mamdani change who he is, what he eats, or the faith that he is proud of. It has never demanded that of any Muslim in this country. Rather than address Cuomo directly as any mature and seasoned politician would, he seized the moment to insinuate that Islamophobia is a widespread phenomenon in the United States of America.
He has conveniently forgotten that not only are there thriving and unmolested Muslim communities all over America, but that there is a public call to prayer (adhan) for Muslims in Detroit and its surrounding communities most notably in Dearborn which has an extremely large Muslim population. Several mosques in Dearborn and Detroit broadcast the call to prayer several times a day on loudspeakers.
He seems to have forgotten that Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress, was sworn in January 2007 and used Thomas Jefferson’s English translation of the Quran for his ceremonial oath. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was also sworn in January 2019, and used her grandfather’s Quran for her oath as one of the first two Muslim women in Congress. Let us not forget Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), also sworn in January 2019. Tlaib used her own copy of the Quran for her oath and is notable as the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress. She, along with Ilhan Omar, are ardent critics of America, and they spew invectives against this country in a manner they could never dare utter even as mild criticisms, not in Palestine, or in Omar’s native Somalia.
Mamdani seems to have forgotten that the United States practices religious reciprocity which allows, among other things, him as a Muslim man to run for political office as a Muslim in a nation of Christians. The irony is not lost upon him. He knows that if Muslims were forced to live in the shadows as he claims they are, that the financial achievements and political victory that he and several other Muslims have achieved in this country would not have been possible. Could he be in the privileged position he occupies if there were forces percolating to annihilate who he is, to dictate what he eats, and to take away his faith?
He knows full well, that there is no religious reciprocity in any (and I do mean any) Muslim county in the world to the extent that it is practiced in the United States. He knows that if individuals who happened to have been Christian had launched an attack against Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, or any Muslim country, that they would have been executed and, I conjecture with a great degree of plausibility, a wave of mob attacks would have been launched against said Christians in those countries.
Against the backdrop of this knowledge, Mamdani did not truly play the role of victim in his address. He performed it on behalf of the majority of Muslims in America who wear their hijabs and burkas undisturbed in their neighborhoods and cities.
People remember that after the 9/11 attack, President George W. Bush went to great lengths to repeat—almost like a religious catechism—that America was not at war with Islam or with American Muslims. He entreated the country repeatedly to respect the dignity and rights of its fellow Muslim compatriots. Bush, we remember, stated that we were at war with Islamic extremists who advocated terrorism. And he went as far as to say—much to the consternation of many—that such extremism and its attendant jihadism were incompatible with true Islam.
Mamdani wants to undo the legacy of religious toleration which exists in the United States and instill deep fear and suspicion among Muslims in America towards their country by suggesting that this toleration was a lie in the first place. He has conveniently forgotten the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
We could be observing the unfolding of a power-luster and a religious demagogue in the making. His weapon is to induce fear and loathing among Muslims in America. And we know by way of Europe and the unholy mess that continent faces with the Islamification of major countries there – such as France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway to name a few – exactly what happens when a religious minority fears and loathes its host country or the country into which its citizens were born: its residents and citizens become radicalized. And by radicalized, I mean they turn against the values, mores, and defining attributes of their nation. They intend to transform the countries they reside in into religious theocracies, and/or Caliphates as the mullahs and imams in Paris, Lyon, and Marseilles, Rotterdam and various cities in England have made very clear their intentions.
“Londonistan,” as a moniker for London, is not a pejorative term coined by anti-Muslims. It is openly used and celebrated by several radical Islamic youths as both a descriptive and prescriptive term for the capital city of both England and the United Kingdom. The goal for Islamists is to transform the nation’s capital from a Western repository of values associated with equality, freedom, and liberty into one where all are subjugated and governed by Sharia—Islamic Law.
Every major revolution started with a seemingly anodyne gesture, an innocuous cry of the heart that ended up being a form of emotional thinking that persuaded the masses to conform to some nefarious goal or ideology.
We must remember that the Iranian Revolution involved a strategic alliance between left-wing groups and religious extremists. The common denominator that united them was not just a hatred of monarchy. It was hatred of the West and its values.
In his address on Friday October 24, Mamdani politicized and weaponized the identity not just of New York Muslims, but of every Muslim in the United States. Not only Muslims, but each supporter of Mamdani and his socialist utopian vision for a better New York are now torch carriers of Islamo-leftism. I suspect that he is not a democratic socialist in the way, say, Bernie Sanders regards himself. The language of socialism is the lingua franca Mamdani uses to seduce people who legitimately feel locked out of a decent life. It is a pseudo message of hope he advances for those who, not without good reason, feel that contemporary capitalism has not met their needs and often rendered their communities obsolete.
I suspect Mamdani is a socialist but a very dangerous type: an advocate of Islamic socialism that would be more in line with the socialist movements in several Muslim countries such as Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Syria under the Baath party. What did these countries have in common? They all implemented major land reform, and nationalization of industries and assets.
America, not just New Yorkers, will take a risk on Tuesday, November 4, 2024, when the next mayoral elections are held. But in particular, each New Yorker will need to ask him- or herself why they trust Mamdani to make New York a better place. Is it because he simply fills a vacuum no other politician seems poised to occupy? Or do they truly believe that this man can govern a city in a way that represents the well-beings of its inhabitants in manner that is not tied to some larger agenda, an agenda that we see proliferating and spreading by those whose political identities seem inextricably interwoven with their religious identities?
Our civilization does not have the luxury anymore of taking political risks, for the simple reason that the democratic right to fail, which comes with such risk taking, long expired when our civilization began careening towards an irreversible decline.
Only Ayn Rand’s secular and rational philosophy of Objectivism (not your Christianity nor any religion) taught at the universities can save America and the West now Jason.
And you know it!
Come out of the closet you consistent Objectivists philosophers wherever you are. Stop hiding under the fig leaf of Judeo-Christianity.
“A philosophy by its nature speaks to all of humanity, not to a particular time or place. A certain kind of philosophy, however, cries out to be heard by a certain place first.
Objectivism is preeminently an American viewpoint, even though most people, here and abroad, know nothing about it. It is American because it identifies the implicit base of the United States, as the country was originally conceived. Ayn Rand’s ideas would resolve the contradiction that has been tearing apart the land of the free, the contradiction between its ethics and its politics. The result would be not America as it is or even as it once was, but the grandeur of a Romantic pinnacle: America “as it might be and ought to be.”
If one judges only by historical precedent, this kind of projection is the merest fantasy; we are arguably past the point of no return. America, however, is a country without precedent, and man has the faculty of volition.” – Leonard Peikoff, “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”
Maybe Ann Rand needed to read a bible to really understand humanity. While she had a few good ideas, she was just as nuts as a jihadist.
You obviously are totally ignorant of Ayn Rand’s philosophy and writings to have embarrassed yourself with such a stupid, baseless comment.
Commentators, including Hazel Barnes, Nathaniel Branden, and Albert Ellis, have criticized Rand’s focus on the importance of reason. Barnes and Ellis said Rand was too dismissive of emotion and failed to recognize its importance in human life. Branden said Rand’s emphasis on reason led her to denigrate emotions and create unrealistic expectations of how consistently rational human beings should be,
One thing Rand’s critics never do is quote her directly and then try to refute her. So here you go, please find a flaw in this quote from Rand:
“An emotion as such tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something. Without a ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection—to the conceptual identification of your inner states—you will not discover what you feel, what arouses the feeling, and whether your feeling is an appropriate response to the facts of reality, or a mistaken response, or a vicious illusion produced by years of self-deception . . . .
In the field of introspection, the two guiding questions are: “What do I feel?” and “Why do I feel it?”…
Emotions are not tools of cognition . . . one must differentiate between one’s thoughts and one’s emotions with full clarity and precision. One does not have to be omniscient in order to possess knowledge; one merely has to know that which one does know, and distinguish it from that which one feels. Nor does one need a full system of philosophical epistemology in order to distinguish one’s own considered judgment from one’s feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.”
“Rand’s antagonists have unfailingly elected to pay her what is, perhaps, the greatest tribute one can offer to a thinker whom one opposes: they have all felt obliged to misrepresent her ideas in order to attack them.
No one has dared publicly to name the essential ideas of Atlas Shrugged and to attempt to refute them. No one has been willing to declare: “Ayn Rand holds that man must choose his own values and actions exclusively by reason, that man has the right to exist for his own sake, that no one has the right to seek values from others by physical force – and I consider such ideas wrong, evil, and socially dangerous.” – Nathaniel Branden
One can be an atheist anthropologist and still appreciate how the principles and temperament of Judeo-Christian/Greek thought are a superior cultural environment for hosting a liberal secular society.
It seems a paradox, but Rand’s ideas would have been impossible – or impossible to publicly promote – without the liberal society created by the Christianity of the majority of the Founders.
The “objective” examination of history shows that any society that rejected the Judeo-Christian/Greek foundation led to more tyranny and violence. (Imperial Japan, Pagan Nazi Germany, atheist Russia and China, Islamist Iran and Gaza).
Eric, I agree. Christianity led to the questioning of the Scottish Enlightenment and the evolution of liberalism in Europe, from which Ayn Rand ideas have evolved. Many of the ideas of liberalism were implicit in Aristotle, but Aristotle did not conceive of the complex of rights, a free economy, and limited government as the Scottish Enlightenment did.
Correlation is not causation.
The objective examination of the historical relationship between Greco-Roman philosophy and Christianity shows that Platonic Christianity produced almost 1,000 years of the Christian Dark and Middle Ages. A brutal theocratic period no different from what Islam produced.
The intellectually unrespectable, risible, Cult of Jesus became the religion of Christianity by borrowing the supernatural mysticism of the Greek pagan Plato’s philosophy to formulate some degree of intellectual respectability.
But what Augustinian/Platonic Christianity produced was the totalitarian theocracy of the Dark and Middle Ages. The American Puritans of the 17th century did not come to America to establish freedom of religion or freedom of conscience but to establish their own totalitarian theocracy. Martin Luther did not do battle with the Roman Catholic Theocracy in order to to establish freedom of conscience, individual rights, and individual liberty, but to correct and perfect the Roman Catholic Theocracy as he defined theocratic perfection.
The Founders and America are NOT the product of the Dark and Middle Ages of pure Christianity but the product of the Age of Enlightenment when the death grip Christianity had on the Western mind had been diluted and eroded. If you read the personal letters of a John Adams or Thomas Jefferson you come away with the strong suspicion that these Founders were closet atheists who publicly still had to profess belief or be banished and ostracized from the public square. What doubting Muslim today would dare come out of the atheist closet and risk persecution in a society immersed with Islam? The same was true of America in 1776.
The Age of Enlightenment was an age when reason became dominant over Christian faith. It was preceded by the Renaissance, the rebirth of Aristotelian secular reason, It took many centuries for Aristotelian reason and logic to slowly and painstakingly erode and dilute Christian mysticism.
It is the Greek pagan Aristotle who is the philosophical father of America not Jesus or Moses.
To Mitchell Langbert,
“The early Christians did contribute some good ideas to the world, ideas that proved important to the cause of future freedom. I must, so to speak, give the angels their due. In particular, the idea that man has a value as an individual — that the individual soul is precious — is essentially a Christian legacy to the West; its first appearance was in the form of the idea that every man, despite Original Sin, is made in the image of God (as against the pre-Christian notion that a certain group or nation has a monopoly on human value, while the rest of mankind are properly slaves or mere barbarians). But notice a crucial point: this Christian idea, by itself, was historically impotent. It did nothing to unshackle the serfs or stay the Inquisition or turn the Puritan elders into Thomas Jeffersons. Only when the religious approach lost its power — only when the idea of individual value was able to break free from its Christian context and become integrated into a rational, secular philosophy — only then did this kind of idea bear practical fruit.” – “Religion versus America” by Leonard Peikoff
Ben Shapiro wrote a book on exactly that.*** Religion without reason is fanaticism and reason without religion is . . . I forget. My memory!
***The Right Side of History:
Our freedoms are built upon the twin notions that every human being is made in God’s image and that human beings were created with reason capable of exploring God’s world.
We can thank these values for the birth of science, the dream of progress, human rights, prosperity, peace, and artistic beauty. Jerusalem and Athens built America, ended slavery, defeated the Nazis and the Communists, lifted billions from poverty, and gave billions spiritual purpose. Jerusalem and Athens were the foundations of the Magna Carta and the Treaty of Westphalia; they were the foundations of the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Civilizations that rejected Jerusalem and Athens have collapsed into dust. The USSR rejected Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, substituting a new utopian vision of “social justice” – and they starved and slaughtered tens of millions of human beings. The Nazis rejected Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, and they shoved children into gas chambers. Venezuela rejects Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, and citizens of their oil-rich nation have been reduced to eating dogs.
I’m just not sure how one can say that a single philosophic system, devised by a fallible human being, can save the world. To think that all of life’s problems can be irreducibly, categorically solved by the ideas of a single world-view smacks of cultism at worst, and ignorance and naivety at best. I have not even used a patina of Christian reasoning to augment, buttress, or validate any of the points in my article. What I have done is deploy reason, logic, common sense, and empirical evidence to establish a logical viewpoint. You have not engaged with any of my positions. You are so fixated on the notion that if an idea is not an Objectivist one, then it can never provide fruitful insight into a problem, or offer robust solutions to said problem. That approach is not philosophically tenable; neither is it empirically grounded in reality. I admire Ayn Rand. She was a genius. And I still teach her ideas in the same vein as I teach Aristotle, Mill, Locke, Hobbes, Sartre, Kierkegaard, and other thinkers who have impacted the field of philosophy. I am sorry to disappoint you: She did not have all the answers, and there were many fields of study in which she lacked expertise or even basic knowledge.
You are right Professor Hill, in this article you don’t mention Christianity but in many of your articles you favorably do. I’ve read every one of your articles that has been published here at Frontpage.
And though you did not mention Christianity in this article I will nevertheless state that Christianity is simply not the answer for saving America or the West. No religion is or can be. In fact the irrationality of the ideas that come from Christianity (the ideology of “social justice” comes from Christianity) is what is destroying this great country and it is the evil irrationality of Islam and Marxism that make Mamdani so dangerous and deadly.
From the very first days of its founding America has been torn and compromised by the contradiction between the altruist, supernatural, ethics of Jesus and the individual pursuit of happiness. Between the irrationality of Christian supernatural sacrifice and the “this worldly”, reality and nature based, and selfish system of Free Market Capitalism.
“Is religion more dangerous than socialism?
I believe that the medievals understood much better than the moderns on what basis to build a totalitarian society that would last and not collapse in less than a century. They did it and the people in the rising religious movement today know that full well. They’re the ones who have millions, upon millions, upon millions, of followers and a real insight into the fact that economics is not the crucial factor, but philosophy and culture are…. Religion has been the root of [totalitarianism] from the beginning, it has ruled in disguised forms, and still is, and now the disguise had to be stripped off… What socialism is doing is really helping religion, the bigger the statism, the more people grow accustomed to government rule over everything, the more people are ready for religionists to take over the lead from the more secular side… The socialists are building the basis for totalitarianism but only the religionists are going to cash in on it and take over.” – Leonard Peikoff
The Quran, the bible of Islam says in order for the messiah to come, the 12th Mahdi (not Jesus), all the religions of the world must convert to Islam or die. The world must fall under Sharia Law. Judaism is 5786 years old and Christianity is 2025 years old. No 1445 year old religion is going to dictate what we believe. 1.3 billion Muslims want to take over the world. They are taking over the US city by city. Minnesota and Michigan have started with 82,000 Muslims. Paterson NJ has started to fall. NYC is next. Once a Muslim gains a foothold in local government it is unstoppable.
Your mistake is replying and doing so with intellect and reason. THX is the most religious poster on this forum. He considers you an apostate.
Sorry but I think THX likes to see himself in print.
Bless your efforts at reasoned education, especially there in ‘Chicagoland’, and also the wider sphere, as in this article.
I still like what my Russian PoliSci 101 teacher proposed on day 1: what is a political (or any) systems’ view of man (human being) – Good? Or sinful?
I believe in objective Truth; not whatever I – or you- think. I believe Creator God reveals himself first, but not only, through the natural realm (“the heavens declare the glory of God”). I believe in the Judeo-Christian view of fallen (sinful) man. BECAUSE I believe in an ordered, all glorious Creator -LOVE (willing the good of the other), for absolute LOVE to BE love, it can’t be forced. Therefore, free will……possible rejection of the good…. evil.
When, as happens all the time, people question “why is there evil?” or “Why does God allow ____evil?” or other such variations, they ask wrongly and become like the accuser.
So, what of our condition of sin (not being God/good) ?
‘Sin’ has been answered by the creator Himself.
Cross…..
“There are many good people in the world who accept religion, and many of them hold some good ideas on social questions. I do not dispute that. But their religion is not the solution to our problem; it is the problem. Do I say that therefore there should now only be “freedom for atheism”? No, I am not Mr. Kemp. Of course, religions must be left free; no philosophic viewpoint, right or wrong, should be interfered with by the state. I do say, however, that it is time for patriots to take a stand — to name publicly what America does depend on, and why that is not Judaism or Christianity.
There are men today who advocate freedom and who recognize what ideas lie at its base, but who then counsel “practicality.” It is too late, they say, to educate people philosophically; we must appeal to what they already believe; we must pretend to endorse religion on strategic grounds, even if privately we don’t.
This is a counsel of intellectual dishonesty and of utter impracticality. It is too late indeed, far too late for a strategy of deception which by its nature has to backfire and always has, because it consists of confirming and supporting the very ideas that have to be uprooted and replaced. It is time to tell people the unvarnished truth: to stand up for man’s mind and this earth, and against any version of mysticism or religion. It is time to tell people: “You must choose between unreason and America. You cannot have both. Take your pick.”
If there is to be any chance for the future, this is the only chance there is.” – Leonard Peikoff, “Religion versus America”
So objectivism uses taqiyya, just like Islam.
Our founding Fathers prayed before every session in the House. Washington prayed before each battle. Our country was built on Religion. I reject your gobbledygook.
Objectivism is a philosophy for the few losers who still hope that the Town of Waterbury Connecticut will adopt a cartoon philosophy that didn’t catch on 60 years ago, 50 years ago, 40 years ago up to the present.
Guess what T, you are one of those losers. You will never learn. What’s it like to be stuck in a mid 20th C. timewarp. Better pull out that book entitled Atlas Shrugged and settle down with a nice cup of coffee as you drift off to dreamland.
YOU ARE A FOOL FOR SATAN. ISLAM IS EVIL, YES. MUSLIMS, WHO ADHERE TO MAMDANI’S IDEOLOGY ARE YES, AIDING AND ABETTING THOSE AGAINST OUR U.S. CONSTITUTION AND BILL OF RIGHTS.
BUT, AYN RAND WAS NOT 100% CORRECT IN EVERYTHING SHE WROTE. SHE WAS A PROPONENT OF ABORTION. So, that alone to me, MEANS SHE WAS AGAINST LIFE, WHICH IS WHAT GOD IS FOR. SATAN IS AGAINST LIFE. HE IS PRO-DEATH AND SO ARE THE MUSLIMS AGAINST PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT MUSLIM.
GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT, FOOL.
Who are you to say what G-D is for?
Most of the Libertarians today are just interested in drugs. They no nothing about economics.
I’m an Objectivist not a Libertarian. Ayn Rand rejected and intellectually demolished Libertarianism in no uncertain and scathing terms.
“For the record, I shall repeat what I have said many times before: I do not join or endorse any political group or movement. More specifically, I disapprove of, disagree with, and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called “hippies of the right,” who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs…
Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to “do something.” By “ideological” (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the “libertarian” hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies.” – Ayn Rand
“The “libertarians” . . . plagiarize Ayn Rand’s principle that no man may initiate the use of physical force, and treat it as a mystically revealed, out-of-context absolute . . . .
In the philosophical battle for a free society, the one crucial connection to be upheld is that between capitalism and reason. The religious conservatives are seeking to tie capitalism to mysticism; the “libertarians” are tying capitalism to the whim-worshipping subjectivism and chaos of anarchy. To cooperate with either group is to betray capitalism, reason, and one’s own future.” – Objectivist Harry Binswanger
“
Any true conservative should appreciate Rand’s “Francisco’s Money Speech.”
Unlike President Trump, who laughably thinks “”tariff’ is one of the most beautiful words in the dictionary,” at least Ayn Rand, like Adam Smith in 1776, and Ronald Reagan as expressed in Canada’s brilliant ad, understood tariffs. (Hmmm, Trump now wants more imports of Argentinian beef to lower beef prices. Somebody help the guy get his meds right.) Maybe someone should explain to him how tariffs hurt consumers..
per AI:
“Free trade is a moral principle: Rand saw free trade, which she defined as the abolition of trade barriers like tariffs, as an extension of the capitalist system that protects individual rights and production.
Tariffs hurt consumers: She argued that tariffs are a tax on consumers, increasing the cost of imported goods and potentially hurting domestic industries if those goods are inputs for other products. “
Trump just put a huge tariff on Argentinian beef. Stop with the lies from the leftist media. America first. Our farmers are first in Trump’s mind. Yes in China the tariffs they put on US goods is huge. Trump just reversed it. Putting tariffs on foreign vehicles coming into this country forced the manufacturers to open plants in the US South to evade tariffs. Jobs for the locals and cheaper prices for cars that didn’t have to come from halfway around the world.
I’m a big fan of Ayn Rand, but few people can live by objectivist principles. Christianity is the only context that has sustained freedom. The inventors of republicanism may have been the Athenians, whose democracy lasted for at most 180 years with interruptions. The Roman republic lasted about 482 years, but it was punctuated by dictatorship such as occurred under Sulla and the Final Decree of the Senate (Senate Consultum Ultimatum), which was used against Gaius Gracchus in 121., Arguably the US has seen drift toward dictatorship now, after 249 years, with the Democrats’ invention of lawfare and prosecution of Trump, Giuliani, Flynn, etc., but that has occurred as the Democrats have rejected Christianity and adopted secular humanism and state worship in place of Christianity and freedom. I very much doubt that the kind of people who vote for Madmani and AOC are capable of adopting the principles of Ayn Rand.
Impressive. I never heard anyone explain Ayn Rand’s diatribe so clearly.
In y near 4 decades of being a student of the Bible and 4 decades of calling on God and Jesus to prove to me THEY are real and no matter what show me the truth, which THEY have proved to me THEY are real and are still showing me the truth, one such powerful awareness is how the Bible came to be and how it has survived for over 2,000 years against all satanic pekkerhead Parasitic Mindsets that have tried to destroy the Bible and the people who have published it.
King James Version was revolutionary and took the Bible out of the hands and control of the Vatican, now matter what the political reason the bisexual King James ordered the Bible to be translated to the King’s English.
The Holy Bible Old and New Testament is the framework of powerful acts of survival and mindsets for humans that lead to books like “Think And Grow Rich” to military strategy and victories.
Once again, history repeating itself, Israel has defeated it’s enemy.
The diaspora is over and Semitic/Hebrew/Jews can claim our identity.
So in 325 AD at the Council of Nicaea the Catholic Church published the first New Testament. The Nicaean Creed came from that Conclave. The Catholic Bible was used until 1534 when Henry the 8th rebelled against the Catholic Church and started the first PROTESTANT Church, the Church of England, the Anglican Church. The KJV Bible was written in the early 1600s for the Church of England. It was the Catholic New Testament written in a language for the common people to understand.
Historically the philosophical development in the West can be said to be 2,500 years old. We make the mistake of assuming that we are today somehow outside that development looking in or looking back but in fact we are still right in the midst of it.
“In the history of mankind it is EARLIER than we think.
It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority rule, but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. The individual was not left at the mercy of his neighbors or his leaders: the Constitutional system of checks and balances was scientifically devised to protect him from both. This was the great American achievement—and if concern for the actual welfare of other nations were our present leaders’ motive, this is what we should have been teaching the world.” – Ayn Rand
Dear Mr. 1138,
May I remove the formality and call you by your first name, THX?
I tried reading Ayn Rand at some point in my adult life and fell asleep after a few pages.
The most boring writer I ever attempted to read.
I felt bad, but then decades later, I feel it’s a matter of interest.
Ayn Rand is boring diatribe that really means nothing unless one is one of those intellectual snobs on a toadstool puffing a pipe and lowering one’s spectacles at the world of proletariats and multibillionaires.
THX, it is up to you to simplify Ayn Rand’s writings into a brief written notes and one or two quotes explaining ‘whatchu talkin bout Willis?” In my multimillionaire entrepreneurial retired but still active, in the real world of capitalism, straight forward is the only clarity to get other people’s attention.
Oh yes, and dance, Don’t forget to dance and groove to the music at least once a day.
Carry on Captain and full speed ahead.
Peace Shalom.
Thx THX
Tell me a specific idea or quote of Rand you find difficult to understand and I’ll try to simplify it enough for you to understand. But keep in mind that simplification does have its limits.
I concur. Shalom is a 5000 year old word found in the Torah, the Bible of the Jews, the Old Testament. The Hebrew language is one of the oldest in the world still used today as the language of Israel. It can be read today as nothing had changed as it was passed from year to year by Jewish scribes. During Jesus’ time the common language was Aramaic. Hebrew was the Holy language spoken only by the Pharisees, the High Priests in the Temple.
Hi, I appreciate your points. One of the problems with the Enlightenment was that they tended to unnecessarily disparage Scholaticism and the work that was done in the Middle Ages. Scholarship in recent decades has tended to reveal that important advances were being made in the Renaissance and earlier. Incidentally, as Raynmond Ibrahim argues on Youtube, this is part of the reason that Western historiography and current academic ideologues are unnecessarily friendly to Islamic history–the Enlightenment tended to disparage the decisions made in the Middle Ages in reponse to Islamic brutality, sweeping Islamic brutality under the Enlightenment carpet. Martin Luther argued against a military response to the Ottomans’ invasion of Austria until it was almost too late. He changed his mind when he realized that Geneva might fall as well.
One example of the work done in the Renaissance was Oresme’s De Moneta, which was probably the first coherent work on monetarism. I recommend the great book by de Juvenal, On Power, which traces how centralization beginning in the late Middle Ages and through the Enlightenment led to modern totalitarian thinking.
The claim that the period after the sack of Rome was a “Dark Ages” ignores the strain that the West was under not just only tribal warfare from the 400s through the 700s, which demolished Rome’s food supply in North Africa but also the Islamic invasion and conquest of North Aftrica and Arabia, which had been Christian centers. The modern university (troubled though it be) was invented in the 1200s, and there were important advances in agriculture such as tge geavt plow, which was a forerunner of the industrial revolution and enabled the Normans’ reconquest of Southern Italy from the Muslims as the plow made Eruope much richer than it had been. William Lee’s invention of the stocking frame in 1599 marked the beginning of the indusrial revolution during the late Middle Ages. Much commercial innovation inclucing the first stock exchanges in the late middle ages. The term “bourse” comes from Belgium, where the first commercial exchanges began in the 1200s. Merchants in Bruges gathered outside the house of the Van der Beurze family, which displayed a sign of three purses. The French applied the term to their stock exchange in the late Middle Ages, the 1500s, before the Enlightenment.
My point is that you have an overly narrow view of the Middle Agtes based on Enlightenment propaganda.
Christianity can save America, Islam or Communism sure in the hell won’t. The Holy Spirit is moving in America today, it’s too bad NYC is about to make a bad choice that will bring hell on them. They will get what they vote for. Before blessings and forgiveness from the grace of God comes judgment, curses, and justice to all those that defy the one true God. We all need to repent and watch the wonderful things that God can do to the one’s who follow and trust in him.
Unfortunately it will bring Hell on the US. Many cities in Michigan and Minnesota have fallen to Sharia law., Paterson NJ just fell. Many cities in England and France have fallen. Islam will patiently take over the world.
Hello again THX – I hope you are OK. And, yes, reason is so important. When the apostle Paul spoke to those in the synagogue “he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving by references that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, saying: ‘This is the Christ, this Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you.’” (Acts 17:2, 3)
So Paul did not attempt to stir up their emotions. He appealed to their minds. And, indeed, if our faith is not based on reason, what is there to stop us, say, believing that the moon is made of green cheese – and worry that Elvis, living safely on the dark side, might be eating his way through it?
However – and bearing in mind that all I know about Ayn Rand is the Barbara Branden book – my impression is that she (Ayn) was much more at the mercy of her emotions than her philosophy allowed for.
We are all the damaged children of disobedient Adam after all. But something that was quoted
in that book made me feel that Ayn Rand did long for the perfection that prevailed in Eden.
There were no Scriptures in Jesus’ time. The Torah, the Old Testament was the Bible of the Jews for 4000 years. Written in Hebrew it was the Holy language of the Jews .The first formal New Testament was written by the Catholic church 325 years after Jesus. The New Testament tells the story of Jesus. How could it have been written while he was alive?
Hello Gandolf, all the Bible writers are Jewish, as the Jews alone were entrusted with God’s inspired word – a trust they carried out faithfully, for which we should all be very grateful. And it has one consistent message, from Genesis to Revelation.
And what a wonderful message it is. But it is not a message taught by the Catholic Church – unless they have changed their teachings radically since my (admittedly faraway) convent schooldays.
Mamdani is a traitor. Treason is an act of betrayal against the state or authority to which one owes allegiance. Mamdani is clearly an enemy of the United States of America. Treason used to be a capitol offence. Why is Mamdani free to commit treason?
He’s just practicing the islamic art of “tequila”. Ask the terrorists at the terror org CAIR.
Taqiyya, not “tequila!”
It could be autocorrection at send but thankfully saved the good name of tequila. Just ask mi heffy Jeffy…..
“Tequila” is a fun novelty song but it won’t be allowed under Sharia or Marxist law.
Mamdani is Inciting rage among Americans against muslims and the Islamization of America.!
Total nonsense. It is Islam which wants to take over the world. Once Islam has a toehold in a country the country will eventually cave under Sharia Law. The Quran, the bible of Islam says in order for the messiah to come, the 12th Mahdi (not Jesus), all other religions of the world must convert to Islam or die. The world must fall under Sharia Law. No 1445 year old religion is going to tell us what we need to do.
I would never vote for a Muslim for public office. And I will gladly
adhere to the conservative, Republican point of view – espoused
ad nauseum by politicians, thinkers, writers, pundits, journalists
etc. – that there are good Muslim people who just want to live
their lives in peace.
I would never vote for a Muslim – because that religion is violent
towards non-Muslims, especially Jews and Christians and is the
foundation of Sharia Law which is in opposition to the Declaration
of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
I would never vote for Mamdani. As for any cries of ‘Islamophobia’ –
cry me a river.
I would never vote for a Muslim or a Jerry Falwell type of Christian. John Ashcroft was a total Christian schmuck covering up the breasts of a statue of justice.
Gee John, why don’t you dress that statue in a burqa too, you know that women were made by God simply to tempt men into debauchery! Eve was an evil temptress we all know that!
Thank God President Trump is a nominal, Cafeteria Christian, who doesn’t take the vast majority of Christian nonsense as seriously as Falwell or Ashcroft.
I’d have invested in responding, but as my posts habitually await terminal “moderation” . . .
Yours also? Interesting mine also.
Mr. 1138, You spill your ignorance about true Christianity which has nothing to do with religion and churches. .
You cannot even see President Trump as God’s Man –not man of God.
YHVH’s Man include Abraham, Moses, David, etc. all the way to President Trump.
Understand this now. Humble yourself and ask this question to YHVH or wait until you leave your mortal coil and are in Paradise learning.
I say Paradise because your intellectual opinions are of ignorance and with no apparent sins that would keep you out of Paradise to lean before YHVH’S JUDGEMENT.
AS in my previous comment to THX 1138, it is by YHVH Blessings upon me as well as my decades of study and action that I am a multimillionaire, thankful, grateful, humble, happy and loving!
Therefore, a wee bit of friendly advice, stick to dreadfully quoting Ayn Rand and be cautious about criticizing things you know nothing about! 🙂
Shalom
And that story of his “aunt” being afraid to ride the subway is pure manufactured bullshit.
(Afterall; Bush41 busted his ass to make sure the religion-of-peace felt right at home.)
Used car salesman Mandami’s “if you love a criminal; set it free” policy has all people terrified to ride the subway every day.
Many get pushed on the tracks, robbed, mugged, threatened, set on fire, “Polar Bear hunted”, etc.
(And for good measure, only good Samaritans that defend passengers get prosecuted.)
“They just want to live their lives in peace.”
It’s the widespread espousal of that lie that has caused this entire mess! The road to hell is paved with “conservative and Republican” self-righteous “moral” delusions that drag the rest of us under with their dead wrong, dangerous naivety. All muslims’ allegiance is solely to the ummah of islam. Every other word a muslim says to infidels is a koran sanctioned lie. Muslims are not like everyone else. The rest of humanity is alike. Muslims are not. You are so wrong. Look at the horrors directly caused by your misguided self-serving pride. Unbelievable.
Annie got her guns — and it’s a 45!!
Boom–
These people who pray to a violent God have hated Christians and Jews since the inception of this gutter religion that is full of hate.
Like everything else it all comes down to free stuff. Free bus rides, rent freezes, housing for everyone., etc. Everything is free. At Mamdani’s last campaign stop where hundreds to thousands gathered they all applauded Mamdani and chanted “tax the rich.”
NYC is about to find out there won’t be anymore “rich” reading in the Big Apple to leech off of.
That should be residing not reading in NYC
like those spoiled brats in intellectual diapers full of poop that are being paid to protest or joining in wanting free stuff – there is no free ride – communism’s cost is greater than the cost of living in NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Chicago and Seattle combined
Read the Qur’an
•Allah constitutes the highest authority for human affairs;
• Shari’a, based primarily on the word of Allah {the Qur’an) and the practices of the Prophet Muhammad constitutes the ultimate law for all humans;
• apostasy consists of any rejection of the first two principles and constitutes a crime punishable by death;
• Muslims who reject the first two principles, any non-Muslim who rejects Islam by failing to convert, and democracies, because they assume that the people who are governed constitute the ultimate authority for human affairs, count as examples of apostasy. The norms of jhadic behavior follow from these assumptions:
• democracies should be destroyed; and
• all individuals guilty of apostasy, Muslim or non-Muslim, should be killed. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
The author must understand that those Muslims he deems “radical” or “radicalized” are nothing of the sort- they are normative Muslims who are believing and acting in accordance with the universally agreed-upon (by Muslim clerics, jurists, and scholars) precepts of Islam itself. Neither are they “extremists.”
For those who are not paying attention, it was a preview of what NYC and other major US cities are about to get slammed with: Marxist Islamists. Mamdani did not sprout out of nowhere. He was installed by the movement behind the Islamic take-over, just like the Mayor of London was. Mamdani and his supporters are positively ghoulish in this video clip. Who needs Halloween?
Without the left’s takeover of educatoin and media Madmani would not have been possible. I blame the American public and the GOP for doing nothing about education and media for decades.
Excellent observation of fact, No these satanic pekkerheads are groomed like Barak Obama who hates USA and Americans like his satanic pekkerhead DuNCe party!
“People remember that after the 9/11 attack, President George W. Bush went to great lengths to repeat—almost like a religious catechism—that America was not at war with Islam or with American Muslims.”
Sometimes Bush II got tremendously caught up in his own stupidity. Sorry Mr. Prez you may have thought that we were not at war with Islam or Muslims. However Islam and Muslims have always been at war with us.. Half the country still thinks the Muj are just our best buddies. How else could MammiDammy be on the verge of becoming Mayor of NYC.
Idiot Dems, including those idiot No Kings geriatric Trump haters, are going to find out good and hard, just how foolish they are and how they got taken.
Just look at the people in the picture. Would you trust any of them?
If this worm wins the election, watch NYC in the next few months. It will be catastrophic.
This Bottom Feeding Scum Sucker longer should be allowed to live in America send him back to where he came from One Way MUM-DUMMY GO HOME
All I can say is that Mamdani is an individual most worthy of indignities.
There are 56 Muslim countries on the planet! Mamdani! Take yourself and your cult and disperse yourselves in all of them….and preach to the choir! We’re not interested!
If Mamdani wins the election, watch NYC in the next few months. It will be economically catastrophic. (censored version)
The thought came to me while I was shaving this morning that USA needed the spanking we got to see the difference between the satanic pekkerhead demoncRats and MAGA.
We should remain in prayer that NYC elects Curtis Sliwa, who has demonstrated by his life’s acts that he loves NYC!
Now we have President Trump back with a dedicated loyal POTUS 47 Stellar Cabinet of Knights Excalibur!
Had the cheating not taking place in the 2o20 election, President Trump would still have had dirty filthy back stabbing cabinet.
We would have not seen how a man or human can endure what President Trump has had to endure for the last 10 years and overcome.
Yes, President Trump is YHVH’S Man!!
Shalom
Why in the name of sanity are you all having a mass fight over Ayn Rand when islam is poised to conquer America?!?! Europe, UK and Canada have fallen, Israel is tottering, and USA is next on the jihad hit list and people are squabbling over Ayn Rand? This is yet another reason why islam is bulldozing our society into the dirt.
While I’m ranting — THX’s proselytizing of Objectivism is repetitive and cultish but he does make a valid point about Christian (or any religious) fanaticism — that it’s not a useful political or strategic response to islam’s war on Western civilization. Indeed this fanaticism feels selfish and callous: I’m being raptured so I don’t care what islam does to the rest of you dirty sinners. This attitude is very helpful to islamic jihad (divide and conquer).
Mandami is not merely a mayoral candidate: He’s a portent. And instead of reading this sign, we’re sinking deeper into magical thinking where people are counting angels on the heads of pins while arguing over which way the toilet paper goes on the holder. Can you hear that sound? That’s Mandami and Hamas and the entire islamic ummah laughing.
IMHO, Islam is a death cult with a political project masquerading as a religion. Either Islam is destroyed, or we are.
Muslims reading this, can you show us one (1) piece of evidence that anything you believe is true? Show us the virgins!!
Under Islam, you die for Allah (God).
Under Christianity, God (Jesus) dies for you.
Islam is all about power, Allah is arbitrary power.
Christianity is all about love. God is love.
Islam delenda est.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: An infestation of Muslims is worse than an infestation of bedbugs, and a lot harder to get rid of.
Ooopsie… owensgate, not “owensfate”! The F and G keys are ajacent on the Divorak keyboard layout!
Mum-Dummy and his ilk should just Leave and if t heir foolish enough to elect this scum sucker them the Big Apple should just be cut off from the rest of the World