Word: ayn
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When the Harvard Objectivist Club brought the Ayn Rand series to campus last semester, we knew we would encounter disagreement. Realizing that new ideas, especially radical ones, are always a hard sell at first, we even anticipated a certain degree of hostility. We certainly did not expect to see in The Crimson an attack like Chris H. Kwak's "Critique of Pure Nonsense" (January 30). Kwak's fact-free, sarcasm-laced rant would not normally warrant a response, but given that it and a similar diatribe printed December 17 seem to represent the only kind of coverage The Crimson...
Some may be surprised to hear this, but Objectivists knows full well that Ayn Rand did not originate the concepts of reason, egoism or laissez-faire capitalism. They also know full well that she was the first philosopher to integrate these concepts into a wholly consistent system of thought, one which is increasingly breaking through the decades-old wall of silence desperately maintained by Establishment philosophers. Witness the existence of the Ayn Rand Society of the American Philosophical Association, or the more than 1,000 professional philosophers who requested complimentary copies of Miss Rand's most technical philosophical work...
...even without these facts, the range of topics covered during the "Ayn Rand Comes to Harvard" lecture series should be proof enough that Objectivism is a philosophy worth taking note of. Lecture topics ranged from the nature of man's free will to the proper basis for the ethics of the evil of multiculturalism. Even people who only made it to the debate on the morality of selfishness last December 10 heard Professor Harry Binswanger lay out a detailed chain of reasoning to establish that by virtue of the facts of reality and of human nature, the pursuit of rational...
...should be obvious that aspiring opponents of this new and radical philosophy were given ample opportunity to hone their skills refuting all these unpopular ideas. But what is the best that Ayn Rand's critics at this august institution can throw at her? Objectivism is lumped in with conservatism, as if Ayn Rand's vision of man as a rational, productive, heroic being were compatible with the conservative vision of a wretched sinner who will sacrifice himself for the needy willingly if the government will just let him. Objectivists are caricatured as blind followers, as if being convinced...
...already labeled yourself an objectivist, acid might be the next thing you'd like to trip on. You're beyond help. But if you're one of the many who's read a work or two by Ayn Rand and is intrigued by her "philosophy," should you spot a poster for an objectivist lecture and choose to attend, please go with a critical mind and a modicum of skepticism because the "lecture" part of their advertisements is a misnomer. Objectivist speakers do not teach; they indoctrinate and propagandize. If you're not careful, you just may be tricked into handing...