Robert Spencer: Unholy Alliance Comes Out of the Shadows and Into Your Living Room

"Gore saw an opportunity to make money and like any good American he went for it."
There are a lot of "good Americans" that would disagree with you. Not everyone is a Judas.

correction: "it should not be such a great deal" instead of 'it should be such a great..'

Unfortunately, the good Americans that you mention are not in a position of power or owners of great fortunes.

When it comes to making money, there are no religions, principles, ethnicities or morals anymore and this is as should be according to the Ayn Rand philosophy, where everyone is out for himself. Why we even have Jews working for and partnering with Arab Muslims in pursuit of the golden stuff.

May Allah have mercy on all of us infidels/jews/atheists and anyone else who give a shitless about Islam.
M

Al Gore is so STUPID, doesnt he know Al-Jazeera has QARADAWI,the cleric who publicly said the Holocaust was Allah's punishment on the Jews,in a weekly Al-Jazeera program watched by some 60 million?
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Do you think Algore would care? He's more than just a door knob from Tennessee.

The word capitalist doesn't describe this immoral windsock who has changed his position on virtually every major issue.

Tools like Algore are the first to go when the mullahs take over. Some days I wish they would just for the show.

The show i'd like to see is Reza Aslan trying to defend his words about what he has already said about Islam in a Shar'ia Court in Cairo. Do you think his definition of a Muslim would pass muster?

Al Jazeera, he said, “was founded with the same goals we had for Current.” Among those goals were “to give voice to those whose voices are not typically heard” and “to speak truth to power.”
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Worse and worse. I had assumed that Current TV was selling out because they had lost their "big" anchor—the always litigious Keith Olbermann—and had lost so much viewership that they would have sold to anyone with a checkbook.

Not caring who you sell to would be bad—but claiming your goals are in line with Jihad-propaganda Al Jazeera is *appalling*.

The whole "speaking truth to power" cliche is especially ludicrous here, since the very first thing a Shari'ah state does is crush freedom of speech.

This is exactly what is going on in Egypt now. Egypt has never had complete freedom of speech, but now even the mildest critics are beginning to go on trial for "blasphemy" and "high treason".

And the "power" in question is free, democratic America—which Al Jazeera would like to see go down in flames before Islamic Shari'ah.

Duh Swami wrote:

Al=Jazeera will not come into your living room unless you turn it on...I expect Al-Jazeera will have a very small American market and will not be a money maker...Everybody should know better, by now, not to buy a used car from Al-Gore...
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Swami, I don't believe Al Jazeera cares very much if Current TV is a money maker.

Very few stations in the United States have picked up Al Jazeera English—even in my own über-leftist region, we just have access to one leftist station that shows an hour of Al Jazeera English "highlights" a night.

What Al Jazeera's acquisition of Current TV does is give them a beachhead in the American market.

Sure—some cable packages *will* drop them—and I applaud them. But most companies will likely keep them out of inertia if few customers complain.

Current TV's programming was always pretty awful—and I imagine there will be few changes, at first. But don't be surprised if the programming subtly shifts to more Jihad-enabling propaganda.

That's how I see Al Jazeera English in general going—and Current TV—Al Jazeera America—as well. They will push as hard as they think they can without their viewers noticing.

Frog; boiling water.

I don't know about you, but just the name "Al Jazeera America" makes my skin crawl...

Great comment, Abraham Lincoln ...

and it reminds me of this verse from the HOLY Bible:

"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." -- 1 Timothy 6:10

Now hold on a second, person without a screen name.

Your statement: "When it comes to making money, there are no religions, principles, ethnicities or morals anymore and this is as should be according to the Ayn Rand philosophy, where everyone is out for himself." is not flawed in several ways.

First, "ethnicities"? Is this a typo? Do you mean ethics?

Second, that is not the Ayn Rand philosophy. This is the distorted, cherry-picked version championed by populist radio/TV hosts. Here's an idea for you and others under this misapprehension. No, you don't have to read some giant tome. Instead, just rent or sign out THE FOUNTAINHEAD film. You get to see Gary Cooper as the ultimate Ayn Rand hero. And you will see that the Ayn Rand hero is actually ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE the populist fear mongers and conservative, backwards-looking talk show hosts from America's Right who try and associate themselves with her work.

So go ahead, watch THE FOUNTAINHEAD. If you did a long time ago, you obviously need to watch it again. Then, reflecting on the action of Gary Cooper's character, ask yourself: is Ayn Rand really just about making money no matter what.

If you say that it is, you are lying. Right now, it's because you're uninformed and haven't gone to the source and are relying on leftist pundits for information. Big mistake. You'll see that if you just watch the film (screenplay by Ayn Rand herself).

As you obviously know, Champ, I am an atheist. There is no such thing as a holy book, just like there is no such thing as a holy land. That's just silly and illogical. However, the Bible is a terrific piece of literature.

You will notice that the actual quote does not say that money is the source of of all evil. It says that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. It's important to get the quote right. Most Bible thumpers don't. Money is also the root of all kinds of good, too. And you don't need any "faith" to determine good from bad. Just a little empathy for the other guy, judiciously applied.

Actually, I completely forgot that you are an atheist. My only intention was to state that you made a good point, but now I'm sorry that I did, since you're very unfriendly.

And the Bible is HOLY and I'm sticking to it.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/rkfdIQZwtorb_0JPfUAOHMf11cByqNg-#5b9a6
wrote:

When it comes to making money, there are no religions, principles, ethnicities or morals anymore and this is as should be according to the Ayn Rand philosophy, where everyone is out for himself.
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What rot.

In addition, I can assure you that Al Gore has little to do with Ayn Rand's philosophy.

And here is the same yahoo-string-of-letters, claiming—bizarrely—that "Ayn Rand capitalism" leads to publicly-funded housing projects, and implying that the United States would have little threat from Jihad if only she had a failed third-world economy:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/01/france-muslims-celebrate-new-years-eve-by-burning-1200-cars.html#comment-924948

Yup, along with Christie and the ubiquitous pasta pazoli eater of all time, Michael Moore.

https://www.google.com/search?q=jabba+the+hut&hl=en&tbo=u&qscrl=1&rlz=1T4GGLL_enUS380US380&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=V4nnUPzkA4jJrQGNqoGABA&sqi=2&ved=0CEAQsAQ&biw=993&bih=385

A George Lucas "Starwars" famous fat slug, called Jabba, not a nice guy as I recall, pictures of which are above, all kinda funny.

No screen name here. No I meant it as it is, ethnicities.

As for Ayn Rand, she was a minor writer, a Russian Jew of the wealthy class who lost everything when the Communist revolution came to Russia and her and the chip she carried on her shoulder came to America, where her hatred for the working classes manifested itself in her writing. By the way the name "Ayn" means a fountainhead in many Semitic languages, so she was having a play on words here. She was revived and made into a 'philospher' sans ethics by the Right Wing since Reagan's time and her philosophy of egotism is now being taught to in schools. Certainly does not bode well for the future.

She believes that the working men are the burden of the rich and should be shrugged off. This is precisely what is happening right now. How can a person who believes in the Torah or the teachings of Jesus Christ, which teach us that yes, we are our brother's keeper, can in all conscience say that they also espouse the selfish and ultimately socially destructive teachings of this minor writer which until Reagan only a handful of people had ever heard of.

Re the movie. I make it a point to read the book first. Seldom I will see the movie, in which case I soon realize it has nothing to with the original work. The script writers make sure of that.

Al Gore and other wealthy elites all follow an egotistic philosophy, Ayn Rand or not. I guess this is the distinguishing feature and a prerequisite to acquiring great wealth.

And I think you have me mixed up with some other yahoo string as I never wrote what you claim I did. The riots in France are caused by the French's love affair with the noble Arab and anything Muslim and of course because of "Eurabia" that secret accord with the Arab world to give them France and the rest of Europe.

As for America having a third-world economy and Jihad. I will not go into the merits of whether America is becoming a third-world economy or not but I can tell you for certain that Jihad has little to do with economic jealousies and more to do with religious fanaticism and having a religion like Islam which is mandated to hate everyone that is a kaffir.

If, as you contend, that few knew of Rand's work before the Reagan era, then how do you explain that The Fountainhead, a work of hers, was made into a movie as far back as 1949, which AL above already mentioned?

Look, I think Rand had some very good ideas (e.g., that societies are pulled into the future by a very small elite) but also some bad ideas (e.g., too much of a disregard for the common man), but to describe her as "a minor writer" immediately discredits you as a serious commenter about her. For example, her work, Atlas Shrugged, has sold millions of copies since its publication in 1957. Well, "a minor writer" never sells in the millions.

I think it arguable that Rand's philosophy of life is an intelligent (though of course not flawness) counter to the teachings of Jesus Christ. The latter embraced a compassionate love of all mankind, itself a defensible position to be sure, but Rand embraced a Nietzsche-like assessment of human beings, to wit, that a vast disparity exists among Homo sapiens and that extending an equal regard for all is maudlin at best and destructive at worst. Reasonable minds, I would argue, can differ about these two positions without necessarily casting aspersions on one another.

Re Ayn Rand.

Usually I don't disagree with you or Gravenimage but...I read 'Atlas Shrugged' and I have rarely been so thoroughly turned off by a book, as I was by that. I felt no interest whatever in reading anything else by Ms Rand.

If she's vulgarising Nietzsche - which she is - then read Nietzsche himself; don't bother with the cheap knock-off, go straight to the original.

Further: with all due respect, one can have either Nietzsche or Yeshua of Nazareth - the real Yeshua, not the vulgar and highly inaccurate caricature that Nietzsche set up in order to smash it down - but not both.

And Nietzsche, David Bentley Hart argues - in a chapter entitled 'The Will To Power', in his book 'The Beauty of the Infinite' - was probably the greatest and most consistent of the modern opponents of Christianity; but let us not kid ourselves that he set out to 'correct' 'Jesus' on this point or that; he set out to *eliminate* him, to restore what he saw as the superior virtue of the pre-Christian (and non-Jewish) purely pagan world; and was not above deploying vulgar ridicule in order to achieve that.

He wanted to reverse and undo what Hart calls 'the Christian revolution'. And so although Nazism is a very crude vulgarisation of Nietzschean ideas, far cruder than Rand's repackaging of the same, at bottom, the Shoah (which was intended to be a prelude to the annihilation of Christians, as well, and was accompanied by quite a lot of killing of recalcitrant Christians who refused to embrace Nazi ideas about, for example, eugenics and the elimination of 'life unworthy of life') shows us the logical conclusion; if one wants to get rid of the pernicious influence of Christianity, one starts with its parent, Judaism; get rid of the Jews, then one can get rid of the Christians. (Islam has precisely the same Grand Project).

Here's one critique.

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Ayn-Rand--engineer-of-souls-4385

and here is Hart, on the new film version of 'Atlas Shrugged'.

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-trouble-with-ayn-rand

I quote:

"Call it morbid curiosity on my part, but I often wonder where the debris of our civilization will ultimately be heaped; and, if this film portends what I fear, now I may know the answer. Rand was definitely on the side of barbarism.


"All right, all right—perhaps I’m being just a little spiteful. I may even be overreacting. The world survived the filming of The Fountainhead (if only by the skin of its teeth), and it may yet survive this.

'And Ayn Rand always provokes a rather extravagant reaction from me, and probably for purely ideological reasons.

For instance, *I* like the Sermon on the Mount.

'*She regarded its prescriptions as among the vilest ever uttered.

"*I* suspect that charity really is the only way to avoid wasting one’s life in a desert of sterile egoism.

"*She* regarded Christian morality as a poison that had polluted the will of Western man with its ethos of parasitism and orgiastic self-oblation.

'And, simply said, I cannot find much common ground with someone who believed that the principal source of human woe over the last twenty centuries has been a tragic shortage of selfishness.

'Still, I like to think my detestation of Rand’s novels follows from more than a mere disagreement over differing visions of the universe. What’s a universe here or there, after all?

'I prefer to think it’s a matter of good taste. For what really puts both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead in a class of their own is how sublimely awful they are.

'I know one shouldn’t expect much from a writer who thought Mickey Spillane a greater artist than Shakespeare...

'Remember, the chief reason that The Fountainhead is among the most hilariously bad films ever made is that it is so slavishly faithful to the novel and to Rand’s screenplay. The result is hypnotically ghastly..".

“I came here to say I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life,” Roark continues, “nor to any part of my energy, nor to any achievement of mine.”

'Rand really imagined that there could ever be a man whose best achievements were simply and solely the products of his own unfettered and unaided will.

'She had no concept of grace, even of the ordinary kind: the grace of an existence we do not give ourselves, of natural powers with which we could never have endowed ourselves, and of all those other persons on whom even the strongest among us are dependent.

'She lacked any ennobling sense that what lies most deeply within us also comes from impossibly far beyond us, as an unmerited gift...

'Taken solely as a storyteller, she had many of the skills of the proficient pulp writer. Her overwrought plots, her comically patent villains, her panting, fiery, fierce yet quiescent heroines—all of that would be quite at home in lushly bad romance fiction.'... END QUOTE

And although there are those here who will disagree, and probably quite heatedly, alas, I have to say that I, having read her 'great book', find myself in agreement with Hart. In fact, I read him and thought: he's right. *That*'s what was making me feel queasy when I was reading Atlas Shrugged, and when - with a sense of deep relief - I set it down and never went back to it.

The Gospels, and St Paul, and St Peter, and St John? Or, 'Atlas Shrugged'??

Follow Yeshua of Nazareth - or Ayn Rand, who is on record as having treated her own husband - suffering from Alzheimer's - with what can only be described as cold-hearted cruelty?

Sorry, it's no-brainer. I'll take Jesus and the Gospels, thanks. I'll choose the same Lord as did G K Chesterton and Jacques Ellul and Gladys Aylward and J S Bach and Reg and Catherine Hamlin (what, do you suppose, would Ayn Rand have had to say about two gifted Australian surgeons pouring out their whole lives to mend the childbirth injuries of illiterate Christian - and Muslim - Ethiopian peasant girls?)

Dont' get me wrong, Wellington. 99 times out of a hundred I'd say I trust your judgement.

But not on Ayn Rand.

"For instance, *I* like the Sermon on the Mount."

As do I ...and our Pastor just started a series on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and it's absolutely wonderful!

Like you, Jesus has given me complete love and satisfaction to my soul; unlike anything else life has to offer. Jesus is the creator of life, so of course He satisfies ones sould. I feel sad for those that have chosen to reject His perfect love. Very sad, in fact ...

soul, not sould ...

The line '"*I* like the Sermon on the Mount'" is not mine; it was quoted by me from David Bentley Hart. However, I *was* quoting him because I agreed with what he was saying.

Incidentally: I have read at least two testimonies of ex-Muslims who are now Christians, in which they say that reading the Sermon on the Mount was one of *the* AHAH moments that helped precipitate their apostasy. They were hit between the eyes by something that was attractive - beautiful - and at the same time utterly novel, unlike anything they had ever been taught during their Muslim upbringing.

OT a bit - but what you said just now has reminded me of a parish priest who taught at a church I was in, years and years ago now. In one of his sermons he told us how one day he had sat down on the university front lawn and started reading the Gospels. And as he did, he said, he was simply overwhelmed by who Jesus was, what He was like; he said he found himself saying out loud, "GOD how I love this man!!" That's what it all comes down to, in the end.

Just because one of Ayn Rand's books was turned into a movie way back does not mean she was world-famous. Lots of movies were made from the works of minor authors.

This is for a fact. The human species would have never survived if Rand's philosophies were in place with our cavemen ancestors. The elements and the sabre tooth tigers would have made sure of that. Taken to their logical conclusions, Rand's teachings would lead to a distopian world. The extreme Right's darling has a lot in common with the Superman (and I do not mean the comic book character but Nietsche's) so beloved of the Hitler and the Nazis, and we all know how well that went.

As for Ayn Rand's current popularity, well that was engineered. When I went to high school, none of her books were on the curriculum. Not so with the 30 something generation, who all had to read her books in school.

In conclusion I would like to add that my distaste for Ayn Rand is for the same reason that I dislike Islam so intensely, both are supremacist Fascist ideologies. And for that reason I find no problem with casting dispersions on them.

You might be interested in John Robbins' _Ayn Rand: Without a Prayer_. Robbins was a Christian writer who, at a point in his life, was tempted by Rand's view of things, but saw its fundamental opposition to Christ.

I'll admit that as a pre-Christian young man, I had a brief flirtation with Rand, chiefly because various Leftists (with whom I was already fed up) had called her a "fascist"; which seemed to be their catch-all cuss word. However, after putting Rand down and picking up the Bible, I've never gone back to Rand, even if I consider myself a pro-capitalism rightist.

Glad to see that you like Jacques Ellul.

Ayn Rand on the English or social studies curriculum? You gotta be pulling my leg!

https://me.yahoo.com/a/rkfdIQZwtorb_0JPfUAOHMf11cByqNg-#5b9a6 wrote:

And I think you have me mixed up with some other yahoo string as I never wrote what you claim I did. The riots in France are caused by the French's love affair with the noble Arab and anything Muslim and of course because of "Eurabia" that secret accord with the Arab world to give them France and the rest of Europe.
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Well, you're right. I am usually scrupulous about checking to see who I am replying to, but the chances of two "yahoo strings" ranting about Ayn Rand within a few days of each other seemed rather unlikely. Now it is clear that I should have checked more carefully.

My apologies. That was another poster I referred to.

And I agree in part with your take on the riots in France—but I believe that there are other factors, such as French denial, a politically-correct squeamishness about criticizing the behavior of Muslims, and, at this point, frank fear that if they don't continue to appease violent Muslims that the violence will escalate.

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No screen name here. No I meant it as it is, ethnicities.
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That means you believe...what? That people must "stick together" by ethnicity? That, as in the old 'crab pot', that people of a certain ethnicity must be sure to drag their fellows down, lest they get ahead of themselves? This idea is almost as abhorrent as the constant and often violent self policing of the Ummah—and, moreover, very similar to it.

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She was revived and made into a 'philospher' sans ethics by the Right Wing since Reagan's time and her philosophy of egotism is now being taught to in schools.
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Generally, when people say they read Ayn Rand in school, they mean that they discovered her work while they were in high school or college—*not* that her work was part of the curriculum.

And Rand began her philosophical writings as least as early as the 1940s. And just because you seem unable to recognize her ethics doesn't means that it is her philosophy that is lacking.

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As for Ayn Rand, she was a minor writer, a Russian Jew of the wealthy class who lost everything when the Communist revolution came to Russia and her and the chip she carried on her shoulder came to America, where her hatred for the working classes manifested itself in her writing.

She believes that the working men are the burden of the rich and should be shrugged off.
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This is absurd. Her family had been comfortable pre-revolution, but had not been wealthy.

And what she hated about Communism was its totalitarian nature, which prevented any but party hacks from "rising". Communism was no boon to poor working people, many of whom starved under Stalin.

As for believing that working people are the "burden of the rich", this is just a grotesque twisting of what Rand actually espouses.

She believed that *all* people are free agents, can freely trade their labor and talents with other men on the same basis. Many of her heroes, in fact, are self-made men who rose from poverty on their own merits.

One of the things she most loved about the West—the United States, especially—was that men were not consigned to whatever "class" they were born into, and could through education, hard work, and innovation make something of themselves.

That is exactly what a creed like Islam—with its hatred of the mind; its barring of innovation beyond what existed during the dark ages; its sacralized oppression of women and Infidels; and its conception of a model man who was a warlord, a slaver, a rapist, and pedophile—stands against.

Islam—like Communism and Fascism—is a collectivist creed that has no respect for humans as free individuals.

Well, dda, I want to thank you for your discourse on Ayn Rand. As I indicated in my post above, I don't agree with some of her contentions, but neither am I as negative about her as you and others are. I do appreciate some of the things she said, for instance, that the skyline of Manhattan is the greatest testimony to the will of man (looking at it from the George Washington Bridge as I have many, many times has confirmed in my mind this assessment of Rand's). But I am too much of a Jeffersonian to accept her downplaying of most people, the common man and all that. Also, she detested Immanuel Kant and I rather like many of his ideas.

As for the entire Christian perspective on life, there is much merit to it, and, as you know, I think Christianity an almost infinitely superior religion to Islam. No contest here. But (you just knew there'd be a "but"), the Jesus of the New Testament employed fear to compel belief (e.g., Mark 16,16). All religions use fear in some manner to compel acceptance of doctrines which, quite frankly, simply can't be proven. This is wrong. If one doesn't believe this, that or the other thing, then you're going to come back as a cow or a carrot or you're going to go to Hell, etc. Philosophy and science don't employ fear as religion does. Neither, I would argue, should religion. If one leads a good and constructive life, that person should not have to fear that some kind of damnation still awaits him because he hasn't accepted certain religious doctrines.

Something else. I've long suspected that whether one is religious or not depends to some extent on the biochemical make-up of the individual and particularly how the brain is configured. I see now where a scientific study here or there tends to confirm this long-held suspicion of mine. Understand, I in no way am maintaining that those who are not religious are superior to those who are (or vice versa). I see a horizontal, not a vertical, differentiation here. Speaking for myself, I am a person who simply has no religious inclination whatsoever. I'm not constituted in such a way as to have faith, which, of course, religion requires. I can accept nothing on faith. Just not an option for me. This doesn't bother me in the least by the way. It's just the way I am. Of course, I have hunches but this is something very different from religious faith. One of my hunches in that God is most likely a legend. Another is that when you're dead, you're dead, that's it; no afterlife of any kind.

Well, dda, I hope you don't mind my respectful differences with you here. Moreover, I concede the possibility that you may be correct in your take on Christianity. If you are, then I hope the mercy of your God in my case will trump any anger towards me He might have. Take good care, my friend.

I think, gravenimage, that you and I have approximately the same take on Ayn Rand. She had faults but merit too. Some of her observations were right on the money. Others not so much. I have detected over the years a decided animosity towards her from religious people. I'm not averring here that such folks are necessarily wrong or too sensitive about Rand, just noting what I've noticed.

Hope you're doing well, my friend. Always good to read your posts. Take care.

Well, it was nice to see you two answer regarding what AR was NOT, so I don't have to.
Wellington, I seem to be of s similar mind to you, in that I do not 'believe', but analyze and draw conclusions. And interestingly enougb, when it comes to 'god', I have actually drawn an opposite conclusion to you.

(current discussions between believing atheists and J/C believers, does NOT include hitchens and a couple of others. They are school children, offering nothing in that area)

Re Ayn Rand.

Usually I don't disagree with you or Gravenimage but...I read 'Atlas Shrugged' and I have rarely been so thoroughly turned off by a book, as I was by that. I felt no interest whatever in reading anything else by Ms Rand.

If she's vulgarising Nietzsche - which she is - then read Nietzsche himself; don't bother with the cheap knock-off, go straight to the original.
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With all respect, Dumbledore's Army—and I have the *greatest* respect for your opinion—I believe that Rand is usually compared to Nietzsche quite unfairly. She *did not* believe that people had the right to use and abuse other people—quite the opposite.

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And so although Nazism is a very crude vulgarisation of Nietzschean ideas, far cruder than Rand's repackaging of the same, at bottom, the Shoah (which was intended to be a prelude to the annihilation of Christians, as well, and was accompanied by quite a lot of killing of recalcitrant Christians who refused to embrace Nazi ideas about, for example, eugenics and the elimination of 'life unworthy of life') shows us the logical conclusion...
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Actually, Rand was *horrified* by the Nazis and the death camps—she hated everything that the Fascists stood for.

I certainly don't agree with Ayn Rand on all matters—religion especially—and I think she did make many mistakes in her own life.

But I also believe she has frequently been unfairly misrepresented.

If she were as she is usually portrayed, I'd be disturbed by the views ascribed to her, as well.

I won't ask you to change your views on Rand, but consider this: Bosch Fawstin is an Objectivist, and so is Pamela Geller.

Pam Geller works closely with and clearly greatly respects Robert Spencer, who is a devout Christian.

She also clearly cares deeply for the victims of Islam—especially the Muslim girls who have fallen victim to Honor Killings. This hardly sounds like the actions of someone who cares for nothing but making money, and has no ethics or empathy.

As always, DDA, I hope you are doing well.

Thanks for your comment. Well, if you don't use belief to conclude that a deity exists but still conclude that such does, by default it almost certainly means that one or more intellecutal arguments for the existence of God is accepted by you as valid. But the problem with any intellectual argument for God's existence, even the best of them like the ontological and telological proofs, has one major flaw to it as Kant so aptly pointed out, to wit, that existence is not necessarily a category of an idea. Therefore, "all" the theist ultimately has, as Kierkegaard understood so well, is faith. And I don't mean here to belittle faith; I'm just noting a reality.

That's "teleological" and not "telological."

Wellington wrote:

I think, gravenimage, that you and I have approximately the same take on Ayn Rand. She had faults but merit too. Some of her observations were right on the money. Others not so much.
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I think so, Wellington. I agree with Rand's assertion of individual rights and non-coercive relations among men, and her focus on reason, achievement, and personal vision.

I don't believe that she was against caring and compassion at all, but just believed that the individual should use their own values to decide what causes they wanted to work for.

I do believe she sometimes overstated things, and that she had her lapses.

In any case, I realize that she can be a very polarizing figure—not least because her actual views are not always well understood.

And now, since this is not "Ayn Rand Watch" or "Objectivism Watch", I will likely move on to things that we can all agree on—fighting the Jihad threat.

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Hope you're doing well, my friend. Always good to read your posts. Take care.
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Same to you, Wellington. Happy New Year to you and yours!