IF YOU CANNOT LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR, WHOM YOU CAN SEE, HOW CAN YOU LOVE GOD, WHOM YOU CANNOT SEE?

There are very few people in the Tea Party movement who would not claim some connection to

Jesus Christ--either through religious belief or through personal admiration. Oddly, many of these

also claim to be followers of Ayn Rand.

I say "oddly," because the principles taught by Ayn Rand and the principles taught by Jesus

are mutually contradictory. One cannot be, simultaneouisly, a Christian and a Randist

Now, I will grant that there is a  cultish sort of sophism that attempts to reconcile "objectivism"

and Christianity, but in order to do so they necessarily ignore huge chunks of one or the other or

both. At the end of the day, a Christian cannot be a serious Randist, and a Randist

cannot be a serious Christian, in any other sense than declaring: "I can be whatever I say I am,

and you seriously better not disagree with me."

Now, there are those who assert, "You just don't know what she really meant!" Rand herself

would have considered this approach unacceptably weak and whiny. She knew she was not

a Christian, she did not seek the approval of Christians and in fact despised the entire Christian

enterprise, with its notions of sacrificing oneself for others and being one's brother's keeper, as

pathetic.

Make no mistake about it: the essence of the Christian Faith is self-sacrificial love. Randism

specifically denies not only the value of this, but the existence of it.

Randism maintains that self-interest is the only motivator, and that we only do things because we

get, or feel we will get, something out of it. So, if I wish to define personal success in terms of

Having successfully lifted the other fellow up, I'm entitled. However, if I wish to define personal

success as having successfully defeated and exploited the other fellow, that's okay too.
Randism sees these things only as two sides of the same coin (self-interest) and sees no moral

conflict between the two.

In fact, Randism is not big on morality, period, seeing it as the weapon the strong use against the

weak. According to Rand, we are all absolute free agents, entitled to whatever prizes we can win.

Cries of, "no fair!" are just whining,

It is at this point that "objectivism" begins to trip over itself. After all, are "the weak" not absolute

free agents? Are they not therefore entitled to defeat and exploit whom they will? If the "strong"

are made vulnerable by the moral approach, and are defeatable by it, does the moralist not then

become the strong person, and moralism the strong approach? Is objecting, "That's not how I'm

defining strong" not, now, simply the whining of the defeated?

Of course, any rational explanation of anything can be defeated by simply declaring, "That's

not how I see it," and fleeing from the discussion. This will not change the fact that, like

Liberalism, Randism is simply another form of secular utopianism that does not and cannot

work. It is also a particularly distasteful form, because it denies the fundamental social character

of man, exalting what all history has regarded as his "worst" inclinations and despising what has,

by the highest philosophiesof all ages, been regarded as his "best."