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Objectivist Hate Fest

Re Charles Featherston’s LRC blog post:

This is sick and incredible. Look, I understand the Objectivist logic behind the right to abort. Sick though it is… unprincipled though it is (Rand herself waved off the crucial question of late-term abortion by saying that was “another matter”). But look at this vile stuff. They actually seem to believe there is a moral obligation to abort–to “squelch”–an “unhealthy fetus”–unless you are very rich, I guess. Look at this!! It’s incredible:

Provenzo:

So in the anti-abortion advocate’s eyes, a parent’s desire to raise healthy children by squelching unhealthy fetuses while the are still in the womb is little more than a pernicious quest, but it is not considered a pernicious quest to knowingly bring severely disabled children into this world. On the contrary, such a choice is held out as an great example of upstanding morality.

Diana Hsieh says it’s the “worship of retardation” (?!):

they want to create more mentally defective and perpetually dependent children by outlawing abortion.

The people who worship retardation reject human reason as a value. They’re as anti-man as the deep ecologists who regard mankind as a cancer on the earth.

Frankly, one wonders why such people don’t lobotomize themselves, if retardation is such a boon to their fellow man.

Update: In a recent Peikoff Podcast he says that if you have a retarded son and a normal son, you should love the normal one more:

Should a father love equally a son with mental retardation and a normal one?

Update:

The Truth about Craig Biddle vs. Smears by Some at ARI

“Onkar’s hostility toward Craig intensified in April 2010, when Craig privately criticized an article that Onkar had published at Division of Labour. In the article, Onkar attempted to apply Ayn Rand’s philosophy to Adam Smith’s thought experiment about whether “a man of humanity” in Europe would cut off his pinky finger to avert an earthquake in China that otherwise would kill a hundred million Chinamen. Onkar said that according to Objectivism the man should not cut off his pinky, that he should instead let the earthquake kill the hundred million Chinamen:

Rand’s ethics would pronounce the action [cutting off his pinky] immoral…. Rand argues that a morality that denigrates the individual and demands his sacrifice for the “greater good” is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the bloodshed and destruction of millions of individuals throughout Western history…. Rand knew that in rejecting self-sacrifice, she would be smeared as advocating sacrifice of others to self. Reject the ideal that you should slice off your finger for the sake of others, and you must be claiming that you should slice off other people’s fingers for your sake. “Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal—under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind.””

Update:

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{ 11 comments… add one }
  • Carl Waters September 25, 2011, 10:14 am

    Mr. Kinsella,
    If I may offer my humble perspective;
    Analysis and conclusion regarding issues of “right” and “wrong” are far more “absolute” than analysis and conclusions regarding issues of “good” and “bad”. But since there is no total “absolute”, any more than there’s a total “perfect” or “truth”, there are some cases where the “absoluteness” of a conclusion of rightness, or wronngness should be tempered by the relativity of good and bad.
    I think the abortion issue is such an issue.
    As I understand the technical or “objective” viewpoint, the fetus is the “property” of the of the mother untill it is a living and breathing and metabolizing individual. Fair enough, but I heard the good doctor say his first experience of abortion involved the cries of an infant. On top of that, I understand that in a hospital setting, most third term fetuses are salvageable. If the objective conclusion depends on ownership, then it seems appropriate to factor in the subjective “good and bad” into the analysis by scaling that ownership, similar to the level of responsibility that a parent grants to a child over time, or maturation.
    I’m still an “objectivist”, but I still don’t believe in “absolutes”

    Thanks

  • Hmm is anyone else having problems with the images on this blog loading? Im trying to find out if its a problem on my end or if its the blog. Any responses would be greatly appreciated.

  • David March 14, 2013, 12:39 am

    How is the Objectivist argument for a right to abortion “unprincpled”? (I assume you don’t mean simply that you disagree with the principles being applied.)

    • Stephan Kinsella March 31, 2013, 7:42 am

      because she dismissed the late-term abortion issue as “another matter” without integrating it or making it compatible with her views on early-term abortion.

      • William Walsh December 1, 2013, 9:33 pm

        “because she dismissed the late-term abortion issue as “another matter” without integrating it or making it compatible with her views on early-term abortion.”

        Because it could not and cannot be integrated.

        Well stated.

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