The Ayn Rand Institute, the leading center for the advancement of Ayn Rand’s writings and her philosophy of Objectivism, announced that the 2017 curriculum for A-Level Politics, which is taught in secondary and pre-university schools in the United Kingdom, will include Ayn Rand and her ideas for the very first time.
A-level specifications require students to know and understand the core ideas and principles of liberalism, socialism, conservatism and other political ideologies. Rand will be incorporated into the conservatism segment of the curriculum.
2 comments:
I hope they talk about all the holes in Objectivism, possibly shown the book "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature" by Greg Nyquist or the blog of the same name ( aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com ), which published the following this month:
Friday, March 10, 2017
Orthodox Objectivism: an Autopsy, Part 1
While it may be an exaggeration to say that orthodox Objectivism, since ARI continues to exists and apologists for that organization still exist. But as an intellectual force, it is dead --- and probably not revivable. Some might argue it's been dead, or close to death, for several decades. But there was always a hope, however dim and unlikely, that the corpse might be resusitated. Indeed, in 2008, orthodox Objectivism showed a brief flicker of life. Sales of Atlas Shrugged surged, and Rand once again became a favorite target of the left. But in the end, nothing came of it. In 2010, Leonard Peikoff conspired with ARI executive director Yaron Brook to force John McCaskey, a lucrative donor, to resign from the ARI board of directors for the sin of challenging then Peikoff protege, David Harriman. In retrospect, that unsavory episode appears to have been orthodox Objectivism's last gasp. While ARI will undoubtedly persist for many decades to come, perhaps even longer, in terms of intellectual significance, it's impact on the culture will be so close to zero that it might as well be zero.
To get an idea of what the future holds in store for the O'ists, consider the Henry George Institute. How many people know that such an institute exists? For that matter, how many people know who Henry George is? Late in the nineteenth century, George may have been the third most famous person in America (behind Mark Twain and Thomas Edison). Now he's largely forgotten, and his influence is virtually nil. If someone were to declare themselves a Single Taxer, hardly anyone would know what he was talking about. A hundred years from now will anyone know what it means to be an "Objectivist" in the Randian sense of the term?
This is not to suggest that Rand herself will be forgotten. The Fountainhead, and maybe Atlas and We the Living, could persist for many years to come. The point is that, while Rand may continue to influence a certain number of high school and college age youths for decades, even centuries, in the future, very few of these youths will ever become orthodox Objectivists, and those that do will exercise no real influence on society as a whole....
I believe what is missing from all the discussions I have read from the Randites, Conservatives, and even liberals is a cogent reference to Adams Smith's 'Theory of Moral Sentiments' which was written before '..Wealth of Nations' considered much of the underlying philosophy behind 'The hidden hand' and 'enlightened self-interest'.
Certainly the founding fathers were quite familiar with Adam Smiths works and both books formed the underlying basis for the Articles of Confederacy and the US Constitution which in turn formed the basis (at least in theory) of our socioeconomic system. This is often pejoratively referred by opponents as "pie-in-the-sky ivory tower thinking".
So if basing your socioeconomic government policies of the common good and public commons off from published social economic theories that have withstood centuries of actual testing and practice what do you call untested and unproven socioeconomic theories based off of a 2nd rate science fiction author? How about a flimsy justification for a kleptocracy conflating Free Enterprise for a degenerate predatory capitalism i.e. neoliberal financialization otherwise biblically known as naked Mammon worship.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smMS5.html#firstpage-bar
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