From: forb0004@student.tc.umn.edu (Eric Forbis)
Subject: Re: The Enduring Rand (was: Re: Theory?)
Organization: University of Minnesota
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1992 05:38:41 GMT

In article <1538@tecsun1.tec.army.mil> riggs@descartes.tec.army.mil (Bill Riggs) writes:
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>From: riggs@descartes.tec.army.mil (Bill Riggs)
>Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books
>Subject: Re: The Enduring Rand (was: Re: Theory?)
>Message-ID: <1538@tecsun1.tec.army.mil>
>Date: 10 Nov 92 00:48:08 GMT
>References: <1992Nov6.175024.13668@panix.com> <BxBLJD.8Aw@apollo.hp.com> <9211071042.03@rgm.com>
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>In article <9211071042.03@rgm.com> root@rgm.com (Ray Mendonsa) writes:
>>nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
[material deleted]
>
>	Some of you all may recall a posting I did a few weeks back which 
>identified most non-liberal political ideologies (i.e. Marxism, National 
>Socialism, feminism) with the ancient Gnostics. One of the characteristics

I hope you're using the older historical meaning of "liberal", rather than 
the leftist politically- correct kiss-my-special-interest-group's-collective-
ass variety of political nonsense that liberalism has deevolved to. Most 
Marxists are feminists, and are extremely liberal (in the pejorative sense). 

>of Gnosticism is that it definitively prohibits questions from being asked
>(which challenge its basic assumptions). Furthermore, this feature of
>Gnostic thinking enables a particular ideology to be logically consistent,
>but yet incapable of answering those questions it prohibits. Objectivism
>clearly meets these criteria for "Gnostic" thinking. As does libertarianism,
>to whit:

Gnosticism (greek _gnostikos_, knowledge) was a semitic/Judean mystical 
tradition that taught that the creator mentioned in Genesis was actually the 
devil, that the material world is evil, and that only by meditating on God 
(the real one) could you know truth. There were a zillion gnostic cult 
variations from about 600-700 BC onward in Israel; the cult was highly 
individualistic, and no specific canon was ever formed. Gnosticism doesn't 
prohibit the asking of any questions that I'm aware of, and it most 
certainly isn't even remotely similar to Objectivism. I don't think that the 
gnostics cared much for logic; they were utterly focused on revealed 
religion, where the individual undergoes the experience. It survived until 
the 1300's in France, where the Knights Templars brought back this "
heretical" creed from their Holy Crusades. This creed, Albigensianism, 
became moderately popular in France; the Pope decided that their wealth and 
power would be better under his god's control, and uttered the famous "Kill 
them all- God will know his own", after which they were massacred. Not Ayn's 
type at all.
---------

Eric Forbis      forb0004@student.tc.umn.edu