Friday, November 26, 2004

The Producer's Holiday?

Anyone who knows me really well knows I practically get hives when I see someone reading Atlas Shrugged or even when I hear Ayn Rand's name mentioned, but few people seem to understand why.

These brief excerpted thoughts from the Ayn Rand Institute's article on an Objectivist angle on Thanksgiving go a long way towards explaining my discomfort:
Thanksgiving celebrates man's ability to produce. The cornucopia filled with exotic flowers and delicious fruits, the savory turkey with aromatic trimmings, the mouth-watering pies, the colorful decorations--it's all a testament to the creation of wealth.
Rand's adherants may make some good points about Liberal guilt or the tendency of some folks to thank God for products that they acquired by the sweat of their own brows, but I still think Objectivism's worship of wealth is just another extreme. And sometimes it verges on fascism.

The Producer's Holiday? Blech. I'd prefer to skip all the cult-like nonsense and simply think of Thanksgiving as a time to express thankfulness for friends and family and the comforts of home and hearth.

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