Point taken on your use of language. I'd still stress an ought/should difference, as well as may/can lend/borrow and others. But certainly I do understand what people mean when they speak.
There's no harm in being a nihilist. I happen to find it a very respectable position. I am not one myself though I have great sympathy. If you consider pleasure to be the ultimate good and pain the ultimate evil, you could be considered a hedonist, sure.
I don't know if I want to scour the Rand books for exact quotations. But when selfishness is a "virtue", capitalism is an "ideal" and property rights are seen as the foundation of all Western rights... I'd say that's a moral system. She certainly talks the talk, at least.
Random quotations. Use of the word evil:
"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil."
Talk about rights:
"A crime is the violation of the right(s) of other men by force (or fraud)."
"Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual)."
"Rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligation on other men."
"Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others."
"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence... The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, and to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law."
Here I think she makes it clear she's moral (or immoral), and certainly not amoral:
"There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims."
no subject
There's no harm in being a nihilist. I happen to find it a very respectable position. I am not one myself though I have great sympathy. If you consider pleasure to be the ultimate good and pain the ultimate evil, you could be considered a hedonist, sure.
I don't know if I want to scour the Rand books for exact quotations. But when selfishness is a "virtue", capitalism is an "ideal" and property rights are seen as the foundation of all Western rights... I'd say that's a moral system. She certainly talks the talk, at least.
Random quotations. Use of the word evil:
"There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil."
Talk about rights:
"A crime is the violation of the right(s) of other men by force (or fraud)."
"Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual)."
"Rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligation on other men."
"Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others."
"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence... The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, and to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law."
Here I think she makes it clear she's moral (or immoral), and certainly not amoral:
"There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims."