Page 28 - Liberating Liberals V2

The Mental Prison Break
own empire, and help others when you feel like it. It’s an 18th century economics developed long before most of the modern economic realities had begun.
In addition, as even that most consummate of capitalists, Ayn Rand, noted: “Christianity is the best kindergarten of communism possible,” — because it so emphasizes self-sacrifice and sharing.13 Thus not only are we dealing with rigid fundamentalism in conservatives, but with fundamentalist dogma whose two principle beliefs almost completely contradict each other.
Nietzscheans for Jesus
At the opposite pole from conservative fundamentalisms is the free-wheeling freethinking of the 19th century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. He described the excitement inherent in a wide-open mind, as interpreted by the Nietzsche scholar, Leslie Paul Thiele:
Stripped of purpose, life becomes a terrifying, essentially tragic experience. But it also regains lost innocence. Guilt is impossible without duties to shirk or natural callings to neglect...Man is free to create himself for he bears no transcendent nature, nor is he subject to pre-established goals... Only the innocence of becoming gives us the greatest courage and the greatest freedom. With no obligations to fulfill, life becomes an exercise in creative freedom, an experiment, not a contract. 14
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