Those who are against Ayn Rand, care to shed some light on the reasoning?

I cannot concieve of any benefit either way of the pitiful education system called public schools pumping out mindless robots and illiterate junk-filled kids. Unless, of course, I was a slave owner such as the Fed gov. and didn't care one wit about whether or not they can spell their name.

 

Atlas Shrugged was too long and needed a good editor, but the principles it espoused are sound. I don't recall her exact stand on charity, but I believe it was that it sould not be mandatory or forced by the government, but purely voluntary.

A "cliff notes" version should be mandatory reading and the pros and cons discussed in every school.

 

In her other writings, she calls vountary charity evil.

 

I don't like her because she's a bad writer and because her lamentable philosophy is taken way too seriously by her followers.

Sort of like Stephanie Meyer, I suppose.

 

Politics aside, she was a literary retard.

 

I wonder if the premiere of Atlas Shrugged had a bunch of hysterically-screaming right-wingers wearing TEAM ROARK and TEAM DAGNY t-shirts.

Probably not ... from what I understand, not many people saw the movie. The reviews are not positive.

 

Don't care for it, too many folks treat it more like a bible than a literary work. Even worse are those who want to pretend it's got a thing to do with economics.

 

At a minimum, public education keeps a lot of kids off the streets. Hopefully, it allows the guy serving you fries to count out the correct change. At best, it provides a skilled and innovative workforce that improves society as a whole. I'm not claiming that public education succeeds particularly well at any of these - just pointing out that it likely provides some indirect benefit to you, even if that benefit is well below what you consider "equitable" based on your property taxes.

 

This thread isn't about Karl Marx.

 

Ayn Rand is kind of like Ron Paul - too many nutjobs who treat her like a cult leader in order to take her seriously.

 

You're right.

It's about Ayn Rand: a sociopath who paid her private doctor to give her increasingly large dosses of amphetimenes and who believed that charity and altruism are evil and that nothing matters so long as you yourself are getting rich. Everyone else can (*)(*)(*)(*) off and die.

Oh, and she also believed that religion should be abolished.

 

How many bodies were found in her basement?

In the early 1900s, cocaine and heroin were legal over-the-counter drugs so that doesn't mean a whole lot.

So what's your point? How many people did Ayn Rand kill? She possibly suffered from autism. The left is worse than she could ever be, as much of a fringe theorist as she was.

Then the left should love her.

 

These indirect benefits you speak of can be taught at home, and should be. Those who strive to do more are to be commended, but I've had some of the worst fast food service, table service, and off-handed experiences with the youth of America to realize that the public education system has failed miserably. The format of education now focuses on multi-cultural diversity with a heavy emphasis on sports more than meaningful political discourse and political/social education. Not much to brag about there.

 

I'm against her because she's a hypocrite who lived off of SS and because she was a homophobe.

Oh yeah, and making a rapist a hero in one of your main books doesn't help either.

 

speed freak/meth head? sources? Cites? Publications? or just your opinion? Charity through compulsion ie. taxation is what she was against. Those who were not deserving were the ones receiving the benefits, that's what she found disgusting......

 

Funny as a Christian Democrat I think Christian Republican's are an oxymoron. Most Republican's crawl to their knees and bow to their wealthy masters, while at the same time denigrating the poor. Letting woman choose to destroy their own cells is a far cry from collectively turning your backs on the ones most in need in support of the ones who have everything. You guys are disgraceful Christians!

 

The story has everything to do with economics as it beautifully compares what we here in America are experiencing right now with obama's regulations and taxes pushing small and large businesses into shutting down or moving their livlihoods overseas to escape the wrath of obamanomics. The 2nd part of the movie for those who didn't read the book will be coming out in October just before obama gets his head handed to him by Randian American voters across the fruited plain.

 

Sociopath =/= murderer.

Bath Salts is a legal over-the-counter drug today. I guess you'd be happy to look up to and follow the philosophy of someone who is on those.

Ok, so what you are saying is that so long as someone does kill anybody, they are moral and should be looked up to and have their philosophies followed. Correct?

The vast majority of the Left of religious.

 

You say that but she didn't fit the profile of a sociopath - she was more likely autistic, and if hypothetically she was a "sociopath" in the clinical sense but never acted on it then why is it matter? Maybe she was a pedophile too but never acted on it - what's your point?

She isn't any worse than the left-wingers like Charlie Rangel who claim they're for giving to the poor but don't even pay their own taxes - at least she was honest about the fact that she was miserly.

 

Let me guess: the only work of hers that you've read is Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead?

You've never read any of her non-literary essays about Objectivism?

As to her amphetimene addiction: http://randwatch.blogspot.com/2011/03/was-ayn-rand-drug-addict.html

And this is far from the only source.

 

So sociopaths who hate humanity, condemn altruism, and believe in the philosophy of "I've got mine, (*)(*)(*)(*) you" are people that others should look to, in your opinion?

I guess that must be what your version of Jesus espoused too.

 

Objectivists gave it mixed reviews. I thought it was below average. Ed Cline, an Objectivist author from Pittsburgh, gave it a scathing review. Several posters at ObjectivismOnline forum were also critical while others enjoyed it. It is simply not of the quality I would have wanted for a novel of this importance and value.

 

Prove it.

Plus she has a point - too much altruism can be just as bad as not giving a fking about anyone else. Too much altruism leads to total group think and mob mentality, where any opinions that go against the mainstream are not tolerated, and people end up committing evil acts (ex. burning heretics) but believing that they're doing it "for the better of society" - too much altruism is basically religious extremism - it's pure group think with no free thought or individuality allowed.

 

Rand said nothing about "too much altrusim".

She came down on altruism in general. And show me ONE instance of altruism causing something like heretics being burned.

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2009/11/how_ayn_rand_became_an_american_icon.html
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Her diaries from that time, while she worked as a receptionist and an extra, lay out the Nietzschean mentality that underpins all her later writings. The newspapers were filled for months with stories about serial killer called William Hickman, who kidnapped a 12-year-old girl called Marion Parker from her junior high school, raped her, and dismembered her body, which he sent mockingly to the police in pieces. Rand wrote great stretches of praise for him, saying he represented "the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul. … Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should." She called him "a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy," shimmering with "immense, explicit egotism." Rand had only one regret: "A strong man can eventually trample society under its feet. That boy [Hickman] was not strong enough."
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“He was born without the ability to consider others.” -- Rand's gushing description of Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. She really liked the type. Roark goes on to blow up a building someone else owns because it offended his sense of artistic purity. While most would call that sociopathic, Rand declared it to be admirable.

In Atlas Shrugged, the lesson we learn is that if you invoke a couple sci-fi technologies, it's possible to create an imaginary libertarian wonderland that actually works. Though we never learn who cleans the toilets in Galt's Gulch. Must be some miracle technology for that as well.

Rand is kind of a pathetic figure. She was badly broken as a girl by the bolsheviks, and as a result grew up to emulate the bolsheviks to an uncanny degree. Lovely little cult of personality she created, with the demands for absolute loyalty, the show trials and purges for any offenders. I'll refer you to this 1972 article by Murray Rothbard about life in the Rand cult.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html