“…A grimly precocious, friendless Rand declared her atheism at age 13. …and in 1964 she told Playboy that those who place friends and family first in life are “immoral” and “emotional parasites…”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574525702581182272.html

You have created a bias laboratory. The ARA post comments to me are a microcosm of the political dysfunction in our society. Knee-jerk reactions, hyperbolic arguments, inflamed tempers and damaged egos abound. Is it possible that these behaviors are a symptom of a larger sociopolitical disease/dysfunction?

It appears we are stuck with this dysfunction until a new generation of more moderate souls can shape our nation. We could be waiting a while with our expected demographic trends.

I am prone to similar behaviors as discussed above. Fortunately the older I get the more I realize how these behaviors will handicap the USA in future growth. Less testosterone might also be helping me too.

Americans spend so much time and energy fighting over things that will never change or if changed will likely not be worth the fight. Both political parties seem to prey upon this relationship to sustain their survival.

Instead we should create a national Venn Diagram to specify and overlay problems, solutions, financial yield and political mandate to drive political and business investment(I would call this a true mandate)? Let us focus on developing and implementing solutions for issues that we do agree upon and let time provide the salve for our disagreements. Actual progress that people can agree upon just might soothe our collectively damaged egos. Rhetoric is bandied about when solutions are needed.

Graphical data analyses shown on TBP helped me conceive of this VD model. Your comments are much appreciated.

In fact it’s ironic that they don’t get the irony!

In all her writings she is ruthlessly logical. After you get through Atlas Shrugged there are a number of books that are more approachable with shorter essays rather than thousand page tomes. Including articles by Greenspan.

Finally, the stupidity of damaging someone’s car because it makes you feel good misses the entire point of property rights and the rule of law. It just goes to show that someone can read something and have no idea what they just read.

I recently sent Atlas Shrugged to a friend who sent me this blog post. This author and the author of the article he references did not “get” the key points of Rand. They not only didn’t get her, but they cannot grasp the nature of the world around them. Here are a couple quick points off the top of my head after a quick read, from a horrible analytical piece:
• We do not live in a Free Market, though Rand imagines it for us in her writings.
• Greenspan, while originally a Rand disciple and author of a couple essays included in her non-fiction books, abandoned his own philosophy, only to make a half-hearted attempt at regaining it well into his terms as Fed Chairman. Remember when he wanted to peg the dollar against not just gold, but a basket of commodities? That was him trying to regain a philosophical position, but by then he had sold his soul.
• Unions, by their very design, are not free men joining together. They are groups of thugs.
• “Cooperative behavior” is at the soul of the entire game for her. To not understand that means you really need to go back to elementary school reading comprehension class. The corollary: you can’t cheat an honest man.
• Rand doesn’t hate god. She treats god with the same interest we treat other mythological deities (with disinterest, that is). Indifference is not hate.

These were among the most egregious errors the author made, but by no means the only ones. So many errors of comprehension in such a short space. . .

Rand’s writings do not describe as things are, but as they should be (her words). She invented fictional worlds in which she would like to live.

For those who have not yet read Atlas Shrugged, there are two places I would direct your attention when you do get the chance to read it. When you get to Galt’s Gulch you will begin to understand how things are supposed to work in a free, capitalistic world. When you leave you are sad. Examine that feeling when you get it.

When you get to Galt’s Speech read it carefully. It explains not only the basics of philosophy but the flaws in one of the major religions and the evil most espouse in the name of “good”. Galt’s Speech is extremely difficult to read and fully comprehend. I believe it took her 3 years to write; it has taken me several readings to understand.

While she considered herself a fiction writer first, in many of her works Rand had to break new philosophical ground because the characters in her mind needed a firm foundation for their ways of being that did not exist. Galt’s Speech deals with metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, the three building blocks of all philosophy. In that speech Rand shows how Plato’s metaphysics were flawed but Aristotle corrected it. She shows how using epistemology to back track into Aristotle broke the logic chain and gave us such disastrous philosophies as Kant, Heisenberg, Hegel and Marx. The Enlightenment was doomed because of these guys’ writings, but her work on epistemology, described for the first time in Atlas Shrugged, broke their strangle hold on men’s minds and freed them to pursue greatness once again. Whether man chooses (chooses, mind you) to be great is one of this age’s great unwritten endings. The result hasn’t been yet determined.

Sure, she was a child of the Soviet Dis-Union and grasping essential truths of an evil system in an 11 time zone gulag was quite a feat itself. She railed against it as anyone would rail against a tormentor, but that just helped her focus her analysis rather than affect it.

I am not seeing the irony, perhaps someone could enlighten me? I don’t understand your point.

Rand’s third principle of Objectivism is that of rational self-interest – neither sacrificing yourself to others nor requiring others to sacrifice themselves to you. The fourth principle is that each individual has an inalieanable moral right to his own judgment. The fundamental right is the right to life and the rights derived thereof – the right to liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.

To an Objectivist, the act of destroying someone’s personal property without their permission is attacking their basic, moral rights (property being the extension of the right to life). It also requires that they sacrifice themselves to you since your act of violence made you feel better, but you did not obtain their prior permission to allow them to agree before acting upon an intrusion of their rights but expect them to accept it.

Thus, I’m not sure how irony is being defined here. To me this seems to be the same as serving an Orthodox Jew a dish consisting of ham, bacon and pork chops. You are doing something that contradicts their basic beliefs.

But it’s not irony.

~~~

BR: Try not to be so literal — it is sarcasm

Worst blog post ever
Awesome
I suck
Flame Bait!
Better lose 40 pounds
My 15 minutes are up
I am cold and devious
I’ve jumped the shark
Great job
A well deserved wedgie
Randians were suckered by their Superior

Thanks to all who contributed

It was much needed.

Those people are idiots.

Objectivisum is the lowest order of thinking, and is nothing new from the fist time Kunckle Draggers put Charcoal to cave Wall. It’s just the newest Rationalization for it.