The Influence of Ayn Rand on American Society...

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You fail to grasp that humor is in the eye of the beholder. You're not the grand oracle who unilaterally decides what is or isn't humor.

I'm cringing a little here as you should know that Dox47 hates being associated with the term "right-wing". It seems though that with society becoming less religious with time, civil libertarians are on the winning side of most battles these days, the biggest divisions are now over economic policy. Thus as long as the majority of prominent wealthy libertarians and corporate funded think tanks are pooling their support behind the Republicans as the "lesser evil", even as that party continues to drag its feet on social issues and favor stupid reckless military spending, libertarians are going to continue to get maligned as being "right-wing".

This is your basis for credibility? Because I'm gonna throw Battlefield Earth at you...

My objection to Rand is not her philosophy per se, but rather its simplemindedness. The idea that rational self-interest can uncritically justify unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism defies her own philosophical view that reality exists independently of consciousness. There is value in the inherent well-being of all members of a society, not least because that inherent well being serves to protect all of us from self-interested, destructive activity such as theft. But nowhere does objectivism admit of the rational self-interest that is inherent in the well-being of others. As such, it is mere philosophical masturbation, intended to make the avaricious and misanthropic feel justified in their ego disorders. It is Hedonism without ethics; epicurianism without virtue.

Now, that is not to say that self-interest is not an important driver of human behaviour--of course it is. And that's not to say that self-interest cannot be inherently good. But Rand's sin is to take that inherent good, and render it absolute.

Birds of a feather...
If the libertarians don't want to be associated with the Christian Taliban, they shouldn't hang out with them.

Also Rand was a flat out atheist. No equivocations. She regarded belief in God as irrational and bad.

ruveyn

That's a no-no if you want to court the religious lunatic vote.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I'm non-religious and I consider her views valid and enlightening, I learned a lot from her novels.
I don't object to her being an Atheist.

Best Regards,

Jake

Rand was a writer, taking ideas from her time and creating characters to front for them.

She got out of Russia alive, she did not like collectives. She also did not like the State having all power.

As the world was making up it's mind to turn Red, NAZI, or Royalist Colonial, she promoted the radical American concept,

Henry Ford hated Unions, Jews, The Government, The Tax Man, the Duponts, smoking, drinking, built towns where his workers could live and be spied on, and fired and run out if he wanted to. Do not even get him started on Eurotrash, or the Yellow Peril. When called the most vile names, he said, I listened to your views, now listen to mine.

He was hated, people raised their fist and yelled at him as they drove by in one of his dependable reasonably priced cars. Even his own workers.

As long as they were sobor and not smoking Henry did not mind. He would raise his hand and yell, Yo Mamma!

Railroads were The Sherman Antitrust Laws in action, but the character would be called Henry if he built autos, so he built better rails, and not like that little Scot who treated his workers just like Stalin did, then built Libraries with food taken from their childrens mouthes.

Henry would have also called her some Bohunk, Slavinski, who kept a house for her many men friends. I have seen many pictures of his factories, not a woman in any of them, just down at the future worker scrubbing and feeding pen, where they belonged.

Still, she could not help loving him, he was harsh, abrasive, rejected her and most of the world, and his workers, their wives, families, were controlled, dominated, desiplined, and the highest paid industrial workers on earth, they owned cars, only Fords, and took vacations, on a list of Henry approved vacations.

He got more production out of his workers than Stalin on his best day, and did it without a firing squad.

Some article about a deranged impulse killer in the news, is just a type, he was not good at it. But he did do what he wanted with a total disregard for human life, just like Ford, who's cars and trucks have killed more people than wars.

Hitler and Stalin were bad, but Ford was profitable.

Where other culture models sent the strongest out to fight the strongest, Ford depended on bad drivers and slow pedestians. While both were versions of Mecho-Darwinism, Germans would not buy their own Panzer.

While Europe wasted it's self, having men dominating men, dressed in fine uniform, armed with precise and expensive machines, Ford built a machine that dominated men, the Production Line, and sent it's product out to random people of little knowledge, to go forth and slay themselves, the old, slow, children, dogs, and with minor repairs, go on their path of destruction for years.

Rand was in Thrall to Ford, if only he would stuff her in the trunk, and take her, she would do anything, for ten hours a day, six days a week, one task done over and over, till her body could make no other move.

So she did get a book out of it, pointed out that America produced men that could have taken Detroit, the steel mills, coal, with their army, but chose to follow their personal dream, of building the best machines to kill the unwary, the slow, before they could breed more and more of their kind.

It was what the species needed, a predator to take the slow witted out of the gene pool. War took the brightest, the strongest, autos took the dumb.

Fords dream continues to take near a hundred a day out, and with China being the big new market, the population problem should be solved in a few generations.

Robert Hienline wrote in praise of Rand, that each year the worst student in the school should be hung on the flag pole, as all the others gather to say the pledge. It would do more for academics than all the money on earth.

Now if we could just vote to have one Member of Congress hung, it would take 535 years to hang them all. It would change the direction of government.

Carnegie never compelled anyone to work for him by force or threat of force. If you took a job Carnegie offered then you bought his package. It was purely voluntary. And libraries are much more valuable of an extended time period then a single meal which is shat out the following day. None of Carnegie's workers ever starved. The same could not be said of Stalin's workers in the gulags.

ruveyn

Careful now.
Some people get testy when you criticize "uncle Joe".

That's another conservative myth about liberals.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Stalin had Leon Trotsky killed because he was too moderate ... and most American liberals are still far more moderate than Trotsky.

Trotsky was killed because he had been Stalin's rival for power. Later, while in exile, Trotsky had established a counter communist group called the Fourth International, which rivaled the Soviet Union's political apparatus in spreading communism internationally. On top of that, Trotsky was writing a book meant to out Stalin as the monster he was. For all this, Stalin had him murdered.

Here's a Trotsky fun fact - - Did you know Trotsky had boned famous Mexican artist Frieda Kahlo? It caused the end of his friendship with Frieda's husband, Diego Rivera, who had originally welcomed Trotsky with sanctuary in Mexico.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I've seen liberals get defensive when Stalin or Mao Zedong are criticized. One I personally know said with a straight face that George W. was worse.
Besides, look at all the gross generalization made about conservatives in that thread about conservatives.

I don't think anyone in this thread has called American conservatives mass murderers.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I'm talking about over-generalizations and straw man attacks.
Personally, I'd feel honored to have a liberal call me a mass murderer.