# Ayn Rand for Dummies **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 2, 2009, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078 "2009-11-02T18:16:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/21 "2009-11-02T20:28:42Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Ayn Rand for Dummies. > > Just take this colon **:** place it midway in the word count, and you’ve pretty much got it. Darnit, you stole my idea, although I was going to say “As opposed to…?” ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/22 "2009-11-02T20:31:16Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > Her parents had to flee Russian when the communists came. So she was very very very anti-communist. But, I feel, from reading a few of her books, that this lead her to hate any government program that helped poor people because it was socialism and socialism is next to communism and the commies killed my dad! (ok it is a simplistic view of her work, but it’s been years since I read it.) More accurately, she felt that any system which starts from the premise that the ‘greater good’ trumps the rights of the individual is one which will over time lead to misery. She saw a fundamental contradiction in the notion that from your perspective, my needs are more important than yours, but from my perspective, your needs are more important than mine. Turning everyone into everyone else’s keeper, as socialism and communism tend to do, is not just immoral, it’s inefficient and dangerous. And it ultimately requires a large state to manage through coercion, because it flies against the true nature of man. Rand isn’t the only political philosopher to believe this. I believe a much better statement of the dangers of collectivism come from Friedrich Hayek. Read “The Road To Serfdom” for a detailed description of the dangers of collectivism. And the commies didn’t kill his dad. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/23 "2009-11-02T20:42:28Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > She believed that the greater good is served by each people acting “selfishly” Kind of like “greed is good” from Wall Street. To a certain degree it is true. I personally think that the market allows the wealthy to attract so much power that it can lead to bad results in some cases (especially in the short term) and that things like progressive taxation and public schools are needed to achieve better results for the median citizen. She wouldn’t be concerned with “the greater good”. If anything, she would say that “the greater good” is a secondary byproduct of her philosophy, mainly because any other philosophy would lead to a “worse greater good”. In fact, arguing for “the greater good” is counter to her philosophy as it is generally used to subjugate the interests of the individual to those of society. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/24 "2009-11-02T20:44:02Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Rand isn’t the only political philosopher to believe this. I believe a much better statement of the dangers of collectivism come from Friedrich Hayek. Read “The Road To Serfdom” for a detailed description of the dangers of collectivism. And the commies didn’t kill his dad. No, but the Nazis chased both him and von Mises out of Austria. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/25 "2009-11-02T20:46:42Z")
Yeah. “The greater good” is a byproduct, but it’s not the moral justification. Although I do believe that they should go hand in hand. If rational self interest doesn’t lead to a better society and in general to a better state of mankind, then the best you can say about it is that it’s unstable, and the worst you could say is that it’s immoral because it leads to the destruction of man. Fortunately, I happen to believe that Rand was right in this regard - that a society where everyone is free to pursue their own self interest will also be a society in which the state of mankind is elevated the fastest. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/26 "2009-11-02T20:49:51Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > I thought her writing was OK if you skip the chapter where a character would go on a chapter long rant to spell out her point in case you weren’t getting it. Now see, that is the kind of part that I actually liked and needed. ---
**Author:** ![Procyon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac91a4/32.png) [@Procyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procyon)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/27 "2009-11-02T21:10:52Z")
“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” – Ayn Rand ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/28 "2009-11-02T22:43:02Z")
There’s a scene in [_Dirty Dancing_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_dancing) where it turns out the dancer Penny is pregnant and the father is Robby, the “nice” Jewish boy and medical student whom Baby’s sister Lisa is sweet on (and of whom their father heartily approves). Baby confronts Robby, but he refuses to spend all the money he’s earned over the summer on Penny’s abortion (illegal, therefore expensive); he needs it for medical school. He says, “Some people matter, some people don’t.” He then offers Baby his dog-eared, heavily-underlined copy of _Atlas Shrugged_ to read. I really don’t think Rand’s message comes down to that, but it’s easy to see how an arrogant person could read it as justification for elitism and callousness. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/29 "2009-11-02T22:53:11Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > There’s a scene in [_Dirty Dancing_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_dancing) where it turns out the dancer Penny is pregnant and the father is Robby, the nice Jewish boy and medical student whom Baby’s sister Lisa is sweet on. Baby confronts Robby, but he refuses to spend all the money he’s earned over the summer on Penny’s abortion (illegal, therefore expensive). He says, “Some people matter, some people don’t.” He then offers Baby his dog-eared, heavily-underlined copy of _Atlas Shrugged_ to read. I really don’t think Rand’s message comes down to that, but it’s easy to see how an arrogant person could read it as justification for elitism and callousness. What is the point of this? You quoted some movie writer’s smear of Ayn Rand’s ideas, then admitted that isn’t probably what her philosophy says. News flash: Obnoxious people will always find a justification for their obnoxious behavior. Would you like a list of the ways in which Ayn Rand would be apalled at the behavior of Robby? We can start with the fact that he had sex with someone he did not admire and value. Then we can move on to his refusal to pay a debt he helped incur and live up to the responsibilities he created. And Ayn Rand believed that _everyone_ mattered. That’s the whole point to her philosophy. Your post is the equivalent of dropping into a thread on Marxism to quote some serial killer’s rant in a movie about how it was okay to wipe out half of mankind to serve the greater good, then admitting that Marx never really meant that, but you could see how some people could use his ideas as a justification for murdering their neighbors. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/30 "2009-11-02T22:57:52Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Your post is the equivalent of dropping into a thread on Marxism to quote some serial killer’s rant in a movie about how it was okay to wipe out half of mankind to serve the greater good, then admitting that Marx never really meant that, but you could see how some people could use his ideas as a justification for murdering their neighbors. What would be inappropriate about that? It would be entirely relevant to the discussion. Some people **have** used Marx’ ideas as a justification for murder. And I daresay Rand’s message has no less pernicious potential. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Bith\_Shuffle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ce73a5/32.png) [@The\_Bith\_Shuffle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Bith_Shuffle)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/31 "2009-11-02T22:59:12Z")
Ayn Rand is a philosopher whose defenders always insist has been grossly misrepresented, even though they cannot explain how. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/32 "2009-11-02T23:04:09Z")
> [@The\_Bith\_Shuffle](#): > > Ayn Rand is a philosopher whose defenders always insist has been grossly misrepresented, even though they cannot explain how. Much like Marx, in that regard. And not in that regard alone. From [“Which Civilisation?”](http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2001/which_civilisation) by Michael Lind, _Prospect,_ 10/25/01: > [@](#): > > On the secular side of the civilisational divide, there have been three major traditions: humanism, rationalism and romanticism. These three traditions originated in Europe but now have adherents around the world. All three are essentially secular worldviews which do not need to invoke the authority of divine revelation or mystical gnosis (though some romantics are mystics or pantheists and some humanists have been religious believers). In respects other than their common secularism, the three traditions are fundamentally different from one another. > > Humanist civilisation crystallised in Renaissance Italy, before spreading to the Netherlands, Britain, and the US. This liberal, commercial, increasingly democratic civilisation has spread to other nations by emulation (Lafayette’s France, Atatork’s Turkey, Yeltsin’s Russia) and by conquest and conversion (post-1945 Germany and Japan). Humanists seek to ameliorate the problems of social life with the guidance of practical wisdom, derived chiefly from history, literature and custom, with little or no reference to supernatural religion or natural science, with the possible exception of the emergent sociobiology. Humanists tend to be modest as philosophers and cautious as reformers. Examples of great humanist thinkers and statesmen are Petrarch, Erasmus, Bacon, Montaigne, Voltaire, Franklin, Hume, Burke, Smith, Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison. > > Rationalism, a world view underlying a number of secular creeds, first crystallised in 17th and 18th-century France. Rationalists reject the humanist distinction between practical wisdom and natural science. The goal of rationalists of all kinds is to devise a science of society, modelled on natural science, which can serve as the basis for the construction of a “rational” social order. Stephen Toulmin makes a useful distinction between the “reasonableness” of Renaissance humanists and the “rationality” of Enlightenment philosophes. The rationalist pantheon includes social engineers like Condorcet, St Simon, Comte, Fourier, Bentham, Marx, Lenin **and Ayn Rand.** (The “secular humanists” who support world federalism and utopian social reform are really rationalists). > > Romanticism, the third major secular world view, has spread widely from its original homeland, late 18th and early 19th-century Germany. Romantics reject both reasonableness and rationality, they exalt the inspired unreason of the artistic genius, the child, the primitive uncorrupted by civilisation. Rousseau, Emerson, Wagner, Nietszche and Frantz Fanon should be on a list of romantic prophets, and idealist philosophers like Kant and Hegel arguably are closer to romanticism than to humanism or rationalism. > > The American revolution, and the French revolution in its constitutional phases, were humanist. The French terror and the Bolshevik terror were rationalist. The second world war was a struggle of three secular civilisations: humanism (Roosevelt and Churchill), rationalism (Stalin) and romanticism (Hitler). The war by Islamic radicals against the US, Europe and Israel is, among other things, a conflict between religious and humanist civilisation. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/33 "2009-11-02T23:08:24Z")
Her book Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal is a small and pretty clear accounting of it. I find her writing style simple and clear enough, though sometimes her sentences run on like patent claims. For heaven’s sake, she wasn’t the prince for whom Niccolo Machiavelli wrote his famous book, nor the mercenaries she mentions in it. And she wasn’t evil in the Cheyney / Darth Vader style. She grew up under cruel communist circumstances, IIRC, and kind of swung to the other end of the spectrum. She wasn’t even the John Galt she invented. She was a very enthusiastic writer and lecturer who had a bit too much reverence for the profit motive as a guiding light. But I have to like her description of offering other people some object or service so useful to them that they willingly part with their hard-earned money to get it. In the end she was all about giving people more choices. Also, for some reason this is usually missed, but if you’re interested, “Ayn” rhymes with “fine”. It isn’t “Ann”. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/34 "2009-11-02T23:11:10Z")
> [@The\_Bith\_Shuffle](#): > > Ayn Rand is a philosopher whose defenders always insist has been grossly misrepresented, even though they cannot explain how. Except that I just did. And in my experience, her defenders have no problem whatsoever explaining how she has been misrepresented. And if she is being constantly misrepresented, may I suggest that you should take your beef up with the people misrepresenting her ideas? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Piranha\_Brothers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aca169/32.png) [@The\_Piranha\_Brothers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Piranha_Brothers)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/35 "2009-11-02T23:23:48Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#): > > Anyone feel like breaking down Ayn Rand’s philosophy for me? I would really like to figure her out, but most of her stuff tends to sail over my head, and I need someone to really break her down as if they are talking to a child. Anyone want to take a shot at it? > > I tried to read Atlas Shrugged and was lost half the time. I’m going to try it again, but I was hoping for a little help before I dive back in. > > I have already been roundly laughed at by several people for not being able to grasp it, so I am already jaded to that response. No one need even bother. There is no philosophy there. It’s political fiction pretending to be philosophy but it’s actually not that deep. For (fill in your own personal icon here)'s sake. Saying “A = A” does not constitute a philosophy. Putting your fingers in your ears and ignoring the world around you going “there is no gray there is no gray there is no gray” does not make one a philospher. There is actually more to epistemology than the statement that there is a world around us wether we want it or not. Perhaps that it is why it is attractive: because it is much easier to understand than REAL philosophy. Nzinga, if you find “atlas shrugged” difficult to read, just toss it in the bin. It is in no way obligatory to read it to become enlightened or anything. Reading should be fun and if possible interesting and truthful at the same time. There are other books that you can read that are more fun or more intelligent. And most other books are more truthful. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/36 "2009-11-02T23:32:05Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The most common thing you’ll see when people talk about Ayn Rand’s philosophy is “A is A”. This is shorthand for “Existence exists, independent of the perceptions and biases of the viewer.” In other words, “wishing doesn’t make it so.” She objected to Immanuel Kant’s subjectivism, the belief that things can be whatever we perceive them to be. Instead, she believed that things are what they are, and our task is to use empiricism and our senses to discover them. > > This can be summed up as: **Metaphysics: objective reality** > > From that axiom, she derives her epistemology. Man’s tools for discovering and understanding the details of the universe are his senses and reason, and the tools of logic. You could not discover reality through religious experience. There is no God, there are only people with brains attempting to understand the objective world around them. > > This can be summed up as: \*\* Epistemology: Reason\*\* > > For man to be able to use reason, he must have freedom. Freedom to think and communicate whatever he wants. Freedom of thought, of expression. Man must also have the right to keep the fruits of his labor and be able to benefit or suffer based on his actions. > > Rand did not believe that it’s wrong to help others. She felt that _altruism_ was wrong. Altruism defined as the belief that it is more moral to help others than to help yourself. > > In other words, if I donate to the Heart Foundation because I believe they do good work and are helping build a better world for my children and they espouse values I support, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if I am told that I MUST help the Heart Foundation because otherwise I am greedy and selfish and immoral, that is wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with living your life in a way that promotes your own happiness. No one has a claim on you. > > A logical reason for this is that a system where everyone looks after their own interests is better than one in which everyone looks after someone else’s interests, because the individual is the best judge of what he or she needs. Adding a layer of indirection by making everyone responsible for everyone else just muddies the waters and removes the incentive and ability for people to use their minds in the most effective way. She ties the right to self interest with the exercise of reason. She hated hedonism, for example. > > This can be summed up as: **Ethics: Rational Self-Interest** > > So given that the ‘correct’ behavior of man is to use his intellect to improve his own life and to improve society by promoting his own values, it follows that the proper form of government is one which recognizes the supremacy of individual rights, including the right to create and sell products and services, choose who he wants to do business with and on what terms, and to benefit or be punished by objective reality based on the decisions he makes. Out of this comes the need for a government that enshrines free markets, freedom of thought and expression, absolute property rights, and the right to life for the benefit of oneself and not be a chattel of the state or of others. > > This can be summed up as: **Economics: Laissez Faire Capitalism** > > That’s a very short, very broad outline of what she believed. Now type it again while standing on one foot. The latest _Newsweek_ has two pages on the recent Rand biographies. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/37 "2009-11-02T23:34:53Z")
> [@The\_Piranha\_Brothers](#): > > Nzinga, if you find “atlas shrugged” difficult to read, just toss it in the bin. It is in no way obligatory to read it to become enlightened or anything. > Reading should be fun and if possible interesting and truthful at the same time. There are other books that you can read that are more fun or more intelligent. And most other books are more truthful. You can probably get just as good a take on Rand by reading [_Anthem,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)) which is nice and short and on many high-school-English summer reading lists. I found [_The Fountainhead_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead) somewhat interesting because in that book Rand made her alienated genius, not an industrialist or entrepreneur or sociopolitical rebel, but an artist, specifically an architect. An inevitable choice, I think: Architecture is the most publicly engaged of all the arts, because we all have to live with its products every day. But what I found most interesting about Howard Roark was that he seemed to be so committed to art-for-art’s-sake that he would be just as satisfied to put up a building in the Gobi Desert, where it would never be used or seen, as in Manhattan. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2009, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/38 "2009-11-02T23:54:07Z")
Ok. I have tried the wiki articles, and all of the accompanying links, and they did help alot. But I still thought (hoped) maybe there was some more clarity to be had. Again, I appreciate the help. Sam Stone, your break down was really nice. The link in this thread (American Icon) was a great read. ETA: Pirhana, I appreciate your advice, but if I tossed every book that I find a difficult read, I would be missing out on a lot of hard won enlightenment. Some of my favorite books, I had to read chapters over and over before I even finish the book once. So, yeah…for me a difficult read doesn’t mean the book won’t entertain me. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2009, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/39 "2009-11-03T00:13:39Z")
> [@The\_Piranha\_Brothers](#): > > There is no philosophy there. It’s political fiction pretending to be philosophy but it’s actually not that deep. Are you aware that she wrote several non-fiction books describing her philosophy? > [@](#): > > For (fill in your own personal icon here)'s sake. Saying “A = A” does not constitute a philosophy. Putting your fingers in your ears and ignoring the world around you going “there is no gray there is no gray there is no gray” does not make one a philospher. Do you know what else doesn’t make you a philosopher? Reducing someone’s work to a gross mischaracterizational sound bite and telling others to dismiss it on that basis. There are plenty of things to debate and object to in Ayn Rand’s philosophy, but to do so you’d actually have to read it and understand it. > [@](#): > > There is actually more to epistemology than the statement that there is a world around us wether we want it or not. Which of course would be why she wrote an [entire book](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Objectivist-Epistemology-Expanded-Second/dp/0452010306) on her Epistemology. All 320 pages of it. > [@](#): > > Nzinga, if you find “atlas shrugged” difficult to read, just toss it in the bin. It is in no way obligatory to read it to become enlightened or anything. That’s right - if philosophy gets tough, throw it away! It should be FUN! > [@](#): > > Reading should be fun and if possible interesting and truthful at the same time. There are other books that you can read that are more fun or more intelligent. And most other books are more truthful. So I take it that you would recommend throwing away Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_? Not really a lot of fun, that one. How about Hume’s _An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding_? Whip that one out at parties! It’s a laugh riot. And if we’re in need of new sitcom material, perhaps René Descartes _Meditations on the First Philosophy_ could be used for the script. I’m no Objectivist, and I can find all kinds of issues with Rand’s philosophy. But that’s because I’ve actually _read_ it, as well as the works above, and can speak from a position of knowledge. Casual dismissals of works you don’t like and suggestions to throw books in the garbage if you don’t find them fun to read indicates a certain lack of seriousness - or simply an attempt to smear ideas you don’t like. ---
**Author:** ![ragerdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d07c76/32.png) [@ragerdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ragerdude)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2009, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078/40 "2009-11-03T00:32:54Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Ayn Rand for Dummies. > > Just take this colon **:** place it midway in the word count, and you’ve pretty much got it. I don’t get this at all. Could you explain please? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ayn-rand-for-dummies/516078.md?page=3)