# Joss Whedon endorses Romney **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [October 29, 2012, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joss-whedon-endorses-romney/639172 "2012-10-29T00:14:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2012, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joss-whedon-endorses-romney/639172/61 "2012-11-04T18:24:52Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > There is a great deal of crude, smug self satisfaction in our conversation, but I assure you, very little is coming from me. I have tried to be respectful and nice. Hopefully this is more clear to the people reading this than it is to you (and Marley) Not so much, no. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2012, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joss-whedon-endorses-romney/639172/62 "2012-11-04T21:22:08Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > In an era where the established cultural norm was to regard homosexuality as immoral? I don’t recall hearing about much revulsion regarding George Washington holding slaves. Also, your own link goes on to note that homosexuality is perfectly moral. She made comments in the 70s that homosexuality was immoral at the same time as Bayard Rustin was campaigning for gay rights (weakening the claim of “presentism”). Not to mention that she claimed to be propounding a moral system of incontrovertible rights and wrongs. > [@](#): > > Specifically, the facet that allowed him to shrug off societal mores, one which she incorporates in her heroes. But again, given that one of the cardinal rules of her philosophy is to abjure the use of violence, the revulsion you feel is based on a half-understanding. Where did I claim to feel revulsion? I was explaining why others may feel it. You’re right on the question of her moral doctrine though, she felt the only acceptable use of force was retaliation. This puts her sharply at odds with most of her fellow travelers, including Nozick, who held that rights are derived from property (and other rights are subservient to property). For instance, it would not be an act of violence for Ayn Rand to occupy her house or to destroy her possessions. > [@](#): > > Thank you for that, but I didn’t quite get your point. Individuals may not work to maximise monetary gains, but they do maximise their personal utility functions. Rand recognises this. I don’t think Marxian systems of government as practised do that. Care to explain hyperbolic discounting in praxeological terms? > [@](#): > > I do know more than enough about the practice of socialism though, which has failed spectacularly everywhere it has been tried as an economic system, and in my country left hundreds of millions of people in grinding, starvation levels of poverty for decades longer than they needed to be. Would feeling sympathetic maximise my personal utility? ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joss-whedon-endorses-romney/639172/63 "2012-11-16T08:01:48Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Not so much, no. Very well, both you and Marley are posters I respect. These are my posts in this thread, please help me become a better poster and point out where I come across as disrespectful and not nice. (I count one ‘silly’ that cuts it) > [@bldysabba](#): > > Why the dig against Ayn Rand though? She didn’t have anything against helping people. > [@bldysabba](#): > > I knew it’d get a chuckle out of most people. It is true though, and funny only if you’re ignorant. Which, I thought, was what we were fighting. > [@bldysabba](#): > > I am not wholly conversant with political discourse in the USA. I _am_ aware that Ayn Rand provokes a knee jerk revulsion from a number of people, which confuses me. She was an average philosopher and writer who held personal happiness (attained, in her words, without ‘leeching’ off others) as her highest good. To help someone because it brought you happiness would be fine in her book. In fact, there’re a number of such examples in her book. That doesn’t seem like something that should attract revulsion. > > Eh? I don’t know how you get that interpretation from what you quoted. She didn’t think anyone should be duty-bound to be charitable. She considered sacrifice for something you don’t value as evil. Why’s that wrong? > > That is a caricature, and a bad one. In her [own words](http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/charity.html) on the topic > [@bldysabba](#): > > I desire for you to jump off a cliff. (Not really, you’re a fine person I’m sure). > [@bldysabba](#): > > Aye, and to expect otherwise and design systems (Socialism - the real one - from each according to ability and to each according to need) that expect us to do otherwise, is, I think, irrational and ultimately counter productive. > [@bldysabba](#): > > Thank you for providing the perfect response. In each of these judgements that you make, you take into account that which is valuable to you, according to you. You may consider her screed to be repulsive, but you live by the largest part of it. > > But you have entirely failed to explain _why_ a considered reckoning of its failings makes you find it repulsive. Your one sentence to that end was, if you pardon me saying so, rather silly and repudiated by your own statements to follow. > > I have seen previous threads on the topic in GD. They consist of a lot of people foaming at the mouth about ideas that they have half understood, not understood, and, in one thread, not bothered to even acquaint themselves with! I can easily understand the point of view that Rand’s ideas are not deserving of veneration, but cannot understand what there is in them for you to find _repulsive_. > [@bldysabba](#): > > In an era where the established cultural norm was to regard homosexuality as immoral? I don’t recall hearing about much revulsion regarding George Washington holding slaves. Also, your own link goes on to note that homosexuality is perfectly moral. > > As for the serial killer admiration - What the 23-year-old Rand wrote in her journal, as notes for herself, was: > > There were facets of his personality she admired. Specifically, the facet that allowed him to shrug off societal mores, one which she incorporates in her heroes. But again, given that one of the cardinal rules of her philosophy is to abjure the use of violence, the revulsion you feel is based on a half-understanding. > > Thank you for that, but I didn’t quite get your point. Individuals may not work to maximise monetary gains, but they do maximise their personal utility functions. Rand recognises this. I don’t think Marxian systems of government as practised do that. > > It’s been a while since I read her books. Off the top of my head? Roark pulls the sculptor guy out of his depression. _Tu quoque_, chum. [/QUOTE] I was hardly foaming at the mouth about socialism in that post. But you’re right and fair that I don’t know enough about the theory of socialism as laid out by Marx, and should have qualified my statement better. I do know more than enough about the practice of socialism though, which has failed spectacularly everywhere it has been tried as an economic system, and in my country left hundreds of millions of people in grinding, starvation levels of poverty for decades longer than they needed to be. There IS a big giant hole in her philosophy. We both probably don’t even think it is the same one 🙂 But there’s nothing to cause revulsion. [/QUOTE] > [@bldysabba](#): > > Did you mean it _isn’t_ clear to you if I was serious or not? Are _you_ serious? Did you miss the part where I say - “Not really, you’re a fine person I’m sure” ? Or the follow up response to LHOD where I make it even more clear it was a rhetorical device? Not that it could have been any clearer. For the record, no I was not wishing death or harm on anyone. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2012, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joss-whedon-endorses-romney/639172/64 "2012-11-16T16:02:49Z")
This is bringing up too many memories of darkened dorm rooms at 2 am… My Libertarian college was divided into Randians, Randists and Randites (who would argue points of interpretation with each other)! And then a small clique of us who thought the whole Ayn-worship was immature. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joss-whedon-endorses-romney/639172.md?page=3)