Her idea of art is fucking crap; her idea of writing is juvenile ranting; her idea of philosophy is masturbation. Her ideas in general are sophomoric and solipsistic. She’s a travesty of one who can actually think and feel, and then create something of genuine substance.
You, on the other hand, provide an excellent example of a mature and nuanced viewpoint. Bravo.
My complaint is that she created a fantasy world, and used the fantasy precepts to judge the real world by. It’s a variety of, “Yeah, but if you take that to its extreme…”
Democrats, today, want the rich to pay higher taxes. Rand says (in essence) “If they have to pay 100% of their income and wealth, the economy would suffer, so your proposal to raise taxes is misguided.”
Even Reaganomics accepted the existence of a maximum point on the Laffer Curve. Rand holds that any altruism is deadly.
Grin! At least he makes me look a little better, in comparison.
(Now I’ve gotta go out and recruit a pro-Rand activist of the same caliber!)
What would that be…BB? 
Oh, fudge, my joke fell flat. I meant I should recruit a really extreme pro-Rand participant here, to make the pro-Rand side look bad.
(Another cheap joke: “But Ayn Rand does that job already.”)
Oh, never mind… The great reputation and heritage of Lenny Bruce is not imperiled…
And yet you’re OK with A Handmaid’s Tale. Doesn’t that do the same? It’s a legit literary device.
Rand was a big supporter of Ronald Reagan, but you’re confusing taxing with selfless charity. IOW, sacrificing yourself for others. When Bill Gates sets up his charitable organizations, he’s not sacrificing himself. When you send a check for $100 to Unicef, you’re not feeding your own children any less to make up for that expense.
Rand did not advocate a treasuryless government. She may have advocated alternative means of revenue raising, but that’s a whole different discussion. At any rate, her ideas about government were quite similar to a Libertarian stance, even if she condemned Libertarians. She was ridiculously possessive about her ideas, and didn’t like thinking that others thought similarly unless they were her own disciples.
Give her a break, she was born on Groundhog Day.
My high school history teacher included her books, along with Dostoevsky etc., on his list of books to read for extra credit.
Why does this myth refuse to die?
She didn’t like the 60s hippy music either. She expected everyone to listen to Rachmaninoff. I believe she didn’t like much of Beethoven’s music because it expressed what she regarded as an anti-life, malevolent view.
Hm… Maybe. I probably shouldn’t have cited that book anyway, as (embarrassment) I haven’t read it.
The same is true of taxation; when safety net programs are taken into account, no one feeds their own children any less to make up for the expense of taxation.
Another important point is that it’s not entirely “selfless.” Supporting safety net legislation can be entirely in one’s own self-interest. Anyone among us might need Food Stamps or Medicare. This is where (in my opinion) Rand fell down: she imagines herself always in full control of her own destiny, and, in real life, for millions of us, that simply isn’t true.
Truly enlightened and rational self-interest would prompt people to support at least a minimum level of public support for the most indigent. But Rand opposed even that.
Even after hearing the 6th Symphony? (Or the Country Danses? Or the Mandolin Concerto, for goodness sake?)
I had a libertarian/Randite friend, who adored Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture; he believed it was an apt musical celebration of John Galt’s life. Oppressed, downtrodden, imprisoned and tortured…but arising in triumph, the triumph of “The Individual.”
True, she turned against him as president, but she was an early supporter of his. This happens so often that it’s hard to find anyone who didn’t “betray” her at some point, except maybe Leonard Peikoff. Once you “betray” her, you become the worst person in the world.
Private insurance could serve this function.
ISTM part of the problem is that Rand’s own definition of “altruism” is not the same as what most people think of when they hear the word, which is something that’s held to be one of the highest virtues in about every culture today.
If I come up out of my idiosyncratic deductive process with a negative definition of something and call it “motherhood” and then say that reasonable people should be against it (or come up with a favorable definition of something and call it “incest” and say they should be for it), I should not be surprised if I get virulent pushback, and maybe I am the one who should back down.
Which BTW, in our general culture, being willing to consider “hey, I may be the one who’s doing it wrong” is also thought of as a virtue. One that Rand or at least her disciples will not often exhibit.
Can you explain the difference?
How could private insurance provide a safety net for the very poorest citizens, the ones with no home, no job, no food, nothin’. How are they supposed to pay for this private insurance?
At some point, the very lowest of the down-and-outs need public assistance.
You could argue for private charity – and, to be sure, private charities do a lot of good work – but private insurance simply can’t do the job.
I do agree that there is a role in the middle of the overall economic spectrum for private insurance. In fact, this is one of the things I admire most about some nations’ national health plans: they have both a public plan, offering the most basic services, and encourage private supplementary plans, which offer better services. Anyone who can possibly afford a supplemental plan buys one. But those who don’t, still benefit from the rock-bottom public plan.
I’m in favor of this kind of hybrid plan. But those who are naked and alone on the floor of society’s basement need external assistance.
If people regularly and consistently understand the philosophy she expounded as encouragement to behave contemptibly, “nothing in her writing is worthy of contempt” is a pretty weak defense.
Have you studied her life, or just read her babble? SHe was opposed to government hand out i=until she needed it herself and then lived off welfare for her last few years. She was opposed to non marital sex for regular people, but that didn’t apply to her. Study up on it a bit.
If you’ve read her books you may have noticed she makes up new definitions for normal words. This is one sign of demagogues and dictators. Check out Nazism and other philsosphies
ctually she disliked reagan.
From Rand’s final public speech, “Sanction of the Victims,” delivered November 21, 1981:
" In conclusion, let me touch briefly on another question often asked me: What do I think of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: But I don’t think of him—and the more I see, the less I think. I did not vote for him (or for anyone else) and events seem to justify me. The appalling disgrace of his administration is his connection with the so-called “Moral Majority” and sundry other TV religionists, who are struggling—apparently with his approval—to take us back to the Middle Ages, via the unconstitutional union of religion and politics.
The threat to the future of capitalism is the fact that Reagan might fail so badly that he will become another ghost, like Herbert Hoover, to be invoked as an example of capitalism’s failure for another fifty years.
Observe Reagan’s futile attempts to arouse the country by some sort of inspirational appeal. He is right in thinking that the country needs an inspirational element. But he will not find it in the God-Family-Tradition swamp.