What Liberals Don’t Understand About Ayn Rand

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• This is simple, libs/progs don't understand FREE WILL.
  They do however, understand, top down, comand & control, fully regulated gov't.

• Liberals, leftists, progressives. All are control freaks with the need to control the environment around them. The people, the climate, the thinking, all of this. It's not that they don't understand her concepts, they are diametrically opposed to them. Simply controlling ones own life is not enough for the lefties.

  • That comes from their delusion that they are smarter, better prepared educationally and therefore know better than you what you need and desire. Unfortunately, in some cases they are right, and that feeds the delusion as applying to everyone.

• Ayn Rand wrote about how people in power pay to control things, and the enviable collapse . Once again History is ignored in the pursuit of progress.

  • How can you expect liberals to understand that doesn't advocate Socialism?

    • I think you forgot the " " around progress.

• Actually, I would indeed call selfishness a vice. However, like pride, envy and hatered, it's not a vice that government can fix.

  • Might have to quibble with you a little RKae, biggest problem is the definition, and how it's been tweaked.
    "chiefly concerned with one's own interest, advantage, etc.
    2. relating to or characterized by self-interest
    There's nothing wrong with self-interest, taking care of my family, my house and job first. No way I see it as a vice and it's certainly not a Cardinal Sin.

    Then they added "to the exclusion of others" but that's a judgement call and muddies the waters. Who gets to decide where that line between self-interest and dickishness falls?

    • Taking care of your family is in no way selfish. Look at all the people who don't.

      Impregnate some woman, then jump on the next bus out of town. Get impregnated by a stranger, then abort. Have a family, then abandon them to "find yourself" by running off to marry someone younger and hotter. THAT stuff is selfish.

      To be a husband and parent is to put your desires aside and focus on your children.

      To say "selfishness is good" is like Gordon Gekko's line that "greed is good." It's catchy and provocative to make your audience pay attention, but in the end it's messing with the definition. What you're thinking of is not selfishness; it's responsibility. As for Gekko: greed IS bad. Making money by working and putting it away for old age is not greed; it's foresight.

  • Conversely, selflessness is virtuous. Leaning heavily on that crutch, virtue is apparently its own punishment.

• Liberals don't understand objectivism and they believe her to be the ultimate Social Darwinist when all she really stated was people should be free to pursue their own rational self interests.

  • Don´t they? Purusing what they perceive as their own, rational self interest is exactly what liberals do.

  • I'm going to read The Fountainhead.. 1) i've always been curious 2) I just learned that it somehow inspired Rush's 2112.. But I've always perceived her to be a strange, brilliant, and probably very unpleasant individual.

    One thing that liberals consistently need explanation on is her apparent exaltation of the creed of a serial killer (i.e. William Edward Hickman).. I can't explain it.. nor can I explain her contempt for recipients of Social Security and subsequent drawing of it later in life

    • Many libertarians and conservatives have said the same thing - that they agree with much of her philosophy but think of her as being an unpleasant person. I've not come across her contempt for SS recipients since they are only getting back what they paid (theoretically). Maybe she is describing her contempt for FDR and his supporters?

      • I don't think anyone, including Rand, is actually contemptuous of SS recipients, just the corrupt system itself.

        Well, there ARE those liberal whiners that think that the wealthy shouldn't get back what they paid into it.

        • I'd say I was getting spun about by a maelstrom of claims triggered by selection of Paul Ryan for veep. Righted myself a bit, here:

          http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2011/10/lying-about-ayn-rand-and-social.html

          thx for indulging me folks