My friend thinks Ayn Rand is a genius. How do I save them?

Send her Obama's books. Problem solved.

It is funny that conservatives rally behind her when she does not even follow any of concervative ideals other than being being right wing as far as how government is run. She is an atheist and self proclaimed elitist. She is an intelligent person but has let her personal experiences controll her ideals rather than an actual understanding of governing. what is funny is that so many people rally behind her work of fiction when history has many more examples of the right wing being the one to take over.

Read Bill Buckley. Much better.

Dude.....seriously?

Ayn Rand is great, but I would encourage people to read libertarian writers like Rothbard and Mises and Hayek. Michael Shermer is also good as an antidote to Objectivist cultlike leanings.

Rand was flawed, but she is a step in the right direction.

Out.

Bill Buckley is a hate spewing nut case who would be fine with a robber barron society rulling the country. At least Ayn Rand is sensible, william buckley is a neo-nazi.

What conservatives rally behind Rand? She wasn't a conservative. Also, what historic examples of Right Wing takeovers are you talking about?

Right wing takeovers off the top of my head? Hitler, Francisco Franco, Pinochet,Jorge Videla,Getulio Vargas, Emilio Garrastazu Medici,Francisco Morales Bermudez, Idi Amin Dad,Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov. I could go on but i think you get the picture (although perhaps the phrazing of my origonal reply was lacking in prudence as most dictatorships, once overthrown, are often replaced with a left wing group that is just as bad). As for who rallies behind Rand, i'm generalizing but often when someone mentions the slightest hint of governmnet regulation being a good thing it is followed with an uproar with rand's book being cited as an example of how wrong govermnent is. As always, please forgive grammer/spelling errors, english is not my first language.

Templar21 wrote:

Right wing takeovers off the top of my head? Hitler, Francisco Franco, Pinochet,Jorge Videla,Getulio Vargas, Emilio Garrastazu Medici,Francisco Morales Bermudez, Idi Amin Dad,Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov. I could go on but i think you get the picture (although perhaps the phrazing of my origonal reply was lacking in prudence as most dictatorships, once overthrown, are often replaced with a left wing group that is just as bad). As for who rallies behind Rand, i'm generalizing but often when someone mentions the slightest hint of governmnet regulation being a good thing it is followed with an uproar with rand's book being cited as an example of how wrong govermnent is. As always, please forgive grammer/spelling errors, english is not my first language.

Stopped reading right there. Where do you think the term Nazi comes from? National SOCIALIST party. Unless you're suggesting that socialists are far right-wingers?

Hitler promoted free health-care and guaranteed jobs, he took inherited or given wealth in the name of the state, spent big money on public education, supported abortion, euthanasia, and major gun-control.

Hitler may have been a social conservative, but of his policies that could be counted as 'right' or 'left' wing, the overwhelming majority were left leaning. Hitler was a Statist. Statism is at the heart of both the far left and far right movements, just in different arenas of politics.

Yeah, Hitler MAY have been a social conservative alright, and which side of the spectrum's extreme characters worship him today. Hint: it's not the Left.

As for Rand ... my 20-year-old cousin is reading "Atlas Shrugged" right now and is really impressed, but as it turns out, it's the first book he's pretty much EVER read. He needs to read more to make a judgment. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Stendhal were geniuses. Rand, not so much.

Haha! i knew i would get this from someone. It is an emphasis on the wrong word that people where able to get a distorted view on this (because, people just nip the surface when reading history because it is too boring to dive into it). It is the NATIONAL socialist pary. Virtually all the things that Hitler did he did through a nationalist corporatist ideology. Putting a word in a name means nothing, if it did, then why do all those guerrilla african/south american terrorist groups seem to kill everybody....

It's my understanding that the term "Socialist" was included in the NSDAP to appeal to the working class. They also wanted to recruit disaffected voters from the SPD. The NSDAP elite absolutely hated anything to do with socialism, but carried out a number of social programs to keep the masses happy.

As a side note, one should not compare the German political spectrum (or European for that matter) to that of the US. The European views of liberalism and conservatism to not entirely match up to ours.

So your definition of Right Wing is any dictatorship that doesn't call itself Communist no matter how socialists their policies are. Most of the "Right Wing" takeovers you mentioned were Fascist regimes (except Amin and Niyazov which were based on egomania and insanity). Fascism is a form of Socialism and has nothing to do with anything that Rand (or for that matter Republicans or Libertarians) champion. I don't know why you'd lump them together.

The overthrow of Fascist and Communist regimes in Poland, the USSR, Romania, Ukraine, and Argentina would be better examples of Right Wing takeovers.

Templar21 wrote:

Haha! i knew i would get this from someone. It is an emphasis on the wrong word that people where able to get a distorted view on this (because, people just nip the surface when reading history because it is too boring to dive into it). It is the NATIONAL socialist pary. Virtually all the things that Hitler did he did through a nationalist corporatist ideology. Putting a word in a name means nothing, if it did, then why do all those guerrilla african/south american terrorist groups seem to kill everybody....

So we agree that excessive nationalism and excessive government power is bad? I'm confused now on what you support. Regardless of whether Hitler did things for corporate or government or whatever reasons, WHAT he was doing was wrong, that is, he was increasing the power of the government. Following that reasoning, wouldn't far left proposals be just as repugnant as far right ones?

Since it's significant, I should add that by 'left' and 'right' I mean combinations of small government in private life, invasive government in business, and invasive government in private life and small government in business, respectively.

the left calls bush a nazi. right calls obama a nazi. your a nazi. we are all nazis in the eyes of gawd.

If you were to choose the top 5 philosophers or writers of the 20th century, Ayn Rand would certainly be included.

I think you are jealous. You're probably a liberal government employee. The events of the past four years validate Ayn Rand's philosophy. It was the Democrats and big government that got the US into this mess. After 2010, it will be the Republicans who get us out of it. Message to all you government workers sucking the taxpayer teat: Find a new job now while you still have one. Your days are numbered. Your pensions are unsustainable. Your compensation is too high. Your numbers will soon be greatly reduced.

America will return to it's prosperous ways soon.

Your ideas seem simplistic and misguided, and your sense of history warped. And you can't tell the difference between its and it's. Otherwise, you've really got it going on.

Right wingers rally behind her without knowing or obscuring the fact that she was a strong atheist. She was a right winger when it comes to government. She believed in a small government etc... But she belived that no government should pass a law that would take away the freedom of individuals for example banning abortion, gay marriage etc all the things that right winger hate. It's funny how right wingers fight for their "freedom" but rally behind the government when they want things like gay marriage and ban in abortion. Ayn Rand believed that we could not do that. Someone asked her during a discussion what did she think about homosexuality and she said she was personally "disgusted" but she hated the fact that people would take away someone's freedom.