06/08/1999: grundle

Posted By: Richard_B_Bernstein


Ayn Rand was far more totalitarian in her dealings with her followers -- and I *do* mean FOLLOWERS -- than you are prepared to admit.

Moreover, in her fiction Ayn Rand's conception of sexual relations between men and women was essentially borderline rape, in which a powerful man's will overcomes the will of a resisting powerful woman.

Furthermore, in Ayn Rand's ultimate novel, ATLAS SHRUGGED, the talented individualistic Ayn Rand heroes and heroines withdraw from the world, leaving everyone else to die horribly in the social and political and economic and technological chaos and societal breakdown that follows. That's genocide based on ideas, pure and simple -- true "judging" of people based on their ideas, eh?

Finally, Ayn Rand's libertarianism only extended so far as one agreed with Ayn Rand's ideas. Within the libertarian movement that she founded, her word was law. If she did not like Shakespeare (and she did not), none of her followers was to like Shakespeare. If she revered Mickey Spillane (and she did), all of her followers were to embrace Mickey Spillane as a great writer. And so forth and so on.

Few people have showed a more discordant relationship between their professed ideas and their actual dealings with other people than Ayn Rand.

Thus, at bottom, liquid-sunshine is just about right about Ayn Rand, self-professed libertarian and in-person petty tyrant with profound intolerance for anyone who disagreed with her about ANYTHING.

* * * *

By the way, just because Adolf Hitler favored public education doesn't mean that public education is a bad thing -- but, then again, for you the word "public" is one of the most noxious obscenities in the language, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.


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