The real problem with Objectivism is that it's completely and utterly unrealistic...just like Communism. Likely this is due to the fact that Objectivism wasn't created as a philosophy on its own merits, it was created solely in an attempt to ensure that Communism would [not]* affect anyone else. Rand was profoundly twisted by her family's interactions with a Communist government, but that hardly excuses turning a blind eye to every possible good that government might accomplish.

If nothing else, plain history shows that private enterprise does -not- solve every problem...every single case of "the commons" is not going to be solved without some collective action (read that as government). Pollution...in the absence of regulations forcing the external costs to be paid by the producer, it's always cheaper to dump toxic wastes than to be clean. It's always cheaper for a for-profit insurance company to refuse to pay than it is to provide health care for the seriously ill. Private enterprise does well when people have many choices of fungible products...it fails utterly when they don't.

Rand was a loon, and those who swallow this koolaid are either willfully blind, or delusional.

* Edited to add the missing "not" in that statement the first time through.

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Nothing to do with Rand, of course, but here is a compelling debate between David Horowitz and Michael Albert: http://www.zmag.org/znet/zdebatehorowitz.htm

*quality in spite of john stossel and fox

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by gwiz665.

Why does this not have a philosophy tag?!

Why does this not have a pseudo-philosophy tag?

Noam Chomsky: "Rand in my view is one of the most evil figures of modern intellectual history."

from an interview in a Canadian right-wing "libertarian" magazine: http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2008/12/question-period.html

Just because it isn't a moral philosophy that you or I totally agree with doesn't mean it isn't worthy of its place in history. I don't agree with post-modernism, but I would still label all discussions involving it as a discussion of philosophy.

Seeing the Fox News bug at the bottom of the screen tends to fill me with a cerebral discontent, as if by watching and actually enjoying anything from this news network I am somehow awful for it.

But once I can get past that I tend to enjoy the shows with John Stossel and Judge Napolitano.

^Absolutely.

Wait for the end....

I think I've lost the ability to debate with uneducated simpletons.

Its probably a good thing.

Moving this video to blankfist's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

>> ^undefined:
I think I've lost the ability to debate with uneducated simpletons.
Its probably a good thing.


But remember all your fellow educated simpletons with whom you may still debate ad nauseam.

This a thinly-veiled polemic, not unlike the book itself. developed to cater to the "radical self-interests" of the conservative movement. Rand, herself, was a stricken & bitter woman whose work served to undercut her own "self-interest," thereby undermining the vision that she, herself, didn't fully understand.

*dead

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Awarding eric3579 with one Power Point for fixing this video's dead embed code.