so...just like the bible then. cherry pick the parts that we like, conveniently ignore the parts we don't.

but hey that's consistent with Ayn who was also a huge hypocrite. decrying gov't assistance, yet partaking of it herself

When you take into account her personal history, her "philosophy" becomes a bit more understandable. Her family lost everything to the Communist revolution when she was a little girl. Thus, her life's ambition was to prevent Communism from gaining any foothold. Objectivism is the result. A philosophy of "not" Communism. If a communist is for it, she's against it. At least in public where it counts.

This makes it perfect cover for the Republican party of No, who built their modern philosophy of government on the same foundation. No to anything the Democrats support.

Sociopaths

Imagine the philosophy that combines Ayn Rands outlook with empathy toward others...

I'm only marginally familiar with some of her principles, but those I do know of speak of the superiority of the self, and how every human is their own temple of the gods, capable of greatness. I completely agree with that, but treat everyone else around me as though it were a universal truth (so, you and everyone else are also entities of boundless, godly potential and should be treated with equal respect as you expect to be treated yourself, i.e. golden rule).

I wish we could progress through life with that perspective of 'superior equality', but not being fully versed in her work I probably fall in line with those who cherry-pick as well.

Wasn't she an atheist? Doesn't that win her some points among the left?

But yeah, communism is okay. They're only responsible for the deaths of around 90 million people in the past century, but hey...

Rand is a lunatic!!!

Rand was certainly not a great writer (as is often the case with those who write novels in a language that isn't native to them). As such, there's no comparison between Rand's use of English and say, Dickens' (but you could probably say that about Dickens and almost anyone else, John Oliver included. And Harry Potter isn't much better than The Fountainhead! Or most popular fiction for that matter.)
I doubt most of Oliver's audience have read Crime and Punishment, or The Brothers Karamzov, or The Sound and the Fury. I doubt Oliver's fans are any more "intellectual" or well-read than Rand's, quite honestly.

But Rand didn't even believe in small government. Just limited government. She was certainly no anarchist. John Galt was, perhaps, but not Rand. (The character is not the author.) Both Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand learned from Ludwig Von Mises, and they took what they learned in very different directions.

Yet, most of Oliver's audience probably haven't even read Rand and she's hardly that much of a contemporary topic worth talking about.. So why would Oliver (HBO) want to spend valuable broadcast time talking about her? She wouldn't be a "thing" if they chose to ignore it, and yet they aren't. Why? Might this bit be (the $beneficiary of those who are) uneasy with a potential Rand Paul presidential run, thus needing a straw man with which to link him with "libertarians" and Ayn Rand?

All this "OMG Rand!" going around, and yet her work continues to stick around long after she's gone.. And will likely remain so, given ^programs^ (and commenters) like this and their unwillingness to let it go.

Man, Nabokov's prose could punch the balls off of anything Dickens ever wrote. You're seriously gonna hold up the language of Dickens as a shining example? The guy who wrote such memorable purplitudes as:
"And in this particular period, the skiey influences seem to tincture the animal life with their own mysterious and wayward spirit of change. The birds desert their summer haunts; an unaccountable inquietude pervades the brute creation; even men in this unsettled season have considered themselves, more (than at others) stirred by the motion and whisperings of their genius. And every creature that flows upon the tide of the Universal Life of Things, feels upon the ruffled surface, the mighty and solemn change, which is at work within its depths."

I got recommended to read Atlas Shrugged by a friend of mine. That friend turned out to be a beret-wearing high-art-snob ponce, but i didn't know it at the time.

I managed to finish it and whilst there were reasonable ideas in there that i think in some way we have paralleled in reality - whilst i find that most of her characters are sociopathic to some degree, i can very much sympathise with the idea of being led by the least capable in society who abuse the system of power that they shape and build to implement bad ideas badly.

I like the idea that the world would grind to a halt if the morons in charge did not have the ordinary, hard working people to keep things afloat... but that's about all i like about it. And i think we genuinely can see it happening in the world today in a less exaggerated fashion - the recent recession clearly demonstrated that the people in charge of money and property do not understand what they're doing and ignored the warning signs for years. Furthermore, our feckless leaders have done nothing about it, property bubbles continue to grow and bonuses for the upper echelons are still outlandish whilst the lower workers are struggling to get by in the recession. And then the expenses scandal of the MPs in Britain literally stealing money from the public pocket to have their moats cleaned (that actually happened) and such. Yesterday the watchdog looking into the scandal has decided that the investigation will take place in secret from the public and punishments will also be kept secret. Et voila, two clear instances of those in charge having no clue and no moral compass swept under the rug and forgotten about.

In conclusion, Ayn Rand is a very small minded individual who thinks that everyone in the world must think like she does. That is the only reason i can think of for the approximately 30 pages i read about the female lead character's personal sexual obsession with being taken aggressively by a man and made to feel defiled and used, and how all women feel that and all men wish to dominate and use a woman in turn.

But i think she got it spot on about how being led by those least capable morons will bring the world to its knees, and it won't require the hard workers to quit either. It just requires them to let it happen. And there's no little paradise to run off to, there's just Earth.

@artician - that's exactly it. The characters have no human empathy in Atlas Shrugged. I don't understand why it has to be all or nothing for most people - all conservative or all liberal. Why not the best of both? It IS possible to be ethical, productive and innovative at the same time.

Rand hasn't been dead THAT long. give it another 100 years or so to see if people still put her on a pedestal. It's already glaringly obvious that no-holds barred capitalism is harmful and not a good way to go.

It's just like racism. There are still a lot of people who were alive when having separate fountains for the colored folk was considered an ethical viewpoint. Just because we have laws that say that sort of behavior is not ok doesn't mean people change their views. You basically have to wait for that generation to die off or be confined to a nursing home before real change to occur.

Thus it is the same with the Rand disciples. There are just too many people who firmly believe unrestricted capitalism is still the way to go and you won't be able to change their opinion, you have to either successfully remove them from a position of influence or wait for them to croak.

Still having problems grasping the concept of nuance I see.

Does Hitler and Timothy McVeigh being Christian win them some points with you?

I got caught up someone in Rand in my youth, and I did take away some good things. It made me feel ok for being selfish once in awhile and to not walk around with constant guilt for not doing more for others. main thing I learned was that the world does begin and end with you because you are you. It's inherent in being you. To deny that and destroy the self leads to either madness or suicide.

Ayn Rand is still popular because she gives a philosophical fig leaf for sociopathic behaviour of the rich and powerful. Whether she was right or wrong is irrelevant, at least she sounded clever.

Upvote for The Inbetweeners "handjob scene"!

Sorry, but no, this is complete bullshit.

Some of the most powerful politicians in the US are devotee's of Ayn Rand, including the last vice presidential candidate and several front runners for the upcoming presidential elections.

Dissecting and criticizing her work is not some sort of straw man argument. It is perfectly legitimate criticism of the core values of those politicians.

Obligatory XKCD reference

especially important is the alt text

I had a hard time with Ayn Rand because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at 'therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone.'

Objectivism doesn't ally very well with the current GOP party, actually. Objectivism is very much against gov't cronyism. Also, Objectivism is extremely liberal on social issues.

It is true that Objectivism is very closely aligned with libertarianism, but that ain't the Tea Party socially.

I didn't say it allied with the current GOP, I said it provided cover for them.

However, there are distinct similarities as well. Her philosophy is nothing but an anti-philosophy, which is analogous to the GOP's policies which are also nothing but an anti-democrat stance. Neither one is -for- anything, they're only against the other side. Neither one provides any original thought or options.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'ayn rand, john oliver, last week tonight, why is she still athing, objectivism' to 'ayn rand, john oliver, last week tonight, why is she still a thing, objectivism' - edited by calvados

I am not a supporter of Objectivism, but to say Ayn Rand didn't support anything, but was only against things isn't accurate. She was passionately in favor of capitalism, reason, science, and individual rights. Her biggest weakness was as unwavering belief that she was right, and everyone else was wrong without any doubts whatsoever, even when the evidence was practically slapping her in the face because if something contradicted her philosophy, it had to be wrong.

Her affair with Nathaniel Branden was a perfect example. You can't say she was anti-marriage. She was however passionately in favor of affairs in marriage if one felt as she did about Branden, even as her husband and his wife drank themselves into oblivion in a feable attempt to cope.

If you think she was simply contrarian, then you completely missed what her ideas were.

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She was passionately in favor of her own ideas about capitalism, reason, science, and her own individual rights as opposed to a functioning society, philosophical debate, actual science and other peoples rights.

It is strange how people mention her as inspiration offhandedly, basically that is like saying "you know there is this rather clever idea in Mein Kampf" because her whole work is pointed in the direction of "being an asshole is good for you" (which is really pretty obvious, is it not?). A functional society should be able to contain or expel assholes. Ayn being taken seriously is a warning sign.

I completely disagree with you about being inspired by her is like being inspired by Hitler. Hitler's philosophy was a complete sham on every level, and contradicts itself numerous times. Objectivism's foundation works well on many levels. Personal aspiration, bettering yourself, valuing logic and knowledge over emotions, those types of things are valuable to an extent.

Objectivism is ultra-logical in the end, very much the same as Social Darwinism. Fundamentally, those ideas have value in some situations and settings. A business for example, in the end, if an employee is not doing his or her job, it's not necessarily the business's job to figure out why unless it's within their self-interest to do so, and they shouldn't have to think that stuff through in every single instance. They should have the flexibility to fire someone in that instance without a second thought about the social ramifications.

It ultimately is a societal problem though that this employee be taken care of as a member of society, which is where Objectivism falls on its face, among other areas. Another one is Objectivism really has terrible implications in many aspects of parenting, to put it mildly.

I was personally inspired by Ayn Rand in high school quite honestly. She made me care about philosophy, about achieving the most I could achieve via hard work and self-determination, to learn how to critically think and use reason, to be OK to not conform necessarily to group think, etc. Just like every ideology, it's not perfect, and following it to a T just doesn't work, just like any other ideology and philosophy we may encounter and blend into our own as we age and grow. But it made me want to learn more, achieve more, and think more.

You can do a lot worse than that, IMO, you know, like Fascism. :-)

No no no, being inspired by her, by itself, is indeed less offensive than being inspired by Hitler, the consequences are less dire.

But having the gall to admit publicly that you are inspired by her unconditionally is equally as bad as .. substitute Adolf where applicable.

By doing either you admit to be a self-conscious antisocial asshole.

I understand that reading her book can accidentally shove you in a better direction than before, and that is very unlikely in the other scenario, I give you that.

I was inspired by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Che Guevara for what thats worth :-)

So a general all-encompassing nod to her is just like a general nod to any evil. And you dont get out of that by quantifying evil and making it relative.

I have the "gall" to admit it that she inspired me in high school. I know numerous people who were as well. None of them are antisocial assholes. I'm perhaps a bit anti-social in the respect that I'm very much an introvert, but people who know me generally don't describe me as an asshole.

It wasn't accidental. Advocating for reason, science, individual rights, critical thinking, trying to be good at what you do, being unafraid to think differently than others, none of that makes you automatically an asshole.

I don't think she was evil. I think her case is complicated as many philosophers were. There's good and bad to it. That's like saying Che Guevara is ipso facto being a fan or somehow on some plane similar or equivalent of being a fan of Stalin, and therefore it's offensive.

Just... no... that's just factually and logically not true.