Saturday Reads

 An untalented screenwriter with an obvious psychological disorder-turned novelist-turned "philosopher" continues to have an undue influence on policymakers over 40 years after she croaked.

All you had to do is see Ayn Rand's interviews and know there was something missing in her analysis.  The speculation she was on the autism spectrum may have some merit.  She seemed incapable to putting herself in another's shoes.

The same cannot be said for her legion of groupies, who are simply greedy bastards or sociopaths.

Snip:

But starting in the late 1970s, Rand became the intellectual godmother of modern-day American conservatism, especially its libertarian strand.

I BELIEVE RAND, NOZICK, AND THEIR MORE MODERN INCARNATIONS are dangerously wrong. Not only does the common good exist, but it is essential for a society to function.

Without voluntary adherence to a set of common notions about right and wrong, daily life would be insufferable. We would be living in a jungle where only the strongest, cleverest, and most wary could hope to survive. This would not be a society. It wouldn’t even be a civilization, because there would be no civility at its core.

As I said, she wasn't all there in the head to begin with. Neither was the "economist" James Buchanan, whose crackpot "libertarian" ideas have caused a lot of damage in this country because billionaires like Charles Koch latched onto those idiotic ideas.

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It's no surprise women make up a large share of the far right.  They stupidly think they will be guaranteed survival from men if they latch onto their idiotic ideas.

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Mike Pence can't be taken seriously as a presidential candidate if he keeps harping on a nationwide abortion "ban"--abortion couldn't be banned by driven underground instead--since voters have very plainly told antiabortion nutjobs like him they don't want women to be chattel.

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