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William Knight's avatar

"Her philosophy then is just her personal vendetta. And it’s the most ironic thing — she calls this philosophy “Objectivism.”

So this explains Rand, but I never understood her appeal to the American libertarian. I struggled to plod through Atlas Shrugged as a youth because I always kept thinking "why don't these private enterprise superheros stop whining and just capture the collectivist government and make it their bitch?", which is what real oligarchs did in the US and later, Russia.

What do the rabid Russian libertarian immigrants think of her? Why didn't they also ask themselves the same question and become uber oligarchs in Putin's Russia instead of raging against socialist institutions and ideology in the US?

Is it just simple and stupid hypocrisy? "Social Darwinism for thee, Social Security for me."

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Tom's avatar
Apr 11Edited

AH, well then you were way ahead of me as a kid, probably even ahead of me as a kid when I was a college frosh. My undeveloped brain and overstimulated hormone addled libido kind of superseded much critical thought or desire to learn anything about "important" things like economics and politics until I was probably 25 or 26.

But lately in my middle years, I'm starting to think I was thinking in the right ways to begin with.

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William Knight's avatar

"But lately in my middle years, I'm starting to think I was thinking in the right ways to begin with"

Yeah, there's a time limit on that burning libido :)

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Tom's avatar

Haha! Exactly. Youth is wasted on the young.

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