Ayn Rand was an intellectually brilliant woman whose larger life was imbalanced and her philosophy severely diminished by her atheism and self-centeredness.
Reading her books is like spending a lot of time looking at a two-dimensional surrealist painting.
Her philosophy, Objectivism , advocates reason, individualism, and personal happiness. Conservatives are more likely to favor faith, tradition, and duty as core values. Politically, Objectivism is classically liberal or libertarian . It expresses a world view associated with the Enlightenment.
Despite your differences in basic philosophy, you must agree with her theories on capitalism as it relates to self interest or "greed" as the lefties would have it.
Rand was a brilliant mind, there can be no doubt. And her books tended to be a hard slog, with much repetition. This is true. Brilliant minds tend to ramble at times. But she had much to say that was worthy, and you can't dismiss it just because you have some quibbles.
>>Ayn Rand was an intellectually brilliant woman whose larger life was imbalanced and her philosophy severely diminished by her atheism and self-centeredness.<<
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Excellent summary of Rand. She is a perfect example of an atheist who tried to erect a false god and worship it.
Then she went all Fatal-Attraction on her protege, Nathaniel Brandon. I sometimes think that was God’s wakeup call for impressionable highschoolers like me who were following her extremely closely in the late ‘60s-early ‘70s; although, frankly, I think becoming a college freshman was antidote enough for her bizarre ideas.
Do her modern followers even see how kooky she was?
Psychologically she was clearly a Borderline Personality, splitting everything/everybody into camps of absolute good and absolute evil—the personality deficiency that eventually unraveled her.