Of course it does. A goddess is supposed to be flawless. Despite the many books sold she isn't.
I don't habitually attack Rand, because I am in fact sympathetic to most libertarian ideas. On a thread whose topic is her persona rather than libertariansim, I think, an objective assessment of her legacy is in order.
I'd kind of feel sorry for both of them.
Right. So, you don't have a system of ethics. You have ethical indiffirentism. That is what I've been saying of the ethics of Rand all along.
Rand have not only tried, but succeeded, in convincing millions of non-Christians and pseudo-Christians to appreciate the values of capitalism and freedom.
On which you then reply:
She did? Where? One can see some intellectual exercise value in Rand's work -- I do -- but please, let us not pretend that her pitiful philosophy ever convinced anyone outside of a very narrow circle of fellow-theorizers.
I would agree that "millions" seems a bit far fetched, but hundreds of thousands is quite likely. Now I may have erred in interpreting the meaning of the word "convinced" in the above quote. If by convinced, you meant an acceptance of the totality of her philosophy, then you are quite right, and I stand corrected for reading more into what you said than what you actually said. In that case, 5,000 to 20,000 at best, if even that many.
On the other hand, if you mean that her philosophy did not add to or change opinions all ready held, then I say you are wrong. I've known to many people who often rejected the finality of her position on a particular subject to have credited her in moving their prior position to something in between the two. And that qualifies as changing peoples minds. Here I suspect the totals to be in the hundreds of thousands. At any rate her philosophy was anything but "pitiful." Unless of course you are claiming that all philosopher's opinions are pitiful by some standard or another. In which case the word "pitiful"is meaningless when spoken by you.
So, you don't have a system of ethics. You have ethical indiffirentism.
The taking of an answer that you do not agree with to a single narrow question, and deriving out of it the totality of ethical indifference, tosses all bias in thought aside, leaving only gross prejudice as the basis for conclusion.
With regard to the two men described, assuming the standard model dictum that all else be not known and equal, any statement as to there not being an ethical difference would be such a gross understatement as to make totally incorrect. My position is not that there is no ethical difference. My position is an assertion that they both are absolutely ethically equal. And that kind of claim requires a system of ethics.