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My thoughts on Ayn Rand--

I read her books as a teenager and they had a major influence on me--and still do.

However, I found many of her followers to be very difficult--they tended to be dogmatic, emotional, and high-strung.

I consider her essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy or politics or economics or art, and I wish every college student required to read Marx's insanity was required to read her as an antidote.

I think the problem with her followers (and Rand as a person) is that logic is cruel--it is very difficult to find a nice way to tell someone they are an idiot or their values are evil.

Since the vast majority of people on the planet probably need to be insulted if they are told the truth life can be rather miserable if you insist on doing so. :-)

My approach with such people is to drop hints here or there with the hope that the seeds will take root. Rand and her followers preferred two by fours to the head.

As the old-timers may remember it was Whitaker Chambers who believed (feared) that a Randian state would quickly devolve into an authoritarian one despite Rand's clear opposition to violence. His point may be that the vast majority of human beings are just not capable of logical thought in their political lives, so the Randians would have to eliminate Democracy and resort to violence if they wanted the political results they desired.

Make no mistake--our current system of the "mixed economy" is a total failure and our Republic's long-term future is bleak imho.

Perhaps there is no political system that can work in the real world with real people. While I am very angry and frustrated with all Democrats and most Republicans I see no other country that is significantly better than the U.S.

While economics has been called "the dismal science" perhaps the real secret is that politics is an equally dismal one.