Well, I think this is it for 'merica. v. Ayn Rand discussion on pg. 3

[ack44]

That was unfair man. And in fact this was what began this entire exchange. Exactly the 'feeling' I encountered when reading you and emindead's exchange. Felt belittled a bit but hey, interpretation over the internet is tricky and I should have just overlooked it anyway.

See, if you'd been around longer, you would have known I was taking a pot-shot at Em's idol.

Well it may take a few PHD's to get to the bottom of America's downfall...but you don't need CSI to figure out I most definately caused this mess. 
 I actually just wanted attention, and a way to raise my post count so someone would talk to me

 I like your avatar, because the Sun is so underrated. The Sun... it's so... fucking.... awesome, dude.

[emindead]

@WW: exactly.

[rumborak]

I'm not familiar with the context of those statements. But assuming you are correct, you have to take the good and leave the bad. Even great thinkers don't adhere to their own ideas consistently. Jefferson, for example, was responsible for all sorts of extra-constitutional actions. Does that mean all of his ideas are shit? No. And I think the same applies here. Her statements very obviously contradict her philosophy, but that doesn't refute everything she's ever said.

I agree with you. And I think Rand's input was very valuable in the sense of pressing the point that not all selfish behavior is negative but can, through competition, achieve very positive results.
But, as with the great thinkers of Communism, Libertarianism, you name it, she too fell prey to the temptation of trying to subsume everything under that umbrella. Sort of a "Grand Unifying Theory" of everything. With the same results as the aforementioned theories.
Problem with any of those theories is, this is not physics. We're humans, evolved through the millennia to do one thing well: Survive. There can be no grand scheme through which to see human behavior. We're selfish when it works, we're altruistic when it works. We're smart when it works, and we're ignorant and stupid when it works for us. We're a big blob of behavioral silly-putty that got mushed together over thousands of years. Trying to find a Grand Unifying Theory to our behavior might play to our tendency to believe simplistic things (because it works for us), but in the end, it doesn't work.

rumborak

[gmillerdrake]

I like your avatar, because the Sun is so underrated. The Sun... it's so... fucking.... awesome, dude.

Why thank you.... I have always been fascinated by our Sun, actually anything cosmical.