It means Rebublicans are clueless about what it means and what it takes to live in a decent society, that’s what it means.

It took hundreds of years of deaths, battles, riots, protests, and hard fought politics to carefully determine the myriad ways in which Americans NEED government in order to ensure SOME DEGREE of safety, fairness, equality, justice, and opportunity in our society, yet Republicans would mindlessly discard all the hard-learned lessons of American history to pursue a rash, ill-reasoned, terribly naive, and selfish ideology.

If Republicans succeed in pushing their agenda on Americans, we will end up among the rampant crime and misery that attends mass poverty, with innocent people getting mugged, burglarized, or worse, just so the hungry and desperate can feed themselves and their families.
This WILL happen to a degree never before seen in our country, perhaps akin to crime in the Brazilian favelas, but with the wealth of a decaying middle-class to feed on- a resource not to be had in Brazil and one which will enrage the starving as the inequities of our society will be evident before their eyes, in their own cities and neighborhoods, driving past them as they beg on the streets.

… and amid the rampant crime, fewer and fewer civil servants to help in any way, as Republicans will have assured that what little government revenues are left are being spent in all the wrong ways, protecting the interests, of course, of only the wealthiest in our society.

An ugly, bitter, desperate future and living environment for all.

Think it can’t happen? Think again!!!!

“Ayn Rand’s Resurgence”

Yikes I hope not,

Jonathan Chait, senior editor at The New Republic.
Anne C. Heller, journalist and author of “Ayn Rand and the World She Made.”
Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks.

I hope Tom warns listeners to bring a shovels since while be in for a load of Bull_. How many times you think Socalist, Communist and obama will come up?

Besides Rand couldn’t even practice what she preached affairs and all.

No Mark Williams in the line up? Was it due to his racist statement about obama or the NAACP or the one how slaves were pissed at Lincoln for freeing them?

Rand talked about objectivism while at the same time having a secret love affair. I guess it explain why conservatives gravitate to her since she full of it and is proud to spread the b.s.

The Rand-Branden business partnership lasted till May 1968. Rand announced in the The Objectivist, Branden would no longer be her intellectual heir and ordered all future printings of Atlas Shrugged not to carry his name in the dedication page. At the time, Rand did not reveal she was having a secret love affair with Branden who was twenty four years her junior and he was leaving her for a younger woman who was also an attractive model whom Branden would eventually marry. However, Branden divulged this information in his book, Judgment Day: my years with Ayn Rand.[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Branden

http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm

Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman by Michael Prescott — Criticizes positive comments Rand made about Hickman, a kidnapper and murderer, in her personal journals when she was 23. Prescott say Rand’s comments “make me question not only her judgment, but her sanity” and show that she was “a psychological and moral mess.”

http://home.ca.inter.net/~grantsky/re-evaluating.html

by Grant Schuyler — Accuses Rand of “rude and deeply inappropriate behaviour” in her handling of philosophical disputes, and warns that “Her life shows the danger of becoming an isolated figure, especially one surrounded by a quasi-cult of insiders.”

http://www.oocities.org/athens/olympus/4612/lp-obj.html

Unraveling Libertarianism and Objectivism by Nigel Maywood — Essay that describes Objectivism as “a brilliant philosophy,” but denigrates “Randroids,” who the author says believe “that Ayn Rand has never done anything wrong and every idea which spawned from her head, no matter how mundane the issue, is gospel.”

http://www.ariwatch.com/
ARI Watch (author anonymous) — Multiple essays criticizing the Ayn Rand Institute and persons associated with it for “advocating the expedient suspension of the U.S. Constitution, self-sacrifice, and torture” since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

We have a impending crisis that is searching for a philosophy instead of a solution. For most citizens bubbles are bad. We have a bubble of population that has grown on cheap energy. In the US we have a bubble reaching retirement, 10,000 boomers each day for the next 20 years. We are willing to change anything, as long as it changes nothing now. I believe both shows today cover the same subject, from the perspective of different parties. Ponzi could not see the flaw in his own logic. Neither does Madoff or Paul Ryan. My state elected Rand Paul, named after Ayn Rand, a state that is insolvent without inflow of federal program money. Rand’s philosophy is interpreted like verses of the bible, short statements to justify what an individual is already doing. A rule book for others combined with self justification.
I am looking for On Point to do a show on the paradox of freedom from responsibility and civil society. No philosophy can replace actions of doing the right thing. We need to quit searching for a philosophy de-jour and start building our nation for our citizens. The work will do us good. Change now instead of making laws that shift changes to the future. This means raising taxes, and keeping the promises to our citizens. Retirement and healthcare are implicit in those promises.

I take issue with Rand followers on the notion that greed is the prime motivator of constructive human action. The Fountainhead protagonist Howard Roark, in my view, didn’t care very much about money. He wanted to design and build buildings. Likewise, I believe that for the most part, the creative people who move our society forward aren’t motivated by money – yes, they deserve a decent living and need some level of freedom – but the notion that wealth is highest and holiest reward is silly. Money motivates pathology as much as anything else.

I’ve never taken longer to read a book than the year and a half it took me to plow through “The Fountainhead.” I tried to put it down multiple times, but I kept hoping for a payoff. Of course, that payoff was “Everyone who is not Howard Roark must be destroyed!”

I fail to understand how a writer who introduces symbols with the subtlety of a foghorn, who can’t seem to make her point in fewer than 700 pages, and whose female characters are thinly veiled versions of herself (rape scene and all…) came to be respected as either an author or a philosopher.

When I finished the book, I was overtaken by a vision of soaking my copy in kerosene, lighting it on fire, and throwing it into a library that contained nothing but thousands upon thousands of other copies of “The Fountainhead.” That “novel” is vile trash of the first order, and it’s the rare work that actually offended me. It’s a distillation of everything that is base and foul in human nature masquerading as virtue.

To anyone who thinks Rand is a genius, go ahead and go Galt—let us know how that works out for you. To anyone who thinks Rand is a good writer, I would submit that you haven’t read many novels. Or essays. Or anything with words, really.

-dan
Boston, MA

I would like to know how the “christian conservatives” are reconciling the fact that the works of this “conservative hero” go against nearly everything I’ve understood the bible to represent?

With the ongoing attack of the conservatives on medical care for the country, wouldn’t it make more sense for them to promote the writing of Mary Baker Eddy?

It seems that a fair amount of republicans are having trouble with their constituents at town hall meetings. Rep. Paul Ryan is among them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/26/gop-town-halls-reps-duck-out_n_854157.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/27/gop-medicare-cuts_n_854224.html

How about the violent rape scene in “The Fountainhead?” Does that make Howard Roark an independent hero?

Ayn Rand makes my skin crawl. What an unpleasant woman.

Did he REALLY say “it doesn’t matter who you know in Washington?!!!!!”

I’m sorry. The FreedomWorks prez is tacking against crony capitalism?

Tom, take this hack to the cleaners. The slightest bit of research and countermanding Kibbe’s would utterly destroy him.

Laughing myself to the point of vomiting now.

What would Ayn Rand make of the new discoveries of the biological roots of altruism and cooperation.

No one does things by themself. Railroads are not built by one person. This is nonsense to talk about the individual doing things all by themselves.

If so many republicans follow Ayn Rand , why are they so against cutting government subsidies to the oil industry – shouldn’t any government subsidies be anathema ?

Ayn Rand was a psychologically unbalanced woman whose sole contribution to literature was to produce a few books that, as much as they are mind-candy, are absolutely based in fantasy and falsehood. The conservative utopia she wrote about is based on hypocrisy and lies as well. It could never exist and is merely a smokescreen to hide her anti-social, paranoid personality.

Of course the wealthy pay the largest amount of tax. As a proportion of their income, however, that’s a tiny amount. They don’t pay nearly as much as a proportion of income as everyone else.

Government bails out some banks and not others? Well, how did a handful of banks get so big that they hold the keys to the entire economy, and will bring the economy down to rubble if they fail? Did government do that? What about these same banks acting to reduce government regulation such that they could go into the risky investments that later came back to hurt them?
Matt’s arguments leave out half the story.

Producers versus nonproducers, says Kibbe. “Nonproducers who think it’s okay to take from others.”
Oh, that would be the Wall Street types. That would be the parasites at the top, who are kind of hard to unmask. Madoff who made off. That sort of nonproducers.
I hate to see someone seeming to defend arrogance who comes from the general vicinity of Hollywood. We get to worship glamor and arrogance every time we watch movies. Does that sense of “I’ve got mine” have to become a philosophy?
Surely the Republicans can do better than that. There are much more solid senses of accomplishment, with or without capitalist heft, that can be found.
But the grabby nonproducers are not all located on the Democrat side of the aisle.

To see the results of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of selfishness and individualism, where people don’t have to pay taxes, and only the strong, self-sufficient succeed, look at any failed state like Afghanistan. They don’t have policies and taxes to pay for education, they don’t collect taxes to build roads or support public health.

Face it Ayn Rand and her followers are sociopaths.

I know you are thankful your great grandchildren won’t be able to come back in time and extract their revenge on you for the world you gave them.

Everyone touts individualism until they hit trouble themselves. Even Ms. Rand survived on Social Security and Medicare as she got older:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-ford/ayn-rand-and-the-vip-dipe_b_792184.html

FreedomWorks guy you know you are using the tea baggers to take away their own Social Security and Medicare.

You might not be the one that laughs last when they wake up and realize that.

FreedomWorks guy you know you are using the tea baggers to take away their own Social Security and Medicare.

You might not be the one that laughs last when they wake up and realize that.

Hah! Matt just said “if you work hard and PLAY BY THE RULES…” I thought that the tea partyers didn’t want the rules. Aren’t they rugged indivudualists???

The Right’s new cry is “don’t tax the job creators” is as disingenuous as all their claims justifying tax cuts. Of course when times are good the Right cries to tax the rich will create a recession.

And that SHOULD be a clue that if the Right’s only answer to ALL problems, even as the debt grows, is tax cuts, then NONE of those rationales are truthful and there must be a hidden agenda.

Of course we SHOULD know what that agenda is… to sabotage revenues hoping rising debt will kill off all those New Deal and Great Society programs the Right so loathes.

If Democrats ever used fiscal irresponsibility to sabotage government’s ability to function or deal with emergencies, the Right would accuse them of treason.

I would like to contest your panel’s argument that questions relating to the commons should be understood under the umbrella of property. The assumption of this argument is that property can be defined by abstract boundaries that define the legal extent of one’s obligations, and that ecological conditions are static and abide by legal definitions of property. While this understanding is convenient, it belies a number of essential truths.

If a chemical company operates irresponsibly, it not only effects the property that the company owns, but also the water table and air quality of the local community. This means that the local community will have a higher chance of contracting illnesses directly related to the production of the company, placing increased financial burden on this community in terms of health cost. Furthermore, it means that the property values for the area will be less than those where there is no chemical company, better water and air quality and (probably) better views.

The “empty lot” of your panel’s metaphor, when left untended, then has significant consequences for the surrounding properties, something familiar to people living in depressed urban neighborhoods, where empty lots negatively effect the community’s property values. It is an unrealistic way of understanding a complex and urgent question, and disingenuous, to say the least.

NO! No!!! THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS — ANY and ALL interpretations MUST be seen to exist within a CONTEXT which ALSO must be STUDIED!!! In some places, the English colonists gave the East Coast Native Americans reservation land (reservations existed before the 18th century; and yes, sadly, it was giving the Indians back their own land, in pitifully PALTY amounts.). Some of the later colonists wanted to reverse that, but once we were a country, the AMERICAN citizens in power (now I’m talking about Northampton County, Eastern Shore Virginia) really worked hard TO GET THAT LAND FOR THEMSELVES. THE LANGUAGE THEY USED FOR THIS LAND GRAB was the language of “individuality” and of “individual ownership”: surely, they said, the Indians wanted to OWN their own plots of land. Trouble is, these powerful people ALSO said, in a paper trail they didn’t realize would catch up with them later: “Hah! If we change the law that gave them their land collectively, so that they each own a plot of land, they won’t be able to pay the TAXES on the land, and they will forfeit the land, and we will get the LAND, AND we will be able to get RID OF THEM, under vagrancy laws! (By the way, the White, powerful citizens said that THEY should decide who was “Indian”, and in spite of protestations that they designated the WRONG people, they proceded to designate various individuals as being “Indian”. Like other reservations, this one, in Eastville, had become a maroon with Indians, Blacks, Whites, and Mulattos all living together; the Whites only wanted individual land ownership to go to Indians; again, knowing that they would soon lose their land to tax debt.) I’ve told you all this before in other contexts, but it NEEDS to be said in THIS context! The Tragedy of the Commons must be studied in the broad contexts it dwelled within — it is NOT A FREE-STANDING CONCEPT — even contemporary scholars of the concept MUST be seen to ALSO live within a social/economic context which they may/may not be able to parse out for its INFLUENCE on THEIR interpretation!!!

This research about this land-grab was done by historian Francis-Bibbins Latimer; altho I take responsibility for the paraphrases of the land-grabbers, and I delivered a very abbreviated version of her research.

We should be clear when discussing Rand’s concept of the individual; this is not necessarily tied to the “rugged individualism” of American Transcendentalist philosophy, this is the heroic individualism of “genius,” and thus a reassertion of egoism. This is why Rand goes through such lengths to aggrandize her protagonists and diminish her antagonists, something clearly seen in the construction of “The Fountainhead.”

Of course, to accept Rourke’s assertion of his right to creative control, we have to accept the assumption that Rourke is a genius, and that his architecture represents some kind of significant and meaningful transformation for the better. If Rourke is a hack, well, then he’s just a poor designer hiding behind a phenomenal ego to legitimate arson.

It is ironic, in some respects, that Rand chooses an architect as her model for genius, because the work of the architect is frequently public, and its importance, social, especially with respect to Rourke’s proposal. Naturally, none of the ephemeral social benefits of Rourke’s work are discussed in the novel, and as the architectural historian Reyner Banham points out in his “Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment” many modernists fell significantly short in terms of the ultimate functionality of their buildings – a problem that currently plagues numerous modernist masterpieces today.

Ayn Rand along with a growing part of the conservative/republican movement are looking more and more like a collection of comic book characters. Are they going to come and save the day by some great feat of collective individualism?????????? or are they going to be tossed into the trash bin of history.

Kent

It is interesting that Bernie Madoff is the topic of the show that followed that about Ayn Rand. He seems to follow her philosophy.

Ayn Rand espoused a very darwinian take on things. The selfish gene: the selfish individual etc ….But she doesn’t seem to get Darwinism. The point being that human beings are the only species that consiously defy darwinian evolution by natural selection.

She was/is wrong but at least she did think about major issues. Credit her for that. The movie is terrible BTW!

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Anonymous, quoted in “I’m Ellsworth Toohey!” by Paul Krugman

If cutting the deficit is the goal, why conservatives this week are opposing to eliminating tax breaks for the oil companies?

The idea that the wealthy could be being over taxed and that there is to much restriction on the free market seems counter to the fact that more wealth is in the upper 1% of the population than any time in the last 50 years.

When thinking about the fairness of wealth transfer its is important to consider the idea of long term wealth balance. There are mechanisms within the free market like interest that naturally funnel wealth toward the wealthy. Having capital makes it easier to earn more wealth. Other mechanisms such as taxes transfer wealth in the opposite direction from wealthy to pore. Since there is always transfer of wealth in both directions it seems useful to consider long term(multi-decade) wealth distribution. Wealth distribution over a long time is independent of the rhetoric of the day and factual data.

Wealth flows from many factors including the publicly funded roads on which products are shipped and the efforts of many employees not just the hard work of a few.

As an individual is seems reasonable not to expect any sort of hand out but that the hard work yields prosperity while being willing to share success with less fortunate. I think there is an appeal in the attitudes of confidence, competence, and individuality in Ayn Rands work that does not need to be coupled to a lack of generosity.

I do not think it was necessarily immoral for Rand to accept medicare money to treat her lung cancer. To make my point, consider the following apocryphal story:

Once upon a time there was a basketball player who lobbied to eliminate the three point shot. After years of making his case, he wsas still unsuccessful, and the three point shot remained in place. One day, he actually made a three point shot, and the referee asked whether he wanted to “accept” all three points or just take two. Drumroll please …. he accepted all three points. He stated that his arguing against it did not require him morally to play the game at a handicap.

So that’s the analogy. Rand wanted to change the rules of society; but until she could make those changes, should she have played at a handicap? If you make the case that she should have rejected medicare money, then that would be like making the (absurd) case that the basketball player should have accepted only 2 of the 3 points.

I know that the analogy is imperfect, but … food for thought.

How can people who call themselves “Christians” and practice the “Golden Rule” still think that Ayn Rands ideas are what their perfect world should look like. Do we really want a world where a few are considered “great minds” and the rest of the people don’t count? Is it only rich people who count and the others are invisible and their gifts, and talents not worthy. What is wrong with the rich giving a little to the poor-we are not talking a great amount-a small sum that will hardly be missed but would mean a whole lot to a person with no money? No one is saying that people who work hard give a big chunk to those who don’t work. Everyone should work for their share. People who sit back and feel entitled deserve nothing. This is not going to make everyone equal by any means. But we all have basic needs.

I believe many of the comments here miss the point that Ayn Rand was as a fiction writer (e.g. story teller). Atlas Shrugged and her works need to viewed in this context, rather than as providing a workable philosophy on the role of government.

For the record, I enjoyed reading both Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged . While I agree with Rand’s view that capitalism is the only moral economic system devised by humanity (as it relies on voluntary consent as opposed to government coercion), most conservatives (including me and Paul Ryan) would not accept Rand’s views regarding such an extremely limited role of government. She argued that the ONLY role of government was to maintain a military, police department, and a court system. She considered all other government evil. Where Rand also loses my support is when she uses such harsh rhetoric (e.g. moochers, looters, etc…) to define everyone else in the same manner as tythose on the economic left lose my support when they degrade business executives, entrepreneurs, etc.. A person can accept Rand’s celebration of reasoning, entrepreneurs and business, but reject her demonization of everyone else in such harsh terms and also believe that a competent, limited government benefits both individuals and society by promoting educational achievements, infrastructure, and providing (and preferably temporary). Where my views differ from most of you who often post regularly on this discussion board is that I believe this federal government role has to be limited based on both economic constraints and also to be effective (e.g. perhaps to the 18-21% of GDP that we maintained during most of the post WWII era prior to 2008).

P.S. I also believe that using Alan Greenspan to critique Rand’s philosophy borders on absurd. If Mr. Greenspan was so inspired by Ayn Rand, why would he pursue a career as a central banker, which is a career that Rand and those who accept her views would reject in its entirety.

Rand Paul is short for Randal, and he and his father Ron have said several times that he was not named after Ayn Rand.

There is a profound misunderstanding of Ayn Rand’s philosophy in the mainstream, as evidenced by the appallingly ignorant and hateful comments here.

Objectivism starts with a simple premise – that we are rational and that we are not slaves (we own our own lives and bodies). Accordingly, individual rights supersede those of the collective. The collective/government has no business telling individuals what they must do with their lives, bodies or property.

In terms of policy, it is obvious that throughout history, the producers, the poor and middle class especially, have been exploited in the name of “the greater good”, while the oligarchy mooches off their productivity. Examples: in the name of nationalism we the people have fought wars that enrich industrial interests. In the name of saving the “economy” we the people have bailed out Wall St and other wealthy interests. In the name of protecting “the country” we are told to give up our individual civil liberties.

As a producer myself, I wish that my wealth was not forcibly expropriated by the government to reward what I see as bad behavior by the various industrial interests that control our government. I would like to use my wealth to reward virtue in the free marketplace of ideas.
With respect to charity, that too has a place within Objectivism. It is in my own self interest to prevent people from dying in the streets, and in a more prosperous free-market I would have the freedom to choose to donate towards that goal.

NeoCons and Tea Partiers like a good conspiracy theory, so here’s one: Ayn Rand, Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, was a Russian plant put in the US to spread her philosophy. The Russians knew that we’d never accept communism, so they sent her to push a brand of “selfish” capitalism and individualism that they knew would eventually destroy our economy. Mission accomplished.

I can’t believe these Tea Partiers have no problem trusting a cold war era Russian, but thy have a hard time trusting a president born in the US.

*Note: I’m not insane, so I don’t believe this. However, it makes just as much sense as some of the crap coming from the far right.

Progressives are inflicted with the liberal disease which Ayn Rand recognized, she showed us the analogy in her book Atlas shrugged. The problem is there is no cure for it. Mussolini and Stalin were victims of this disease, we see how that turned out in the Soviet Union. It took 50 years to undo the damage caused by their insanity and as history bears out it has never been cured. Progressive Democrats will not be satisfied until the collapse of our financial system, in their sick and perverted minds they believe they will create a better system of kings and slaves. carl marx, Lenin and their systems have failed every time it’s been tried. In their state of insanity they cannot perceive history and therefore are not aware of their illness. We have a duty to the mentally ill to try and guide them through their illness.

My, my, such lavish praise in these comments for a woman whose twisted view of life led her to extol the virtues of a serial killer, among other far-out notions. Rand worshippers with enough curiosity can read it all here, in a 2009 Slate.com online review of two biographies of Rand: http://www.slate.com/id/2233966/

Here’s a choice tidbit from the review, which effectively captures for me the alternate pusillanimity and whininess of Rand’s supporters:

“Her heroes are a cocktail of extreme self-love and extreme self-pity: They insist they need no one, yet they spend all their time fuming that the masses don’t bow down before their manifest superiority.”

WILL EVERYONE PLEASE STOP FREAKING OUT OVER AYN RAND?

http://reason.com/archives/2009/11/10/will-everyone-please-stop-frea

Isnt she totally discredited by now?  COme to think of it, arent the neocons?  Why do “thinkers” who screw up our economy and our foreign policy still get an audience from intelligent people?  It would be like asking Neville Chamberlin about how to deal with  a fascist dictator.

I want to base our Constitution on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.  Oh, wait. Gene Roddenberry and “Star Trek” would probably be more appropriate.  The result would probably be better than a Libertarian  economy!

When I was much younger during the mid 1980′s, I read nearly all of Ayn
Rand’s essays, novels and even some of the Ayn Rand Letters available
during this time period. I agreed with nearly everything she wrote;
agreed with her Aristotle inspired form of objectivist philosophy,  and
for many years I was a  libertarian style Republican … But much
later, as I grew older,  I began to question a great deal of her
philosophy on empirical grounds …

One of her essays “Apollo and
Dionysus” exemplifies some of the underlying conflicts I now find in
her philosophy. In this essay, contrasts are made between the Apollo
program and the Woodstock festival of 1969. In short, the Apollo 11 moon
landing, which could only be achieved through the primacy of objective
scientific thought and reason,  is contrasted against the mindless,
emotionalism of the Woodstock rock festival and Vietnam war. The Apollo
scientists and astronauts are depicted as heroes just as the rock
festival at Woodstock is portrayed a mindless mob of collectivist ideals
…

I agree with her judgement; but Ayn Rand has a problem here
… The Apollo moon program was one of the largest governmental,
civilian programs in history costing billions of tax-payer dollars,�
while the Woodstock festival was effectively a free-market libertarian
affair during which free, peaceably-minded individuals chose to behave
in any manner they saw fit. Her criticism of Woodstock is warranted, in
my mind, but this essay demonstrates how her deductive logic and
customary hatred of government can conflict with her own carefully drawn
conclusions about the real world …

One is tempted to
say…”Well she made one mistake…,” but if she can be inconsistent
here, what other mistakes can she make ?  In my mind, she has made a
great many inconsistent arguments, especially about the voluntary
donation of taxes and the necessity of maintaining a military force to
fight Soviet aggression and the spread of communism during the Cold
War.  In an all-out fight against another world superpower, donations
simply don’t cut it…   At times, it has seemed as if she wants to have
her cake and eat it too …

Fundamentally, I think my opinion of Ayn Rand has changed due to the following: To paraphrase Ayn
Rand; within the context of  her novels (she) “…wrote about the world
as it should and ought to be — not as it actually was.”  The problem
is that her version of how the world “should and out to be”  can depart
so far from empirically objective reality  (the real world)  that her extremely idealized and novelized version of the world can
resemble a fairy tale, or worse, a comic book …  This is no longer
objective reality …

I still believe in her basic premise that
all reality behaves in a fundamentally objective manner. I agree with
much of Aristotelian philosophy and logic, but my opinion of Ayn Rand
objectivism has changed over the years. I now find inconsistencies where
I once saw logical and thoughtful arguments. I now find many of Ayn
Rand’s conclusions not in agreement with empirical and objective
reality. I find her idealized versions of humanity  (both good and
evil)  to be caricatures of humanity and it’s truly complex nature. I
have changed since I first read Ayn Rand and it has made me a more
complex and a more thoughtful person …