Ryan vs Rand

[Plane]

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/blog/index.php/2012/08/paul-ryan-rejects-ayn-rands-ideas-in-word-and-deed

Although Ryan misrepresents Rand’s views about human interactions (see below), he correctly notes that Rand rejected religion and faith. Ryan, on the other hand, embraces both. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Ryan also rejects Rand’s politics of laissez-faire capitalism—the politics rooted in Rand’s morality of rational self-interest and her epistemology of strictly observation-based knowledge. Rand’s ethics and epistemology are wholly at odds with the self-sacrificial ethics and faith-based epistemology of the Bible.
 
Politically, whereas Rand was a proud defender of pure, laissez-faire capitalism, Ryan supports a mixture of freedom and government controls—including a robust welfare state. Here are but a few of the political differences between Ryan and Rand:

http://www.comicstripoftheday.com/

[Xavier_Onassis]

An excellent cartoon. It sums up Ryan and Rand very well. Rand, if she were alive, would solve Ryan's problems by publicly cleaning his clock exactly as we see here. I don't think St. Thomas would see eye to eye with Ryan, either.

[BT]

The problem with cartoons is they paint folks as monolithic caricatures. Ryan is no more Rand than Obama is Marx.

[Xavier_Onassis]

No one says that he is.

The cartoon points out how he differs.

[Plane]

I like Ann Rand , but I don't think I have to therefore agree with her a lot, I agree with her mostly where I agree with her logic and disagree where I don't follow where it took her. My favoriate is "Anthem" which might be the simplest and shortest of her books.

I also like Stephen King , who writes a ripping good yarn about a pistoleer , but while doing so reveals that he knows very little about firearms.Or perhaps he assumes that I know very little about firearms?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Stephen King is a good story teller. I have never heard him comment on guns. It is possible that you know more about them than he does.

[Plane]

Stephen King is a good story teller. I have never heard him comment on guns. It is possible that you know more about them than he does.

It is possible that you know more than he does too.

Some of his coments in the "Dark Tower" series make me think that he has never held a .45 bullet in his hand, nor stuck one in his ear.

But is the story compelling?

Oh yes , in spite of such errors he gets one involved in the caricters, it is his insight in to caricter that makes his errors of tecnical facts insignifigant.

With Ann Rand she is stronger on some questions than others, I can't imagine that she would demand an individual agree with her in every point.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Ann Rand did, in fact, expect everyone to agree with her on every point. She was an intellectual show off and a bully. You can see her speaking on various old TV shows on youtube. As a writer, she was less dogmatic, but of course, you can't really dialogue with a writer.

In Wolff's The Old School, he speaks of a private boy;'s school, he attended where an industrialist benefactor insisted on bringing Rand up for a chat with the boys in the 1950's. She assaulted the boys, the industrialist and everyone present as "collectivist statists" and left in a huff. The author, who had read and appreciated The Fountainhead was disillusioned with her, as she attacked Hemingway, whom she had never read, because one of his characters was wounded in his manhood in WWI. She said he deserved it.

 She came with her own cheerleading squad.
Personally, she was a rather hateful woman who grew into a hateful old crone.

[Plane]

Ann Rand did, in fact, expect everyone to agree with her on every point......................

Well then I would disagree with her quite a bit right there.
I wouldn't expect anyone to produce logic so strong that they were never wrong.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Watch the excellent film "The Passion of Ayn Rand" where Rand is played by Helen Mirren. Or watch the Rand videos on youtube. Rand was clearly wrong about lots of stuff, but she attacked anyone who even mildly suggested that other logical conclusions were possible.

She claimed to be a huge fan of capitalism: she wore a dollar sign pin and had cigarettes custom made with tiny dollar signs on them. But she never invested a dime in the stock market until at around age 70, Alan Greenspan suggested she put her money into money market finds instead of a passbook account. It must have been a laborious dialogue to convince her.

One would expect her to invest in venture capitalism: Reardon Metal, Galt's atmospheric engine, Poloroid, Xerox, IBM. But no. She was a dowdy old Jewish lady when it came to investments.