The frightening thing is that some of the socialists may be reading Rand's books ... to get ideas on how to be better Ellsworth Tooheys and Wesley Mouches and Mr. Thompsons.

My City elected a 19 year old in a Special Election and now he is running for a full term and is opposed by an 18 year old. Aren't we lucky? Lots of wisdom there I am sure. I am glad my plans are to move, but unfortunately it is after the City Election.

Unfortunately, the people who really need to read Ayn Rands work likely won't do it. We are in trouble, especially if they start letting 16 year olds vote.

"And when men live by trade — with reason, not force, as their final arbiter — it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability, and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. Is this what you consider evil?"

Yes, that speech of Francisco rivals that of John Galt's. although the latter is the documented philosophical underlying of AS.

Seeing his sentences again, think about "the man of best judgement" phrase. What is considered "best judgement" in our times? President Trump undoubtedly has the best judgement on many issue the country is facing, but he is relentlessly vilified by the left. To them, he has the worst judgement b/c he is not for open borders, illegal immigrants, paying for NATO, trade imbalances, etc.

Doubtful that anyone on the left read AS. I have a friend who has been staunchly supporting Dems for decades. He simply won't touch the book with a ten foot pole.

People in this country have no idea what socialism is, let alone communism.

By Lenin "The goal of socialism is communism".

You won't understand it until you live under it.

When Obama ran I warned people that he was a socialist/communist and will be a disaster for the country. They did not believe me.

From Ayn Rand’s “The Virtue of Selfishness”, Chapter 9 “The Cult of Moral Grayness”: “...when one is asked: ‘Surely you don’t think in terms of black and white, do you?’.—the proper answer (in essence if not in form) should be: ‘You’re damn right I do!’”. Changing ‘black and white’ to ‘evil and good’ doesn’t stretch Ms Rand’s analysis. Surely we must think in terms of evil and good and pick our side. Picking moral grays does not lead to good. Moral Relativism is the gray that leads to black.

Joe Liberman did a 'smack down' on AOC this a.m. I loved the part about 'she doesn't understand the American people.' And when he said, 'She doesn't represent the Party. She needs to study our history and see what we have been working on since she was 11 years old.' Then he added, 'If anyone like her is the Candidate, the Party won't have a candidate that can be elected.' A leading Democrat former candidate!

So few people understand that free market capitalism simply means the ability to choose not only what you will buy but how and what you will do with your time to earn money to make the free choices you will. Socialism/communism mean that you will make none of those choices (including choosing your healthcare) but they will all be made for you and if you do manage to acquire some property it will be extorted (taxed) away from you for the common good. When property is taken from others and given to 'the less fortunate' all they do is destroy it, use it up without realizing they must invest in their future if they are to survive.

Yes, and we need to promote it more and more. (Too bad the movie wasn't better executed).

Hey Scott, Kia ora from New Zealand. Nice to see you posting here, and simply reminding us why this forum exists.
Must be 7 years since I first posted.
I haven't been active cos American internal politics stuff is over my head. Nonetheless GGO offers views on USA that we don't get in our NZ media.
I went on strike April 25 2005 - coming 14 years. Since last year I am almost out of the system I work as a gardener, Last week I was killing excess monarch butterfly caterpillars so only the strongest would get the food. Dammit I grew those swanplants I'm not feeding the entire caterpillar population that arrived.

That which takes away ill gotten gains, undeserved power and upsets the status quo of the worst and least qualified is evil to the evil doers that have ruled over value creating man since the days of Babylon.

Golden Helmets for the Butcher, the Baker and the Candle Stick maker, I say.

Another Muslim member of the "new batch of politicians", Tlaib, attacked a black lady for pointing out the hypocrisy of the left's policies:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lynn...

The addition of the two Muslim reps - Omar and Tlaib - is a disgrace to the House and a proof how gullible the electorate is for sending them to Congress.

Do they think these two would represent the people of America?

I like how they printed a large excerpt from AS. I'll paste my favorite quote I would like the socialists to read.
"When it's all one pot, you can't let any man decide what his own needs are, can you? If you did, he might claim that he needs a yacht -- and if his feelings is all you have to go by, he might prove it, too. Why not? If it's not right for me to own a car until I've worked myself into a hospital ward, earning a car for every loafer and every naked savage on earth -- why can't he demand a yacht from me, too, if I still have the ability not to have collapsed? No? He can't? Then why can he demand that I go without cream for my coffee until he's replastered his living room? ... Oh well... Well, anyway, it was decided that nobody had the right to judge his own need or ability. We voted on it. Yes, ma'am, we voted on it in a public meeting twice a year. How else could it be done? Do you care to think what would happen at such a meeting? It took us just one meeting to discover that we had become beggars -- rotten, whining, sniveling beggars, all of us, because no man could claim his pay as his rightful earning, he had no rights and no earnings, his work didn't belong to him, it belonged to 'the family' -- and they owed him nothing in return, and the only claim he had on them was his 'need' -- so he had to beg in public for his relief from his needs, like any lousy moocher, listing all his troubles and miseries, down to his patched drawers and his wife's head colds, hoping that 'the family' would throw him the alms. He had to claim miseries, because it's miseries, not work, that had become the coin of the realm -- so it turned into a contest among six thousand panhandlers, each claiming that his need was worse than his brother's. "