Amen

You're welcome. No, Ayn Rand wasn't mentally ill, she was a psychopath/sociopath. Psychopathy and sociopathy are not mental illnesses, they are severe personality disorders. Mental illnesses can be treated, controlled with medication, and even cured, but psychopathy and sociopathy cannot.

thankfully

Heh. I humorous distinction,.....if your humor is dark enough.

p.s. ( Thinking about moving to an unlit cave; it might suit me. ) +^d

Actually I retract that statement, since I am very knowledgeable of sociopathic personality disorder,(I'm very familiar with the work of Dr. Robert H. Hare, who created The Psychopathic Checklist, that when utilized by competent psychiatric professionals, is considered a very reliable methodology for determining if a given individual has that personality disorder) I guess I was either tired or lazy.

Just as a side note-this coming from the research of Dr. Hare-as part of his research, the test was administered to a very broad base of individuals, from all social and economic walks of life, what was discovered, was that a very large percentage of those involved in Fortune 500 companies, meaning the movers and shakers in the very upper echelons of corporate management, and/or those who outright owned or were business partners in financial institutions or franchises, scored very high on the psychopathic checklist, indicating a correspondingly high potential of being sociopaths.

The remaining of everything else you said, is also accurate and true, again thanks for the post, sorry for being mentally lazy.

I think you are referring to Dr. Robert H. Hare, and not Hair ;)

Having worked with babies, toddlers and small children, I can tell you that you are wrong. See http://journal.naeyc.org/btj/200607/Quann709BTJ.pdf

The overwhelming evidence of psychological studies, demonstrates quite the contrary, meaning you are patently wrong, I have no idea where you're getting these notions from, but you might want to try closely examining your sources of information, I can guarantee with a great deal of certainty, you'll find those sources wanting in scientific methodology.

Because she had spent it all. Royalties are not a perpetual source of income, they have their limits.

she nailed anarcho capitalism.
Because of her, I understand what capitalism is supposed to be.

I just disagree with moral objectiveness. One plus one does not equal two IMO.

Seduce: Attract (someone) to a belief or into a course of action that is inadvisable or foolhardy....

I was more trying to make a point that these asshole were already selfish and greedy, and now have some sort of intellectually hidden justification.

One thing I have found to be a truism is a fairly common religious (spiritual and philosophical) axiom "you reap what you sew." If one "sews" greed and selfishness then one "reaps" greed and selfishness. When one "sews" generosity and abundance one "reaps" generosity and abundance. This has been true in MY experience.

True enough.

Sow, not sew - sewing requires a needle and thread.

Bro... I tend to agree with most of your views, and I understand what you're saying, but I just think it's a terribly cynical assertion. A well stated and almost entirely correct statement, but you loose me at "inherent greedy nature". Call it naivete, but I haven't resigned myself to believing everyone is born greedy,

You are correct Vierotchka. Sorry for the misspelling..:-)..there are a couple words like that which I mix up quite a bit.

I didn't mean that as a blanket assertion that everyone is inherently greedy. I only meant that those who espouse and latch on to Ayn Rand's philosophies are inherently greedy.

Right on... that is very easy to agree with. I'm a fan :-)

I didn't read the article nor have I read any rand. I didn't need to. You just proved my point.

I suppose one could describe me as an atheist, I refrain from putting a label on myself. If anything just an observer. A friend of mine who is Jewish, describes the Bible also as a book of parables. I asked my father when I was a kid what in fact was the Bible? His reply was "just another Aesop's Fables", so much for my background in theology. He worked on the Manhattan Project. My take on religion is an instrument that has stalled mankinds efforts to aspire to greater things than any other force wrought by man himself. Just imagine where we could be if not for the Dark Ages? We still suffer from the influence of the Puritans and their guilt conscience, and the Protestants have brought us to calamity. My point is there is nothing in the Bible we couldn't have figured out otherwise, we don't give ourselves enough credit for all the things we have accomplished and all we could do in the name of the human spirit. There's a ton of literature out there worth reading that owes nothing to mans delusional belief in a boogeyman.

Religious zealots and their interpretation of the bible have indeed wrought far too much evil and destruction upon the world in "the name of God" (as they like to say). The book is not to blame but the interpretation thereof.
I once had a conversation with a "spiritual healer". I told this woman I didn't believe in a physical place called "hell" and that every reference to such a place in her holy book was a parable. She kept slapping her bible on the palm of her had and saying "it's in the book" to which I would say "please show me" - and of course, every example she showed me was a parable. She became exasperated and gave up trying to prove me wrong. Instead she said "Let's (her sponsor was standing there with us)pray for Sharon that she will be shown hell".... needless to say I took my hands away from these two, "no thanks", and walked away

You are free to give your money away or help out society in anyway you choose. You should not need a government to tell you this

Not getting much done on the internet are you? There are many things you could be doing now besides surfing the web.

I settle for them regulating assholes.

Absolutely brilliant comment! Voted up. :)

Yeah, I'm sure all those USDA approved medicines are safe. How many people have they killed?

Extremely well said!

Since the Wrong-wingers in their evil and insanity have turned regulators into "the friends" of those they regulate, into the supporters (where they haven't simply succeeded in eliminating any real regulation entire), and even promoters (like they did with the FDA).

Um.... What are you talking about? I said nothing of the bush administration. I probably dislike him more than you do.

This is because despite the misguided notion by those on the left that deregulation ruined everything in the economy. And the right's notion that government regulations are what ruined the economy. The fact is every single facet of our government is regulated to benefit the corporate owners in this country. USDA regulations are NOT designed to keep your medicine safe. That is your error in interpreting the efficacy of the USDA. The USDA does it's job quite well, unfortunately the job of the USDA is to aid Pharmaceutical companies in making as much profit as is humanly possible. There are absolutely NO market regulations designed to aid the consumer or the worker, though they are made to appear as such.

check out how the dems are in bed with big pharma and get back to me

I know the republi-thugs are yes. Just as they're so deeply entrenched with wall-street, and well of course it goes without saying the militar-industiral-contractor crowd (what we used to call war profiteering, and used to be called treason).

I believe there was a time when regulatory organizations actually were meant to protect people. You know before "saint-reagan" decided no, they should be all about promoting the industries they were originally intended to regulate. It never ceases to amaze me how the wrong-wingers who consistently claim to be good, true christians are really all about the fundamentalist worship of Mammon-god-money.