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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dave rose who wrote (17393)	3/3/2003 4:34:27 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81226

Dave >I am not a right winger, conservative, or fascist but a Libertarian Constitutionalist. If the politicians would follow the Constitution to the letter(which they don't) I would be a happy man. Yes, I also like to think of myself as a libertarian so, perhaps, we do have something in common. Of course, libertarianism has an attraction only to certain middle-class intellectuals (like us!). Thus it is, in effect, an armchair philosophy rather than the basis of an effective political party which has an appeal either to the masses (working class) or to the very wealthy. I read Atlas Shrugged many years ago and, like you, was impressed. However, in recent years when I learned more about Rand's personal life I formed the opinion that she was a opportunist who was simply out for herself and who used her philosophy as a means to that end. I found this reference which expresses a similar opinion: friesian.com >>>Rand certainly tried to exercise a superrationalistic control in her own life, with disastrous results: Her psychological understanding of people, and even of herself, was clearly and gravely limited. Thus she engineered the marriage between Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, even though (according to Barbara, in The Passion of Ayn Rand) they weren't all that attracted to each other -- their unease was "irrational" to Rand. Then she decided that she and Nathaniel should have some sort of "rational" love affair, like characters in her novels. That Nathaniel was not comfortable with that, especially since they were both already married, does not seem to have mattered. When he finally refused to continue their relationship, Rand furiously expelled him from her "movement" and then scuttled the "movement" itself. That was, curiously, all for the better, since under her control the Objectivist movement was taking on more and more of the authoritarian or totalitarian overtones of the very ideologies it was supposedly opposing.<<< (Italics are mine.) In the circumstances, I have become sceptical of her views.