ok...here is the reality of the situation that i discussed with Ayn Rand in a post-NBI q & a...

in WWII Truman faced a decision....use the A bomb on Japan knowing that women and children would die horrible deaths, but 10s of thousands of American G. I.s would live rather than die invading and taking Japan one inch at a time....he made the decision of which i am grateful as my father-to-be was a marine fighting in the Pacific and might have been killed in the fight to take Japan and would have never been born and tens of thousands of the baby-boomer generation would never have been born...he saved 10s of thousands and gave birth to millions of other Americans....Rand agreed that Truman made the right decision...

In Vietnam, LBJ and his cabinet and the Joint Chiefs of Staff made a decision not to A bomb Hanoi or Haiphong in order to spare women and children living there....they choose instead to sacrifice 10s of thousands of American G.Is and the children they would have fathered (i had the opportunity years later as a pilot for American Airlines to sit next to Henry Kissinger and know this as a fact as i had a discussion with him about it...)

now today, you face a decision to stop a terrorist country (Iran) by bombing them out existence (which will cost the lives of women and children living there) or wait for them to develop the A bomb and set it off here in the U.S. (as an instructor pilot for the Air Force, i had the opportunity to train foreign military pilot candidates from every continent in the world, including those from Iran (when the Shah was in control), Iraq, and Kuwait)...i got quite an education into the middle eastern mind...it is hard for a western civilization mind to comprehend their mind-set...they are Eric Hoffer's True Believers...they would not hesitate to kill our women and children as we are infidels to them and will wait on them for all eternity in nirvana...this life is but a mere blip in time...
so do you spare the women and children of Iran or do you condemn future western women and children who will die horribly...
Leonard Peikoff agrees with Truman's decision...save western civilization...send a message to the middle east that where they are heading will not be tolerated and that we will not sacrifice our military men and women in a hopeless attempt to contain them...
make a choice...it is difficult and it isn't...

No. I am not advocating violence to change the government. Not sure where you got the idea. However if they are willing to initiate violence to take your property or your life you are justified in using violence to resist the loss. That being said knowing that you are vastly outnumbered may temper your judgement in deciding what to do. You are correct in stating that changing others can only be accomplished with convincing them of better ideas. Liberty and freedom cannot be enforced, it must be chosen. Sometimes the best course is avoidance.

Are you advocating violence against the government in the name of self defense over taxes? The course of the country can only be changed for the better by spreading better ideas, not by making an anarchist martyr out of yourself.

You have a right to defend yourself regardless of the maturity of the attacker, his motives don't matter. You don't have the right to kill all muslim children. Is that what you meant? These are not difficult questions.

The use of violence can only be moral if it is used in self defense. All taxation is unjust because it cannot be resisted without the state claiming that it is immoral for the resistor to do so and using violence to enforce it. Taxation is extortion, pay or violence to the level required will be used to collect. The only vote that really has meaning is the ability to vote by not participating at any time you deem it appropriate. For most people this ability raises the fearful specter of chaos and the belief that the results would be worse than obeying a dictator who is going to rob you, kill you, demand that you kill others with whom there is no threat, take your property and your ability to support yourself. People seem to be comfortable with tyranny in knowing that at least there would be 'rules' and we would know what was going to happen.
Free speech is the least important freedom. If every other freedom is gone; i.e. the right to own and control your property, then the right to complain about the confiscation of your property while it is removed means very little. If you become a declared enemy combatant by the state and hanged the fact that you have the right to whine about it before the sentence is carried out is meaningless. It amounts to nothing more than the state being able to identify you by listening for the complainers.
If you believe you do not have the right to resist the state until the state gives you that right the state has succeeded in becoming a tyranny and you have no rights. You are asking permission from the slave owner to be free, it is unlikely your request will ever be granted.

Thank you - I stand corrected! :-)

Ayn Rand arrived in America in 1926. Many years
later, she had a visit from her sister and brother-in-
law; the sister (and, I assume, the brother-in-law)
elected to return to Russia. She tried and tried to
get her parents into the United States; I read in a
compilation of the letters of Ayn Rand that the
last communication she got from her parents was a telegram in 1939 saying "Cannot get per-
mission". I think I read in Who is Ayn Rand?
about a vacation out of Russia that her family
went on when she was a child.

Their family (IIRC) left Russia in 1912... which was well before 1917, the demarcation date of the Russian Revolution according to most historical sources. Correct me if I'm wrong with the date of their departure, but I'm pretty sure they left when the winds of war were fanining, not after the Soviets had declared victory.

it is a very difficult subject...

The story of Nat Taggert was presented as "legend" within the fictional story, except that he was described as not using force or fraud.

Ayn Rand was not just a "fiction writer", she developed an entire philosophy. Of course you should use reason, but that doesn't mean rediscovering yourself all the principles you need.

I cannot agree that it is right to just assume that a
child born in certain nation will necessarily grow up
to be a murderer. That assumption ignores man's
free will.

I am aware that in Vietnam, children were sent
with grenades to kill our men, and then of course
it was necessary to shoot them first.

they are committed to killing every non-muslim man, woman, and child...every one of their children will be trained to be monsters or birthers of monsters unless you will guarantee to raise every child they birth...if you do not, then you guarantee a forever war...it is why we have been in Afghanistan over 15 years and will be there forever unless we show them our determination to eliminate the problem and any future problems...they are religious fanatics and will not stop until they are eliminated...i would hope that someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali could be 100% successful in her campaign to stop Islam, but it will take more time than we have...Iran will have the nuclear bomb within 4 years or less...they will smuggle it into the U.S. and detonate it on our soil...millions of our children will die...you must stop them now by the quickest method possible...you are out of time...how will you stop them....your lack of action will guarantee our demise...

What do you mean "escaped pre-revolutionary
Russia? She had to escape post-revolutionary
Russia.--However, your last sentence does make
quite a lot of sense.

Of course she did. A necessary act of self-defense.
(Well, it was defending Galt's life, but it amounts
to the same thing).

"every man, woman, and child"? No, I cannot go
along with that. Children are innocent.
However, if they are _physically_obstructing justice, it might be permissible. I am still not quite assured about the rights about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If one drops a bomb on an enemy armaments factory, even if it is crammed with civilians, I think it is all right, because, in making the weapons to be used against us, they might as well be military. And if innocent people are in the way outside the plant, sorry, they shouldn't be obstructing justice. And if it's not their fault, it's not our fault, either. But I'm not sure that
those bombs were dropped on armament factor-
ies, or other such places.

Ayn Rand does not say, definitely, that Nat Tag-
gart had the man killed. She merely insinuates it.
But she does have Dagny threaten to do it if a sim-
ilar situation occurs.
Hard to say whether Ayn Rand would actually
condone such a thing. She did say things that
indicate a respect for the rule of law, and against
taking the law into one's own hands.

If the State (government) has set up a situa-
tion where it is impossible to get a fair hearing,
I suppose that it is permissible in such a case
to use such a retaliatory act of force.

But morally, I think one is obligated to be very careful in thinking about whether the situ-
ation has reached that point yet.

The question was about killing people to counter "political obstructionism".

Nat Taggart was not a "destroyer", he created the railroad. The novel describes him as: "no penny of his wealth had been obtained by force or fraud; he was guilty of nothing, except that he earned his own fortune and never forgot that it was his."

Atlas Shrugged did not advocate "killing those who stand in your way" and the question does not "expose the flaw in Ayn's philosophy". The original question is a false alternative based on a misrepresentation of the novel as a false premise, not a "seminal question". https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

Atlas Shrugged is a philosophical novel, not just a "work of fiction". She wrote it to portray her view of the ideal man and developed her philosophy in support of that. In the novel her philosophy was illustrated, and explicitly summarized in "Galt's speech", and is described in detail in non-fiction https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post.... She was not just "a fiction author" and no one has advocated "basing your life on hook line and sinker out of a book by a fiction author".

The guard was physically obstructing the rescue of a kidnapped victim from torture. That does not make killing a "part of Ayn Rand's philosophy". She advocated creative productive work, not running around killing people for "refusing to take responsibility".

A tyranny in which there is no freedom of speech is much more than "political obstructionism". The question in the opening post is based on an invalid premise. The quote, which is from a conservative website, not Wikipedia, is a misrepresentation of Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand did not advocate "murder in the case of political obstructionism" and the novel does not portray that.

There are a lot of topics that could be discussed here, including the fictional history of the Taggart Transcontinental railroad and the legends of its founder Nat Taggart, but not based on second-hand sources that misrepresent the novel like that website does.

How explain Ragnar Danneskjold, then, other than to admit that once force is initiated by theft (including unjust taxation), the person who fights back is not "initiating" force. Certainly Danneskjold's crew would have to kill people regularly to conduct their operations.

It is ""always"" wrong to initiate physical violence!!

The charges against Taggart were never proven, so the point is moot...isn't it?

Killing is definitely part of Ayn Rand's philosophy. She made Dagny killing the guard who refused to take responsibility a critical part of the climax.