Absolutely.

It's amazing how much more you can get out of the novels, especially the philosophical passages like Galt's speech, when you understand the non-fiction philosophical background. Not only does Ayn Rand's non-fiction provide much more philosophical understanding than the novels can by themselves, it further illuminates the meaning in the novels and what they illustrate, making them even better to read.

It would feel the opposite of what we feel in today's culture.

I went to a trump rally last year here in vegas and was struck by the level of goodwill among the 8000 attendees. I could only imagine how good it would feel to live among persons who consistently accepted objectivist principles.

Exactly

"Reading the novels isn't enough."

Very true.

How about a statesman?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++'s

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++'s

"So, I say acceptance of objectivist principles makes for an easier life."

It certainly does..............and far more than just the material aspects.

It’s the scary part too. Look at the violence the Hillary supporters. Did after they lost the election

"...“takers” are dependent and therefore subservient to them."

And that subservience creates the evil of hating (and eventually destroying) the good upon which they are dependent.

The evil part is hate of the good for being the good.

There are many things in their mind that are disconnected; e.g. cause and effect.

"It IS a war out there, and we need to take sides, as Francisco said in AS."

Absolutely !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"... liberals have accepted lying, deceit, and emotional manipulation as normal. "

Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter by Scott Adams is a tribute to the success of Donald Trump.

I would postulate that liberals have accepted lying, deceit, and emotional manipulation as normal. They may say the “goodies” aren’t for them, but they take them whenever they can. They give lip service to the idea of creation and inventing, but they don’t like the creators and inventors. They want inventions and will take them however they can get them, but they hate the idea of trading for them and making the producers rich.

“Takers” are indeed stronger together and they support the gang leader who appears to be the strongest. Like Hillary Clinton with her successful crookedness, or hitler, or Stalin, or saddam, etc

Very interesting essays indeed. Modern societies seem to have slowly developed the idea of controlling people as a way of
Surviving. Increasing populations meant scarcity of free ranging items to forage.and hunt. Now , survival must be based on somehow getting what others produce. Through trade or by reverting to theft. Flat out war was popular but dangerous. The biggest gang prevailed until a bigger one appeared with more powerful weapons. Now we have liberals with their “stronger together” mantra essentially using politics and emotional manipulation as more effective weapons to pillage from other groups rather than trade with them

I suppose the bottom line is that humans seem to revert to “taking” what they need like animals, whether from nature or other people.

Maybe that’s why “producers” tend to be hated by “takers”, since they are the independent beings and the “takers” are dependent and therefore subservient to them

Your easy explanation misses two salient features of that other mindset. In the first place, they will insist - and we can accept - that the "goodies" are not for them. Second, millions of people who accept or advocate political progressivism work hard and otherwise show virtue in their lifestyles.

It is true that there exist some politicians who are what we call in criminology "planfully competent." They do want to loot the producers. But such barbarians are a small number. Why they are accepted is a diferent question. And it speaks to what I believe is your premise.

In other words, just as examples, we honor generals and presidents, but not inventors. Oh, we nod to the creators, but we take off our hats and bow our heads for patriotic holidays without actually getting to the essential virtues of what made and makes America great.

It is pretty easy here in the Gulch to get people to recommend books about Robert E. Lee. Eli Whitney we do not hear much about. That fact points to your identification of support for the looter agenda.

Collectivism is the default position. It needs no explanation. Poverty needs no explanation. Wealth does. From your premise that thinking is an individual process, it follows that the widespread sales of works by and about Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism can be credited to the choice to think made by those myriads of individuals.

Nicely said. Over on Rebirth of Reason, Robert Malcom had two essays. "Origins of the Taking Syndrome" (here: http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/M... ) made the same point: it is the animal mode of survival. Contrasted with that was "Origins of the Trading Syndrome" (http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/M... ) credits civilization to female behaviors.

Well, that's cute; and many people here liked the stroke and gave you one back. But as I said at first (now buried at the bottom), the success of Objectivism these past 50 years is all around us.

As for why "everyone" does not explicitly endorse the philosophy, the explanation may have as many facets as there are people. In Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter Scott Adams explains the success of Donald Trump by drawing on cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. And broad as that is, it is not all-encompassing, nor can it be. We might as well ask why Sir Isaac Newton was not an atheist.

Maybe the over riding goal of a liberal today is simply to survive using whatever they can take. Their thinking is simply designed to take from other people by disarming those who don’t think (by your definition )into submission If this hypothesis is right, it means the liberals are basically evil and DO think to achieve their goals

It’s incredible that liberals actually believe their garbage. Even more incredible that their victims feel guilty and give into them

In my experience, I do not believe that liberals think. Let me put it this way, in order to think, you must have the following, in this order:
1. The capacity to think (brain, neurons, functioning mind)
2. Know how to think - how to present an argument, know how to validate a claim, how to present an axiom, how to construct an assertion built on axioms, etc.
3. Choose to think.
The brain is like any tool ... a hammer for instance. Like the brain, you have to have a hammer, know how to use it (some methods are better than others) and choose to use it.

Consider the liberals (my neighbors) that are fond of saying "everybody pays taxes." That statement carries the same weight as "everybody likes cookies."
Both statements are falsifiable. Example - we need find only one individual that does not pay taxes in order to prove the assertion false. Same holds for the cookies -- just find one counterexample.
Do liberals even know what a falsifiable statement is?

Even more importantly, both statements have very little weight or import.
If is is pointed out that the incarcerated do not pay taxes, the liberal will retort that they will when they get out of jail -- or they pay indirectly through sales tax on their presumed purchases.
When it is pointed out that the net Cost of keeping the person incarcerated is far greater than what the jailed person pays in taxes, the liberal will shrug.
The statement "everybody pays taxes" is the liberal's answer to reality when a graph is shown that illustrates Who is paying the taxes -- what percentage is paid (confiscated) by the top 1%, 5%, 10% of income earners ... and what percent (<3%) is paid by the bottom 50% of earners.

Essentially, it can be easily illustrated that saying "everybody pays taxes" is just plain dumb. It is the repeating of a party-line statement like a parrot. However, the parrot holds no belief that what it is saying has any value.

Another statement of economic illiteracy and morale reprehensibility has recently been making the airwaves . . ."we cannot afford the tax cuts" or "how can we pay for these tax cuts?" These mental midgets know nothing of basic accounting (a tax cut is not an expense). Further, to insist that a tax-cut cannot be afforded is to insist that the State already owns the money that it is yet to confiscate on future production.

I will go a step further -- I think that liberals often choose not to think for the simple reason that they would have to look in the mirror and see that their failures are the result of their own actions. Liberals maintain and grow the State as a form of intellectual insulation from themselves.