Your alleged inevitability of tyranny from unstoppable looters preventing the happy ending in Atlas Shrugged is false. Atlas Shrugged does have a happy ending and you can't write it out of the book with your own malevolent outlook. How people act depends on their ideas. There is no such dismal determinism built in as a "part of some humans' nature".

The vision in Atlas Shrugged is one of unlimited potential for human success, not the malevolent doom that some determinists choose to cling to. Those who choose to be uncivilized can be marginalized, but only with the spread of better ideas.

A philosophy of reason and egoism should be self-evident, but it quite clearly is not. Without marketing of a philosophy of reason and egoism, there will be so few people that embrace such a philosophy that Atlas Shrugged (minus the ending) would have to be considered a default condition for a society. If the ending of Atlas Shrugged actually did happen, it would take, at minimum, a generation of schooling before an Objectivist philosophy could become a default condition. The amount of time for Communism to become a default condition for a society is less than that, as evidenced in Anthem, precisely because Communists have no compunction about the use of force on the minds of individuals.

Galt's Gulch was created as a means of preserving what was worth preserving until such time as the larger society was ready for Objectivism. However, to re-prepare a society for Objectivism (or for Communism for that matter) takes at least a generation of schooling. The reason why America is the only society in the history of the world founded on anything close to Objectivist principles is precisely because America was the original model for Galt's Gulch (minus the seeking for religious liberty). People left where they were to go to a place that embodied their values. Do you see Americans going elsewhere? A few people talk of leaving America, but VERY few actually do, and they definitely do not embody Objectivism.

+1

It does not take much time or effort for such looters to make a country intellectually ripe for them. As long as looters can buy enough people's votes to keep themselves in office in any district, such looters will evangelize to moochers in other districts in order to aggregate even more power for themselves.

"Without broad acceptance of the rights of the individual as a moral right there will be no such "higher threshold" for passing legislation." I agree completely, and that is why I proposed such a much higher threshold for passing legislation. The Senate's passage yesterday of the USMCA trade agreement by an 89-10 margin is an example of how obviously win-win situations for all involved can be agreed upon. Most legislation that passes by much lower margins grants benefits to some at the expense of others.

No, the endings of The Fountainhead and Anthem were not as hard to imagine as that of Atlas Shrugged.

You are correct that "Not everyone lives as a parasite seeking control over others." Those that do are called looters by Rand, and their active pursuit of power will continue to overwhelm our passive tolerance of it. To her credit, Rand was one of the very few who actively did not tolerate such parasites, but the number of and passion for control by looters has been so common worldwide for so long a time that it has to be considered part of some humans' nature unfortunately.

The fundamentals are philosophical principles. They are not "set" any more than new theories on physics are "set". Anyone who thinks and acts spreads his ideas. If they are rational and understood by rational people they are accepted and succeed. In a society of unreason it doesn't make any difference because irrational ideas dominate instead.

At the founding of this country there were enough proper principles of government widely accepted so that those leaders who showed up implemented them in a new government and it, in turn, were was widely accepted. In France the ideas were emotionalist and collectivist. The result was blood.

Ayn Rand did not have a “'rationalistic utopian' ideology". She developed an entire philosophy of reason and individualism on which the basic principles of a proper government must be morally based as the last step in reform. She did not advocate any "utopia" let alone try to "deduce" one. "Rationalistic utopian ideologies" are not relevant and there is no reason to "try to market" a philosophy of reason and egoism to a-philosophical religious conservatives who can't get beyond an irrelevant Edmund Burke and "faith, family and tradition".

Ayn Rand made her position on conservatives very clear, as well as her position on anyone who tries to promote a politics while ignoring philosophy. At the time the conservatives were Buckleyites. Anyone, whether conservative or not, who is willing to think independently can consider her philosophy on its own terms. Those who who already have some substantial elements of individualism and a respect for reason have the best motive to do so.

Not everyone lives as a parasite seeking control over others. That is not the way the country was built and it is not inevitable. How to educate and rebuild a collapsed world is not what the novel was about and it is not a reason to cynically dismiss the ideals of Atlas Shrugged as not having a "happy ending". The ending simply showed that the heroes had succeeded. Unlike, for example, We the Living, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead did have happy endings.

Ayn Rand wrote the novel as romantic fiction isolating essentials and emphasizing principles in a stylized form to convey a sense of life, not a naturalistic description of events. That such fictional condensation to essentials is not "realistic" does not make it "worthy of ridicule". Do you also ridicule The Fountainhead and Anthem?

Without broad acceptance of the rights of the individual as a moral right there will be no such "higher threshold" for passing legislation. The nature of government accepted does not appear in an intellectual vacuum.

A few "well placed looters" cannot take over a country that is not intellectually ripe for them.

Martin Luther did not represent a fundamental change in philosophy. He led a schism within the religious orthodoxy, creating his own entrenched irrationalism based on the same sacred text mentality.

There are a few very good private schools now, especially the Van Damme Academy, but it is single school not a franchise.

As a philosophy, Objectivism has a content. Understanding the principles is much more than "emphasizing curiosity", "making intellectual connections", and "creating value". Those have been done since the Enlightenment, but did not by themselves lead to their philosophical defense until Ayn Rand.

She is talking about the mechanism for the start. Ideas spread. That is how any ideas take hold in a society.

There is no valid concept of a "Galt's Gulch" as a means of a new renaissance. That is a floating abstraction substituting for dealing with the world we live in, and as a fictional device in the novel, was never advocated by Ayn Rand as a 'survivalist' encampment as a substitute.

Spreading the ideas of Objectivism is not about "this November" or any election. It is far more fundamental than that and is not restricted to politics, which is only the last step. Putin has nothing to do with that.

Government abuse is not a law of nature. The kind of government we get depends on the dominant ideas held in the society. LibertyBelle only rejected the false claim that for Objectivism "to survive, everyone in a society must agree to it". That is false. Not only can a minority of criminals be dealt with, but not everyone, or even most, has to be a philosopher with a full technical understanding of all aspects of the philosophy. Understanding basic philosophical principles, however, is necessary to live personally. This isn't a only about politics. Politics depends on the rest of philosophy.

America's implicit egoism did very well before Ayn Rand was born, but it's philosophical basis was corrupted by the intellectuals, making the system unsustainable without better ideas. The "American Constitution" did not "provide a more stable framework" than Objectivism. A Constitution is not an alternative to philosophy. Ayn Rand was not an anarchist. She advocated a (better) constitution as necessary for a government limited to protecting the rights of the individual. You cannot substitute a government system for ideas, either in your personal life or in politics. American politics is failing because the ideas required for a proper constitution are missing.

Every society of any kind is the result of its dominant philosophical attitude. There is no escape from that. Advocating and submitting to Burkean conservative oppression is not only not an alternative, it is suicide. Advocating some form of constitution and inculcating conservative duties in place of the spread of the proper ideas is hopeless, as the current situation and the hopeless appeals by conservatives to only the tradition of the Constitution illustrates. They are losing because their ideas are losing as the premises of collectivism and statism spread.

Ayn Rand did not share Blarman's view of miserable "common Joes".

Those who read the novel know that John Galt did not "berate" "common Joes" and that his assertion that Galt "didn't even offer encouragement to them" is a lie. It misrepresents the entire speech. Ayn Rand admired the best in people regardless of level of ability. She denounced the intellectuals for their corrupt philosophy.

And the rest of us know that contrary to Blarman you did not "think people who are miserable and scraping just to survive are going to be praying for the return of some nebulous voice" or that there was any hint of such a notion in the novel.

Blarman's sneering dishonest attacks on Ayn Rand are becoming worse.

Ayn Rand addressed the better people of all levels of ability. The principles he offered in support of their own lives and properly selfish happiness were much more than having a job in a prosperous society. Blarman's misrepresentation that Galt was happy supposedly because he "retreats to his hidden valley" is assinine. He missed the point of the novel; or perhaps he did not but can't face it and doesn't want others to know it.

Conservativism does not represent the American Revolution, which in turn did not come from Judeo-Christian philosophy. The American Revolution and the founding of this country was a result of widepread acceptance of the values of reason and individualism from the Enlightenment, which largely rejected the mysticism of religion and its obsession with living for another world.

Conservatives directly appeal to "tradition" themselves, that is not something "attributed" by "atheists". Their inconsistent appeals to the Constitution have no philosophical basis; they are appeals to tradition with the Constitution regarded as nothing but tradition. This is not "devolving into an argument of chocolate over vanilla".

Ayn Rand did not "lack a great story with an inspiring ending". She wrote Atlas Shrugged. She wrote it before she began lecturing and writing on her philosophy, which she subsequently engaged in because fiction is not enough to challenge what she called "2,000 years of philosophy". She also recognized the importance of romantic fiction in presenting a philosophy of life. She wrote Atlas Shrugged to present her vision of the "ideal man" in concrete form of action as her primary literary goal, not "for the express purpose of soundly berating them before retreating back into the shadows", which is Blarman's absolutely asinine misrepresentation of the novel showing no understanding of even the plot, let alone the principles enunciated. Ayn Rand's principles are not and were not presented even in non-fiction form as what Blarman calls "cold, dry things". That he previously admitted that he lacked interest in and could not finish Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism is his own problem.

Blarman's claim that he finds it "unappealing to conservatives" because of "extreme individualistic focus - a focus which pointedly eschews family" is his own admission, not an answer to Ayn Rand. Individualism is the opposite of collectivism, not the opposite of being in a "family''. She did not "eschew family", she rejected putting irrational family members above one's own life just because they are accidental "family". She emphatically rejected the conservative "faith, family and tradition" as the basis of a civilized society.

Religions are not "self perpetuating"; they are a body of ideas accepted or not depending on the degree of independent thinking providing reasons for rejecting them for something more rational. Early pre-philosophical Christianity was "taught in parables and stories" because at that primitive stage of humanity it had nothing else, not because it was superior. Ayn Rand knew that defending reason and individualism, and a prosperous industrial society, requires rejecting religious "inertia of tradition".

Blarman's conservative "pillars" pronouncing Creationism, an "afterlife", and intrinsic duties to the supernatural as his irrational "underpinning" of "accountability" to the supernatural and "equality and freedom of choice" demands accepting a mystical "equality" and supernatural "accountability" that do not exist. Religious conservativism profoundly undermines the defense of political freedom as irrationally based on other-worldly mysticism. It is the opposite of Ayn Rand and her rational defense of capitalism.

This is supposed to be a forum for Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason and individualism, not a place for its opposite obsessively preaching rambling religious slogans strung together as incoherent floating abstractions. Blarman knows very well that he is an enemy of Ayn Rand exploiting this forum for his own evangelizing.

Fortunately the better American conservatives do not live and act in accordance with Blarman's mystical obsessions.

Rearden was not "dumped", was much more than someone who "came up" with a "cool metal", and was not a loser for "depending" on other's achievements. Blarman has no understanding of Atlas Shrugged.

There is no "missing happy ending" or "missing vision" in Atlas Shrugged and John Galt did not tell Dagny or anyone else that anyone "needs a leader" to get people "behind that vision". Dagny's brother had no "vision" and did not "completely undermine" her.

Ayn Rand's sense of life emphasizes a characteristically happy life for intellectually independent individuals, not a utopian end with a "leader" -- which sounds more like a religious "vision". Happiness as a state of life was shown throughout the novel for the heroes regardless of their individual struggles. Blarman has no understanding of Atlas Shrugged or Ayn Rand's philosophy.

Blarman has no understanding of Ayn Rand's philosophy or her fiction or the purpose of Atlas Shrugged. Comments like that one from him only raise the question of whether he was awake enough to follow the plot, or is only sneering with deliberate misrepresentations.

Millions of readers did gain from the novel "something to aspire to with enough conviction", which is why the novel is so popular. They did not "just get a twenty-minute lecture from Galt about how they've brought this all on themselves", which is a really sick misrepresentation. Ayn Rand wrote for the best in people of all levels of ability, not the worst (who don't like the novel). She did not share Blarman's condescending view of the "common man".

The small number out of the whole population who, in the plot, were invited to the private property in the Valley were on strike, seeking protection. It was not a place to go to be "happy". They were already happy people. Ayn Rand said she included the scenes within the Valley to show her concept of how the morally best people interact with one another. Many others in the plot not connected with the heroes but who had dropped out on their own had their own refuges. Others -- the looters -- descended into warring gangs.

Readers who understand and embrace the sense of life of the heroes embrace the success in the Valley as inspiring. Why readers who don't would not be in the Valley was obvious. It was not a new nation, let alone a welfare state. Those readers who long before already made their decision to whine, "What about me? You're just going to leave me here?", don't matter. To include that mentality in the Valley as a contradictory utopia would have been a massive contradiction destroying the novel and its inspiration for moral ambition.