Fransisco's money speech is one of my most loved parts of Atlas Shrugged.

This was a good read, thanks for posting.

Yes, it is.......................thank reason (and love of life)

thank you mia. good words to live by

it is still there for many of us, been :)

Not certain it is "well over 90% now", but it could be considering all of the various forms of how "caretaker" could be defined. And, "it was not always like that"; having "been around" since 1938, I can attest that the predominant view, until at least the early 1960's, was "get off your ass and take care of yourself." And though that view was probably declining, it was still healthy until the 1990's, maybe even early 2000. My take is that 2008 marked the "tidal wave" of the caretaker era....................altruism run amok!!! (Sort of akin to the employee meeting at Twentieth Century Motors.)

A vast, vast majority of Americans are looking for caretakers. It's got to be well over 90% now. And, I don't believe it was always like that.

Thanks. I've been having a roaring good time!
I value you too.

hey Dino. I love that you found us. you have a great home here

I do not feel at all surprised to learn that tonight.
(Psst! The first I ever heard of Ayn Rand is when AS1 was available on DVD).

So true in my experience with liberals also. When I asked a liberal if he had read Atlas Shrugged he reply" no who is the author "when I said Ayn Rand he replied "oh she's the enemy". I said "enemy, why". He didn't know but looked her up on his i phone " she's a libertarian" he smugly replied not knowing what that was either.

well said as usual, Zen

yes! nice to see you in here again, blackswan!

in high school or college debate clubs, the real battle was over defining the terms to be debated, NOT the actual debate...if you can define the terms of the debate, the probabilities were high that you would win the debate...
define or be defined...always remember that and you will win...
ayn is pro-producer in all definitions...
liberals and conservatives are fascist/socialists in all discussions...do not compromise...define the debate...before the debate or discussion...do your homework...check your premises...

Typical myth of the left, the brain only that lacks the ability to integrate and of course because they lack morality they fail to see it and assume it resides not in others...the money, the riches, the gun, your SUV and your footprints are at fault.

It's always been interesting to me that part of the biological 'hard wiring' of the human mind is to search for causes and reasons for the events in their lives. But to make sense of what is discovered as possible or probable causes, one also requires knowledge or at least the drive to obtain it, and the ability to apply reasoning and logic to the observables, and both of those are volitional and ego related.

In the absence of, or with only limited knowledge and reason, the mind will still favor an external cause, rather than internal. It's then easy for that lazyand weak ego mind to see others' success as cheating, unfair, luck, or greed, rather than the hard work and self analysis the success really reflects.

That's (Rand's "racism") been around for decades, since the 60s.

The part that's the most stupefying is the fact that leftists have such strong emotions about Ayn Rand, yet they haven't read a single word she wrote.

hey, Tem. nice to see you :)

As ever, the secret is not that you are wealthy or in business but how you got your wealth and how you run your business. Ayn Rand never favoured the shortsighted.

She expected him to think through his beliefs and then reject them in favor of Objectivism. This, of course, never happened. Why did she think he would be sympathetic to her philosophy in the first place? I would guess, and it's only a guess, that she thought his professed anti-communsim coupled with his willingness to go against the grain of the liberal intellectual establishment of the time (see "God and Man at Yale") would make him a natural ally of hers. It was never to be.

intellectual titans, Martimus. Of course, she far exceeded :)

If Rand knew, as I suspect she must have, that Buckley was intellectually totally committed Catholic, I cannot understand how she could expect him to be friendly to her philosophy. The only tentative explanation I come up with is Rand's total confidence in reason. Buckley certainly was intelligent, but, apparently, not willing to think through what was built into him from early on.

There was no love lost between them. Rand famously said that the observant Catholic Buckley was too intelligent not to be an atheist and Buckley often criticized Rand saving his most ungracious and unfair attacks for the obituary he wrote right after her death. But the animosity began with the Chambers piece.

The myth is a typical statement of apparatchik propagandists, who prey on the gullibility of the "unwashed" masses. Most people I've engaged who rail about the "evils of capitalism" have never cracked a book on economics. What's really pathetic is those who extol the virtues of socialism have never read any of Marx or Engels original documents, either (I have, which blows liberal minds). A mind that spouts second or third hand opinion without any thought to discovering the facts belongs to an "oxygen stealer."

Some combination............but, basically, I have concluded it is fear of independence, of being an individual............dependent mentalities look for caretakers (in many, many forms) and are frightened to death of self sufficient individuals for fear of being told to "get off your ass and take care of yourself."