He said "stupid", not "and/or evil", and evil is not a cognitive deficiency. Their immorality is a result of their wrong and bad ideas. The intellectuals promoting philosophical ideas based on wrong premises are not "stupid", and cannot be dismissed without argument by simply branding them "stupid".

Conservatives who do that typically do not understand the principles and their roots themselves and are lashing out emotionally out of frustration. There are literally stupid or ignorant people on the left (and elsewhere), but to dismiss the entire movement as nothing but stupid and evil, calling for a response of "torches and pitch forks" is itself anti-intellectual and will solve nothing. To the extent it is taken seriously it gives individualism a bad name. Walk down the halls of any respected university, or anywhere else where people make a living from the realm of ideas, and see how far you get convincing anyone -- including students and janitors -- by calling everyone stupid and evil for disagreeing. There is a place for moral evaluation, but not as a substitute for reasoned explanation.

Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever. - John Galt

Ooops. Left the "evil" part out of my comment.
The looters bribery will succeed up to the point where they either run out of other people's money, or the torches and pitchforks come out.
If the present administration can carry out the promises of the campaign, there may be a chance that the money to support the moochers will mostly dry up. Yeah, okay, I can dream can't I?

I will politely disagree with you. The left is stupid and/or evil. The looters derive their power by bribing those too stupid to realize that they are being enslaved. Because Objectivism correctly does not force itself on anyone, the rate at which such bribery works will exceed the rate at which people will be drawn to reason and individualism. As their votes count the same as ours, the looters' bribery succeeds.

Torches and pitchforks get innocent people killed and neither that nor slogans do anything to change the course of the nation. "All of the left" is not "stupid": Changing the course of the nation requires changing the dominant philosophic premises from irrationalism, altruism and collectivism to reason and individualism.

Backed up by Alinsky in "Rules for Radicals", or some such tripe. The left, and various members of the msm and rinos, seem to continue to push the lies of the left every chance they get. In hopes that the lie will be believed at some point.
Can't fix stupid perfectly describes all of the left, in my humble estimation.
When do we get to break out the torches and pitchforks? I'm stocking up, but I don't have a lot of time left to join the parade.

The date of 1958 for Dr. Hendricks is approximate. AS was published in late 1957 with the initial sustained readership into the first months of 1958 -- it was on the NYT Best Seller list for five months. But Ayn Rand began planning it in the 1940s and by 1951 Dr. Hendricks as a doctor explicitly on strike appeared in her notes (reprinted in Journals of Ayn Rand). The British National Health Service began in 1946 and of course Ayn Rand knew what state medical control had done in Russia.

It would be good to have the kind of analysis Leonard Peikoff did in 1985 updated.

Thank you for the historical perspective.

The purpose of government is its own survival and that if it’s minions- at the expense of everyone else

Well saud

They always exempt themselves from universal health care, too, with their politically privileged benefits. What they don't understand, and never will, is that the destruction of health care wipes out medical advances and the best doctors that they won't have either. The kings and queens of stagnant societies centuries ago didn't have and couldn't imagine what everyone in the relatively freer countries has today. But it will take more than prayer to reverse the trend back to the tribalist stagnation.

Leonard Peikoff's 1985 lecture "The Death of Medicine" in the Ayn Rand anthology The Voice of Reason showed that doctors were already quitting in significant numbers over 30 years ago because of government wrecking the medical industry with Medicare beginning twenty years earlier in 1965. It is an example of both how productive individuals avoid government punishment and how their quitting makes no difference to the trend in public policy.

The fictional Dr. Hendricks in 1958 was based on well known history. By the time Medicare started here doctors were already famously quitting in droves in other countries, such as Britain, because of socialized medicine. That didn't make any difference either. There was only the fantasy that it didn't matter because Medicare wasn't full socialized medicine and that it would somehow be different here as the statism evolved.

No matter what lessons are openly available to be learned, the collectivist, altruist premises always continue with yet another variation on the same statism, and always driving the fantasy that the way to 'fix' problems in fact caused by government is more government intervention for the same altruist collectivist goals. Don't challenge and reverse the premises and their implications continue, as Ayn Rand showed in "How Not to Fight Against Socialized Medicine", also in The Voice of Reason.

More like after a heart transplant from a teenager.

We should hope to God they don't change that because if they do, their answer is universal health care because they damn sure won't pay for high deductibles with high premiums.

Obama and Congress exempted themselves from the Obamacare they imposed on the rest of us.

There is a lot of work to be done ,Think of the US economy as Lemuel Gulliver tied down with thousands of strings.... The pissants in The swamp are protecting those strings in this "uncivil war" fighting Trump with lies, innuendo , false accusations , a total smear campaign with a colluding media. Shame on them and vote the leeches out.

OMG Abaco!! Could NOT stop laughing at this!!
One of the best holiday gifts I could ever receive:
tears of laughter!! Am saving this one! Much thanks
for the only kind of tears I ever want.

He's entirely consistent. You didn't build that (i.e., whatever you built). Collectivism built everything.

The only "affordable care act" IS to stay healthy !!! Obamacare is a disaster. A 40 year old friend of mine had 1000 deductible insurance with blue X for $156 a month before Obamacare. This year for $6000 deductible it was $406 per month. Next year Blue X isnt even writing policies in Nevada. I think Obama should have Obamacare.

Tax reduction will not "grow the economy" really. Any taxes at all retard the economy, so I agree with you that removing taxes and regulation will free up the economy to where it would have been had the taxes and regulations not been there in the first place

I think Obama should go out and get a real job, or maybe do a startup so he can see how the government isnt responsible for getting the business going, but it is often responsible for making it fair.

So glad that Bath House Barry is no longer in the Oval Office!

To be fair, the health (such as it is) of the economy is likely attributable to Obama (and Presidents before him) more than to Trump, since most policies have long-term effects which take years or even decades to fully play out.

When the current bubble bursts, as inevitably it will, I somehow doubt Obama will step up for his share of the blame.

“I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago,” - Dr. Hendricks' speech in the Gulch in AS

That's right. I've since lost all three of my doctors: primary care, dermatologist and pediatrician - and I'm not even in Obamacare. But, the medical groups got dismantled and that's the end of that. Had to go to PPO now to get my doctors back at the first of the year. The next dem pres will burn things down enough where I'll lose my doctors again and never get them back. My pediatrician, who owns his own practice, will probably be eliminated from earth. My derm will survive doing work for the rich housewives in his community for cash. My primary care physician, the last standout in the area who hasn't joined a leftist HMO, will probably retire.

Note to self: Stay healthy.