Ayn Rand vs. Vladimir Lenin

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

Who would you vote for as leader of your nation?

[America Needs R'hllor]

Not the ironhanded dictator

[Goldwater]

Rand.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

MY QUEEN IS ALIVE!

[ApatheticAustrian]

rand - and my early-teenage me now tries to strangle me.

[Phony Moderate]

One of these is a bloodthirsty maniac who has a desire to do away with all political opponents.

The other is Vladimir Lenin.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Ayn Rand's ideology would require allowing a civil society which could oppose its fullest horrible realization. Lenin's would have no problem responding to such a thing with bloodshed and village burning.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Rand.

[The_Doctor]

Faced with two extremes, can I opt for a third option? I suppose, if forced, Ayn Rand against the forefather of the Commie Menace.

[Antonio the Sixth]

There is not a person or ideology of any significance in human history that I would rank below Ayn Rand's glorification of war of all against all as the highest good.

[Mr. Smith]

Faced with two extremes, can I opt for a third option? I suppose, if forced, Vladimir against the forefather of the Objectivist Menace.

ftfy

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

There is not a person or ideology of any significance in human history that I would rank below Ayn Rand's glorification of war of all against all as the highest good.

I mean yeah Rand is up there but it's obvious why statements like this are pretty absurd.

[White Trash]

There is not a person or ideology of any significance in human history that I would rank below Ayn Rand's glorification of war of all against all as the highest good.

[Santander]

I'm agreeing way too much with BRTD. Either I went through some sort of red pill experience (better red pill than dead pill?) or I'm losing and need to take a break from Atlas.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

There is not a person or ideology of any significance in human history that I would rank below Ayn Rand's glorification of war of all against all as the highest good.

I mean yeah Rand is up there but it's obvious why statements like this are pretty absurd.

And Pol Pot

[White Trash]

I'm agreeing way too much with BRTD. Either I went through some sort of red pill experience (better red pill than dead pill?) or I'm losing and need to take a break from Atlas.

You've taken too many pills. You're starting to overdose.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

There is not a person or ideology of any significance in human history that I would rank below Ayn Rand's glorification of war of all against all as the highest good.

I mean yeah Rand is up there but it's obvious why statements like this are pretty absurd.

And Pol Pot

And Mao, Stalin, Papa Doc, Baby Doc, Pinochet, Castro, the Kims, Erich Hoenecker, Macias Nguema, the Derg, Robert Mugabe, Hillary Clinton, Hoxha, Qadaffi, Saddam, the House of Saud, Paul Biya, Ted Bundy, David Parker Ray, Al-Baghdadi, Bin Laden, Brezhnev, Andropov, Kissinger, the Ayatollahs, Mullah Omar, Chavez, Maduro, Putin, Ceausesceau, Suharto, Mobutu, Nasser, and Amin.

[RFayette]

Rand never had any actual power whereas Lenin actually did, so this strikes me as a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison, because we'd never know how Rand actually would have executed her philosophy.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

I think that if Rand got to a position of power she'd be extremely incompetent, her writings reveal that she had no idea of how the mids of regular people (as opposed to fictional characters) worked.

[Santander]

I think that if Rand got to a position of power she'd be extremely incompetent, her writings reveal that she had no idea of how the mids of regular people (as opposed to fictional characters) worked.

Sounds like she'd be a pretty standard Republican, then.

[Beet]

Wait, wasn't Rand basically a Leninist who became a Randian because she thought it was the opposite of Leninism, but it really wasn't since her whole frame of reference was Soviet thinking due to her upbringing and education? I remember reading some of Rand's stuff as a teenager and thinking it sounded like it was written by a communist who wanted to project what a philosophy of libertarianism might look like.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I actually recall someone saying "I, personally, find it amusing that someone whose economic utopia was apparently "do whatever you feel like doing, regardless of market demand, because it is immoral to force people to do things for others in order to make money, oh and if someone pays you for something you make and changes it in a way you don't like that is an attack on you as the maker of that thing and you have the right to destroy it" is treated as the opposite of Marx."

Yeah great point.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Wait, wasn't Rand basically a Leninist who became a Randian because she thought it was the opposite of Leninism, but it really wasn't since her whole frame of reference was Soviet thinking due to her upbringing and education? I remember reading some of Rand's stuff as a teenager and thinking it sounded like it was written by a communist who wanted to project what a philosophy of libertarianism might look like.

Not quite. She grew up in Tzarist Russia, but was in college in the early twenties when she wrote her earliest known short stories. They were written that way to seem vague in the event she crossed the party, which she ultimately did. She was actually purged with hundreds of other students right before graduation, but a visiting British delegation intervened and they allowed her to graduate. At this point, she was more concerned about eating than writing so the works were fairly dull.

You ought to read The Passion of Ayn Rand. It is a fairly reliable and objective first hand account of what made Ayn Rand into Ayn Rand.

[Intell]

Ayn Rand along with Milton Freidman are the creators of the most despicable thoughts and morals, and exemplifies what is wrong with modern society, her thoughts and ideas have lead to the ruining of lives of many people and servile attacks on the poor.

She is the worst political human being, only one small step away from dictators. If she had anypower she would be a million times more destructive and horrific than many dictators, and even the thoughts she espouses are a trillion times worse than Lenin.

I hope she's

[Tartarus Sauce]

There is not a person or ideology of any significance in human history that I would rank below Ayn Rand's glorification of war of all against all as the highest good.