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Alright, I'm going to riff this piece, Mystery Science Theater 3000 style. The piece is enough of a joke, might as well joke about it. Except for Odd Thomas, and the ARI. lol Well obviously, Trump loves Russia and Rand was from Russia. Makes total sense to the fake news mindset. Whole, as in "all." Quite a wager considering that Trump agrees with Objectivism on quite a few key political goals... preserving the 2A, repealing regulations, repealing Obamacare, standing up to the Global Warming fraud, destroying radical Islam instead of making excuses for it, etc. So what does our prophetess have to say exactly, Mr. Ghate? She obviously didn't foresee the rise of the Internet. Except for Ron Paul, a far more intellectual and principled candidate than Trump, which the ARI opposed because... uh, why exactly? A limit which apparently led for her to vote for Nixon, a far worse candidate than Trump, over McGovern, a far better candidate than Hillary. and who channel a dead woman... oh wait, that's the ARI. Yes, the first candidate in 30 years to not thank God in his acceptance speech, and who says that he has "nothing to be forgiven for" is a "mystic." He might as well be a closet atheist who pays lip-service to religion because politics and votes. No, what's illuminating is your attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole. You mean like government-sanctioned torture, or the Waco raid? That sort of justice? None of which are evident in Trump's decades of honest business dealings, Mr. Ghate would assert. If he had been a Madoff-like crook, surely evidence for it would have arisen by now. Apparently calling out fake news represents "disdain for the truth." Ah, Anderson Cooper, a bastion of journalistic integrity. Because he's not a liar. Apparently YouTube viewers don't count. Apparently respect for women involves denying one's own sexuality and the beauty of the female form. Ghate would have us equate spur-of-the-moment tweets with Trump's considered opinion. No, it's because none of the things you just mentioned were lies. Actually it captures basic marketing principles. The defenders of capitalism sure don't know much about how business works. Says the ARI, an organization which hired Carl Barney, former Scientology church owner and current college swindler, and takes his dirty money. Obviously they would assert that they only hired him because people can change. Well then, we had objective evidence that Trump no longer desired to be part of the swamp and only had to be in order to run his business effectively. Apparently concepts like slogans and the process for choosing them to reach mass appeal are alien to the ARI. No wonder there are so few objectivists. And apparently unless you constantly repeat those things, your own inherent goodness means nothing. "It's true because I want it to be true" actually perfectly captures the tone of this hit piece. I'd rather have a man who acts moral but never talks about it, than a man who never acts moral but preaches how moral he is. Fine people want to preserve their history for the sake of remembering, not tear it down for the sake of nothing. Not every person defending the confederate statue at that rally was a neo-Nazi. No other president actually stood up to North Korea and forced China to play nice. I'd call that quite an accomplishment. In addition to the hundreds of regulations that Trump has repealed. If Ghate and Brook had their way, Hillary would be president and these would still be on the books. Don't forget about Jesus and Buddha while you're making your fake list of people who Trump never said that he's better than. Or, you know, it was a joke. Yes, how dare he be loyal to America first instead of globalists. I guess that Trump's business achievements count for nothing. As opposed to the objective thing to do, which would be to hire men who would betray him. As it should be, given Comey's lack of fidelity to justice in the case of Clinton. What you're hearing is patriotism towards America, not tribalism. I know, it's hard to recognize for a member of an organization like the ARI that puts Israel above America. And Hillary apparently would've played no part in this drift. Political hucksters rely on strawmen, such as saying that Trump blamed "all" the country's problems on any particular group. By this logic we should never elect a county sheriff who pledges to crack down on criminals. That would be tribalism, apparently. You mean like Hillary calling half the country "deplorables?" Oh look, a nugget of truth! You're forgetting some qualifying adjectives. Illegal immigrants, dishonest journalists, globalist "free" traders, and corrupt elites. Trump opposed none of those things intrinsically. Sales should be soaring, but the ARI fails at marketing so they're not. With funny names like Floyd Ferris, Wesely Mouch, and Onkar Ghate. You mean like how Leonard Peikoff squandered Ayn Rand's intellectual heritage? That sort of progeny? I'd trust a snake oil salesman like Alex Jones before I'd trust Anderson Cooper or wherever Mr. Ghate gets his "news." And by letting in the entire Third World into America all at once. She also advocated that, apparently. America to Israel, America to globalists... just kidding, he doesn't say that. So this is what makes you happy? Writing baseless schlock about the president? What about the Convention of States? Oh wait, the ARI hates states' rights. I mean, I think that she would have said that too, but not in the way that you mean. After all that bloviating, this is the best you could come up with that Rand might have said?

I never said that I was. It's okay to be white. And it's okay for me to say so.

Lol, "The Anti-Intellectuality of Donald Trump". Same thing could be said of nearly every politician and every modern president. It is routinely trotted out against republicans for example Reagan and both Bushes. I am not sure why that particular feature is even notable given the quality of what passes for an intellectual. The corruptness of Hillary Clinton is not a less venal character trait, and in a president is more so in my opinion. I will again take this opportunity to remind all the readers here that Ayn Rand endorsed Richard Nixon, of all people, simple because she was that much against McGovern.

Set us straight here. Do you believe in blood guilt and/or original sin? Because invoking those crimes of the past is same thought process. I am not guilty, and I am okay with being white.

ARI published an anti-Trump opinion, FWIW.

This reminds me of the scene in AS where Dagny, while begging D'anconia to invest in the John Galt line, describes her own request as 'crawling on her belly to ask for money - just like Jim'. If you try to do it in the same manner you wrote that post then in my opinion (much like Fransisco's response to Dagny) it won't actually be self degradation; you'll be doing it wrong. I felt the same way for a few months after I'd discovered O'ism. To this day I still feel it, whenever I stop to ponder it. But why should we ponder it? The purpose of knowledge is action; until we can solve mortality, how is it relevant to any issue but one (the critical one)? Hank Rearden wasn't evading the Equalization of Opportunity bill, when he chose not to think about it, because there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. To the best of my knowledge there is exactly one way in which it is vitally relevant. The total amount of time you get to spend makes a difference in how you ought to spend any portion of it. If I believe that 'I have, say, sixty years to live' (to paraphrase Roark) and that my enjoyment of them is nobody's responsibility but mine then for me to spend one nanosecond on any unnecessary or purposeless drudgery would be outrageous; if my time is infinite then who cares? It's been a long time since the after-death (the idea of that eternal oblivion which used to horrify me and which I'll never actually have to experience) has crossed my mind. The inevitability of death is something I've considered frequently, of late, in order to better budget my life's time (which is the only currency that matters). I value my knowledge of my own mortality because whenever I remember it I lose any desire to procrastinate; it makes me want to go climb a mountain, slay a dragon or conquer the world at the instant it enters my head (which is how I usually should feel). P.S: You really should watch this one. Avicii said it better than I can.

This is the crux. Not only do I find this the most decisive or important point, it raises a particular point of difficulty for me. You recently brought into my center of focus for the last week or two The Objectivist Ethics. This particular quoted paragraph aligned my mental crosshairs on this paragraph from within that center of focus. Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility. It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of “value” is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of “life.” To speak of “value” as apart from “life” is worse than a contradiction in terms. “It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible.” In a concomitant paragraph from the same article, she addresses a closely related issue: Psychologically, the choice “to think or not” is the choice “to focus or not.” Existentially, the choice “to focus or not” is the choice “to be conscious or not.” Metaphysically, the choice “to be conscious or not” is the choice of life or death. A blind pursuit of truth is not necessarily a value. It attempts to elevate truth to the position of an ultimate goal or end. In Galt's Speech: "Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth." And later: "A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest—but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking." Truth does not differentiate between sad and glad, or despair and happiness. From an inductive standpoint, truth serves as a step or rung in a staircase or ladder to climb. Suffice it to say, truth cannot be a series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end. One more edifice along this line of reasoning: In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between “is” and “ought.” This is where "such a truth is a clearly a disvalue" sticks in my "proverbial" craw.