This… was simply hilarious. It never fails to amuse me when people who bought into Ayn Rand’s policies and politics run for office on platforms that are anathema to most of their voter base, but that this voter base is so blinded by the promise of maybe eventually becoming one of the hyper-privileged that they ignore all those inconvenient facts and accept the backpedalling by people like Rand Paul Paul Ryan (d’oh!) uncritically, and can’t be whipped into the same kind of furore that they manage at the mere mention of the name of a Democratic candidate who shows the merest hint of being anything like their own heroes.
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The whole thing kinda proves the tribalism at play, doesn’t it?
It’s funny though. Ayn Rand doesn’t represent humanism, despite her correct assessment that gods don’t exist and all morality must come from humans’ reason. I suspect it’s because she had a gross lack of empathy. It’s probably a big part of why there’s such a Great Rift in the atheist community now — there are people who just want atheism to deal with atheism, and that’s fine. But there are other people who are atheists who hate the idea of building a morality that involves egalitarianism or plurality, and they are the most vociferous pushers-back on ideas like atheism plus. When they say “atheism plus is like a religion”, they’re saying “you’re suggesting that some actions are moral or immoral, and religions do that too, and like Ayn Rand, I hate religions.”
Except we’re using reason to suss out the best positions that have the most egalitarian outcome. Shouldn’t a Randian libertarian be totally on board with that?