In real life as it stands today, Atlas Shrugged is not a plausible scenario. The trick to reading it without casting it aside in horror is realizing that Rand knows that, and that she's drawing things to their extremes to make a specific point about how she thinks human beings work. People who mock Atlas on that point are missing the point of the book.

It's like reading Asimov, who judges most of his characters by their approach to logic. There's an advantage to illustrating a single facet of a human being. It lets you focus and create characters that revolve around a theme. If Rand had made her books more involved, they'd have lost the focus on the attributes that she writes about.

I don't think she is the end-all be-all. I voted Obama, who will expand the government in many ways and demand some altruism from everybody. But I think that compromise is a necessity: that altruism is a necessary evil rather than an end unto itself.

The immature one is the one who dismisses somebody's argument because they choose to support a flawed person. Frankly, I'd much rather talk with an Objectivist than a Nihilist - that despite Nietzche's being a much more influential and agreed-with writer. I'm trying to argue my points expressively, and to respond to people who disagree. You're either being immature or a troll.

Is that what they teach you in the Rand Club?

But seriously. What am I doing that's rude? I said that I thought that Rand was misread, and that I thought it wasn't necessarily bad that she writes in black-and-white terms. I also said that I think it's a mistake of the people who follow her more seriously to assume that the world really is black-and-white. I don't think I was being rude or an asshole. Am I wrong?

The fact that you use similar phrasing in all your posts, comment in unsimilar threads with quick, brief responses, and have similar disregards for things like two-way, interesting debates, tend to make me a little suspicious. I could be wrong, but with all due respect, at this point I rather doubt I am.

My question is: why? Are you the blog's author/submitter? I've noticed junk accounts pop up more when I mention my distaste for the article this was written about. You make similar comments to KrisZolar, who submitted this article. Every single response defending this post appears to be made from a spam account: KeshRivya also seems to be in this category. And every single one has the same anti-Rand stance as the original post, and writes in the same style.

The one thing that fascinates me is that a lot of these seems to have been made months-if-not-years ago. That takes a lot of effort. And I wonder why go to all the effort.

I'm sorry if it does turn out I'm raving and wrong, but I flagged this post. I don't know if there's a way of matching IPs, but the evidence all seems to point to a massive amount of throwaway accounts.