Steve:

Atlas Shrugged has sold as many copies as it has because of the number of people who experienced an emotional rush from that vision.

Yes, her art succeeded exactly because of her romantic vision, and her politics have had an influence because of the success of her romantic art.    It was her novels that most read first, and then her essays.

She was also successful , I think, in the placement/marketing of her art;  Anthem was a Jr. High on-ramp(her detractors might call it a gateway drug.)   It was still being assigned in the 60s, along with Animal Farm and 1984 and The Lottery and .Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron -- all decidedly political art in that America.     (My public Jr High School  teaching sister, in the 90s, fought attempts to remove these from the local curriculum by the onslaught of 'progressive' thinkers freshly patrolling public schools.)  Night of Jan 16th was an attempt at the theater, as a sifferent front.  (Ideas not well received by the critics?  No kidding.)   And her three novels -- We The Living, Fountainhead, and AS were a kind of personal progression, yet all screaming the same fundamental idea; this thing in my hands is my life and I will fight for it.   In total, a kind of broadside, aimed at the prevailing alternative collectivist ideas sweeping the world during the time that she wrote these works.    She wasn't subtle.   You would have to work especially hard to misunderstand her(and the gymnastics of those who purposely do is more revealing of them than her.).   When you consider the prevailing winds when she ... screamed these things at the top of her lungs at the world, it was a remarkable feat of personal will.    That she is still vilified today, in 2014, 30+ years after her death, is a testimonly to how clearly she hit her mark, and what a threat her ideas pose to her opponents, even today.  Rand is their hairshirt-- they protest a little too much how inconsequential and non-influential among 'right thinkers' she is -- and she serves as a kind of litmus, even long dead.

regards,

Fred.

Fred,

In addition to the 'running downhill' advantage of the collectivists, there is another large advantage they have.  They stand to gain hugely from their efforts to steal from others, and they promise to share their loot - it is a promise that we can make running downhill work - whoppee, no more hard work, no more needing skill or knowledge.  

Whereas the people who recognize that real growth can only come out of an uphill climb, aren't motivated by the promise of gains by fighting the collectivists - at least that isn't how it presents.  They see a large battle, with lots of time and energy in addition to their normal work load, and at best they will temporarily gain freedom from some proposed small increase in taxes - or something like that.

I remember an ex-cop I knew who would point out things on the street that I (who am pretty observant) wouldn't have noticed.  He'd say, "You get up everyday to go to work. So do the crooks. It's their job. They work at finding ways to rip you off."  Because the location of our political infection's reservoir is the universities, they work at finding new ways to dress up collectivism and to move the next generation further to the left.

At some point we run into that old saw about people getting the government they deserve. You mentioned in another post that people 'woke up' to the loss of liberties whereas the surprise was that it took that long and that we should have been on top of it from long before that.

Madison Ave and the politicians will always seek out what works best. It is a kind of evolutionary arms race going on where there hasn't been as much evolution among consumers as there should have been. But the capacity to see what an ad is doing, or what charismatic moves a politican makes that have no substance is never far away. It is an evolutionary growth that can be quickly attained even though never guaranteed. Wise consumers is the cure for many ills.

Where the quest for super-effective glamor type of ad falls just short of explicit promises to the guy that if he uses their after shave lotion they will get laid by gorgeous young models the justice department could always go after them for fraud. It would require creating a rational definition of what constitutes fraud as opposed to puffery. But the better approach is to simply teach critical thinking as part of every single year of schooling. And I suspect that free market competition in the schools would bring that about on its own.

Bad products (or defective political ideas) need to use glamor instead of reason, and if some text is expected they will create lies or misdirection. Good products have lots of advantages: stronger word-of-mouth (they work better), good reasoning to go with the image instead of lies and shallow promises that don't make sense, better integration with similar ideas or products, and their reputation, and the reputation of their purveyors is more likely to increase over time. Whereas the socialists had to start calling themselves liberals, then they had to start calling themselves Progressives. They find they have to toss an idea or a purveyor under the bus every now and then.  Notice that after every heavy dose of progressive politics, there is a strong drive to more sensible ideas.  I think that can be partially attributed to the glamor effects that brought in the progressive orgy, wore out it's mystery, and its illusion.  

All in all the good ideas and good products have the advantages, but they are coming from too far behind in terms of planned, energetic, institutionalized promotion.  And they have not learned how to sell the sizzle not the steak (as the Madison Ave. people put it).

Libertarians, I think, are entering a game with three strikes on them before they even take a pitch. It is a kind of a paradox-- I call it the Paradox of Freedom -- that a nation must be won by convincing others it is in their best interest to mob up to defend their right to be free from each other...except under a model of free vs. forced association.

Sad but true.

After watching the video, I have more to comment...

Victoria mentioned during the video about how today she no longer understands how a computer works.  This is another kind of problem people have with the viewpoint of just looking at the meta level causes and effects... without looking at the underlying workings of the system.  So the problem is, when some component of the system changes... the best actions you've derived from your previous experience don't work anymore, they produce entirely different results.

Just for a quick example... my son at one point knew that pushing with his legs pushed him higher while he was holding on to something.  So when it came time to see if he could stand balancing on his own... as soon as he started tipping to one side he would spring his legs out, which did successfully get his head higher for a moment, but then caused him to tip over like a stiff pole and smash his head down harder into the ground further away.  So then in this new context where he has to balance, he has to figure out a different way to keep himself up.  (And until he can balance, he had to learn to let his legs collapse so that he'd land on his butt instead of his face).

The Federal Reserve's Quatitative Easing policy is exactly the same in this respect as my son trying to stay up longer by straightening and pushing his legs.  They are printing more money to keep the financial system going for a little bit longer (son pushing off to stay up longer)... but its going to result in an even bigger collapse of the dollar and financial system (son falls quickly like a stiff pole and smashes his face in the ground).

But I don't know how much this relates to Deontological versus Consequentialist...  I guess... I'd just say that both using principals and learning effects of causes and going with the best action is important.  But when using principals, you should know the reason why the principals were made to be followed in the first place (and when they don't apply), and when forming new principals via learning cause and effect, one should start off with a sound base of knowledge of prior learned principal understanding so that you don't waste time/energy/life relearning things the hard way.

Machan:

And yet, the woman who defined Objectivism made it clear:

The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism.

The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. No man—or group or society or government—has the right to assume the role of a criminal and initiate the use of physical compulsion against any man. Men have the right to use physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.

And from that I'd conclude, the only ethical role of state elites is to enforce a prohibition of elitism; the only justified application of forced association by the state is to prohibit acts of forced association, not only by individuals, but by groups, both internal and external, and especially by the state itself.   That defines and limits a free state.

Freedom ultimately is, freedom from each other.  Not bears or hail or acne.   From forced association with each other; our wishes, our dreams, our visions, our hopes, our failures, our lives.   An idea so powerful that it is worth mobbing up to defend.   An idea so dangerous to the tribal herdists that it is worth them mobbing up to attack.

The asymmetry of this dispute among peers walking the earth is clear; a free state would readily tolerate (and even, protect) a commune, co-op, or non-profit freely established in its midst; a national socialist state could never tolerate the inverse, nor long survive in its midst.   Instead, those rapists tell their victims to sit back and relax and enjoy it, against their victims will, because they will like it.

regards,

Fred