Regarding your comment that in Atlas Shrugged Dagny Taggart commits a murder (“… another example would be the murder of a man in Atlas Shrugged by one of her main characters, a murder justified by the victim’s personal failings when measured against Rand’s preferences. He stood in the way of their plans, not as an aggressor, but as a weakling. “): you are omitting the circumstances in which this occurred.
Recall that John Galt had been taken prisoner and was being tortured (this is aggression). Dagny was attempting to rescue him and a guard was preventing her from doing so. After giving the guard many opportunities to step aside (she was holding a gun on him), her response to the aggression was to shoot the guard.
Ayn Rand’s position on aggression was unequivocal: it is never permitted. Response to aggression, however, is another matter. If you choose to believe that turning the other cheek is the only acceptable response to aggression, that’s fine; just don’t expect many others to follow.

Byafi,
You’re right that it was in the context of rescusing Galt, but the implicit point Gus is making might be that Rand could have presented the guard as someone willing to forsake duty to authority. He remains weak and doesn’t become strong.

“To bring this back to spirituality, to me Rand’s work owes much to Christianity, in a weird way. The individual as something totally separate from society and owing nothing to it is very compatible with the notion of the soul descending into the fallen world but not a part of it.”
The idea of the soul descending into the physical world isn’t orthodox Christianity — it’s neo-Platonism.

Dear Byafi:
There is a scene in Atlas Shrugged that is relevant here. Just before a train wreck in a tunnel, Rand lists the passengers on the train, covering their philosophical errors (from Rand’s point of view). The implication is that each of the passengers who are about to die in the wreck is in some way responsible for what is about to happen. Why? Because they disagreed with Ayn Rand. Clearly that is a capital offense.
Best,
Jim

Isn’t Yevtushenko’s first name Yevgeny, not Yuri? Or are there two Yevtushenkos who are poets?

Gus,
I think that you are, as usual, spot on. I’ll also note that Rand’s world view is just impractical because it is too limited. No matter how Dagny Taggert shone as an individual, she had to ride the bus with other people. And she had, although Rand never recognized it, an interest in not getting on a bus with people infected with TB or swine flu. She had an interest in having the bus driven by an educated bus driver, who was licensed and who operated under regulation, e.g., no texting while driving, no drinking on the job, etc. She had an interest in having that bus driven over bridges that had passed inspection. Finding out, afterwards, that the toy your child chewed on was full of lead may give you the opportunity to never buy toys from that company again, but that’s rather cold comfort. And, as society has become more and more complex, none of us has time to check out everything in advance and assure ourselves that we’re only buying safe toys, food, bus tickets. Rand’s world view was too simplistic for the mid twentieth century and it’s far too simplistic for today. We really are all interconnected. She failed to grasp that.

Vesta-
Correct on Yevtushenko. Mia culpa. I’ve been bad on names all my life and it isn’t likely to get better now. Thanks for the correction.
I have no idea what counts as orthodox Christianity. It’s been merged with Neoplatonism monotheist style for about as long as there has been an organized church. When Christians come to agree what is orthodox then I will know.
The guard was shot down. As my memory goes, they didn’t have to kill him. They chose to. Thanks for the RR example, Jim. I’d forgotten it (I haven’t read Atlas Shrugged in maybe 20+ years, but I still remember feeling a bit sorry for the guard.)
And, byafi, what about the Indians? What’s your rationalization there? There was one fictional guard where we can guess what his motivations were. There were millions of Indians and we have pretty unambiguous records of widespread murder, theft, and oppression. Wonderful contractual relations between consenting capitalists, those.
Right On, Hecate and Nataliya,

Gus, I would be interested in your thoughts on the writing of the Pagan Libertarian, Jack Parsons (who most Ayn Rand worshipers have never hears of) I will admit it has been a while since I read him, but I thought him a cut above Ayn Rand

Jaundiced-
I never heard of him. What do you recommend?

Excellent observations. I’ll pass this on to an acquaintance (social burden) who maintains that no one has a right to say they dislike Rand unless they have a Masters degree. He’s 32 and been married four times.
I’ve never been able to get past Rand’s (IMO) overall disdain and dismissal of anything other than cold, nihilistic selfishness to get anything else out of her. I can get all the misanthropic encouragement I need from being an animal shelter volunteer, and still at least be useful to the dogs in the bargain. Independence and self-recognition are great, but “rugged individualism” seems to me too often an excuse for metaphorically running over people with large farm equipment just to prove you can, even when they aren’t really in your way.

My comments in this post are continued thoughts on Rand….not so much reaction/response to Gus’s 2nd post. I’ll do that seperately.
I’ve been thinking about my youthful entracement w/ her novels. And I think it had much to do w/ the messages I was being given in the rest of my life. WASP & a girl growing up in the 50′s……much of what I was told had to do w/ shaving my sharp corners to fit the round hole that society said I was supposed to fit. Mind you, this was all pre-hippy explosion.
And so….despite the horrific gender messages that Rand gave….here was someone who was saying to me:No. Be your self. Be your gifted talented self….not who THEY say you should be. Stand up for your self and trust that.
And I needed that message. And that’s what I read Rand to be saying.
But that was me, then. Not the world now.
And I’m young enough that I don’t know the world Rand was writing in. Because that was before my birth.
So today….we’re talking about folks who’re reading Rand today. And reacting thru their own needs/filters to those words from a world so different than the one when I was reading her words. Let alone the world when Rand herself was writing them.
Hell, just the difference in attitude towards women. While not perfect, nothing like the one when she was alive (or when I was growing up).
We are embedded in the world in which we live. As I was in that different world when I 1st read her.

This is yet another long, complicated narrative spouting the exact same intentional misinterpretation of Rand’s work that has already been spouted by so many other dishonest writers.
Rand defines selfishness as not sacrificing oneself to others, nor sacrificing others to oneself. This is a really very simple concept, one on which guys like you will write 5000 word narratives to try and demonstrate that what she really means is sacrificing others to oneself.
You say you have read most of her work; you should know that she does not, nor has she ever advocated the sacrifice of others to oneself.
“What emerges is such contempt for the inferiors that they can be sacrificed when necessary.” This is an idea that Ayn Rand absolutely despised. She wrote many lengthy essays, and explained in great detail, why this way of thinking is corrupt and evil.
Your argument works really well for people who have not read any of Rand’s books. Those who have read her work, and are honest, do not interpret from her books that she somehow promoted trampling all over the rights of other people. In fact it was something that she explicitly and emphatically denounced in several of her works.

Jerry- Rand and the Indians – Rand and the Indians – Rand and Indians -
How often do I have to ask?
Your post is not a way to argue rationally or impress your readers. Throwing accusations of dishonesty while refusing to address the reasons or examples given by its author itself seems pretty dishonest itself – or blind.

I have read the same article by several different authors on multiple occasions; you just threw in a few words that were slightly different from some of the others. They all endorse the same faulty conclusion. Rand advocated what she called “rational self interest”, but you interpret that to mean that she advocated the individual stepping all over other people and sacrificing others in the pursuit of goals.
Rand even refuted your argument before you ever made it.
“When one speaks of man’s right to exist for his own sake, for his own rational self-interest, most people assume automatically that this means his right to sacrifice others. Such an assumption is a confession of their own belief that to injure, enslave, rob or murder others is in man’s self-interest—which he must selflessly renounce. The idea that man’s self-interest can be served only by a non-sacrificial relationship with others has never occurred to those humanitarian apostles of unselfishness, who proclaim their desire to achieve the brotherhood of men. And it will not occur to them, or to anyone, so long as the concept “rational” is omitted from the context of “values,” “desires,” “self-interest” and ethics.”
- Ayn Rand from the book “The Virtue of Selfishness”

Jerry – you are getting on thin ice here.
You continue ignoring the BRUTE FACT that she said of Indians: “They didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using . . . . What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.”- Address to West Point, 1974
(Read my articles and follow the link or google it yourself)
That of course is pretty much the attitude of the aliens in Independence Day… It s exactly the attitude I am contending vitiates what value there is in her defense of individual liberty, and which we see popping up over and over again by people claiming to be inspired by her.
You want to defend her? Fine. Address the issues.
UPDATE:
I just re-read your post, and it seems you are calling me a plagiarist. I missed that the first time through because it is so far from being true. Now if you do not answer the Indian issue you are banned from this blog. You have crossed the line – and you do not know what you are talking about.

Re: American Indians
I always forget how obssessed the left is with American Indians. Rand made few comments on the subject, and it’s odd that – off all the subjects Rand wrote about and discussed – that you would focus on this one.
My understanding regarding Rand’s position on American Indians is:
(1) For the most part, European colonizers did not “steal” land from American Indians (although there were some exceptions). It’s impossible to “steal” from someone who does not recognize property rights.
For thousands of years the American Indians (to speak of them as one group is silly – they were countless tribes) lived as nomads and in a constant state of war and violence against each other. North America was not divided into distinct political territories or countries; the territories of the various tribes were in constant flux. So it’s impossible to say that the Europeans “invaded” any of these territories. Nor was the land divided up and assigned to specific individuals and families, so it’s impossible to say that the Europeans “stole” the land. It’s nonsensical (not to mention ethnocentric) to appy our concepts of ownership and property to the American Indians.
(2) Although there were a few organized military actions to kill off certain groups of American Indians, for the most part they died from contagious diseases that came from the Old World. That sucks for them, but the left is being dishonest when they call that “genocide.”
(3) The left’s childish myths about noble savages notwithstanding, there were many negative things about the cultures of the Native American tribes. My understanding is that not a single culture in the Western hemisphere had achieved literacy, a basic hallmark of civilization. Cannibalism, human sacrifice, torture, slavery, and the subjugation of women, etc., were common in many of the tribes. The colonizers were far from perfect, but when it comes to basic human rights, the Europeans were far ahead of the Indian tribes.
(4) Ethnic warfare, colonization, race-based slavery and oppression had been going on for thousands of years and on every continent. These practices were largely abolished only in the 19th-Century by European/Western civilization – by the advent of capitalism. We cannot forget that the only reason why we see racism, ethnic slavery, etc., as wrong is because we have a Western/capitalist worldview. We believe in individual rights and the right of the individual to his own work, property, and profit. The American Indians you so love, treasure, and admire would not be so enamored with your tolerance, love, and acceptance; they would probably scalp you for looking different than them.
(5) Some cultures are superior to others. There is such a thing as right and wrong.
Enjoy.

I would say the previous blogger addressed the Indian issue quite eloquently so I won’t waste any time on that.
I was not accusing you of being a plagiarist; I was simply making the point that your original points have been made on countless occasions with the same erroneous conclusion; that Rand condoned sacrificing others to achieve one’s goals. As I have already stated, and as anyone familiar with her philosophy is well aware, that is a complete bastardization of her ideas. It is a very common below-the-belt tactic used by people who want to distort Rand’s philosophy and steer people away from reading her books.
I was, however, accusing you of being dishonest. If you have indeed read most of her works as you have stated, her complete admonition of both sacrificing others to oneself and sacrificing oneself to others should be quite clear to you, unless perhaps you read all of her books by skipping every other chapter, (which even then would be a stretch). There would be no explanation other than that you are bending the truth in an attempt to distort her philosophy.

Alano-
[I have corrected some missing attributions separating Alano's comments from my own that I noticed after first posting this, and done a little clarifying editing.]
You must be new to Rand. You never define your terms. That said, I will address each of your points in the order you make them. A careful reader will see that in attempting to rebut me you support my key criticism of Rand. You write
ALANO- My understanding regarding Rand’s position on American Indians is:
(1) For the most part, European colonizers did not “steal” land from American Indians (although there were some exceptions). It’s impossible to “steal” from someone who does not recognize property rights.
GUS- They did recognize property rights. They did so in ways different from Europe, because most property rights world-wide were first vested in communities. This included Europe until property was taken away from conquered communities and invested in military victors as the spoils of war. The origins of private property in land is usually based on conquering. Almost everywhere. So you are essentially supporting my interpretation that people who do not live as Rand approved can be despoiled and their land taken for others who use it more appropriately. Lovely.
ALANO- For thousands of years the American Indians (to speak of them as one group is silly – they were countless tribes) lived as nomads and in a constant state of war and violence against each other. North America was not divided into distinct political territories or countries; the territories of the various tribes were in constant flux. So it’s impossible to say that the Europeans “invaded” any of these territories.
GUS- Actually, many tribes were agricultural. That includes the tribes of the east, which were the first to be conquered, and all the way through to the plains, which were not suitable for agriculture. Even there, it was only with the advent of the horse that some tribes took up that style of life on a large scale.
The tribes of the Southwest were often agricultural as well, and the tribes in the northwest had large permanent settlements. Even among those who were not agricultural, many tribes made extensive use of fire to deliberately alter landscapes to improve hunting and horticulture and gathering. The Europeans simply did not recognize what Indians had done because it was different than what they would do. Not that this would have stopped them. They often justified their stealing and killing by invoking the Old Testament. Nice to see you so comfortable with Old Testament reasoning…
All tribes had territories. They were not constantly at war. Further, while the territories shifted, have you ever looked at a map of Europe during this time? Double standard, eh, bucko? Much of the border shifting in post-contact times came as tribes were pushed westward by superior arms. So your understanding is based on an insufficient knowledge of how Indians actually lived.
ALANO- Nor was the land divided up and assigned to specific individuals and families, so it’s impossible to say that the Europeans “stole” the land. It’s nonsensical (not to mention ethnocentric) to appy our concepts of ownership and property to the American Indians.
GUS- Depended on the tribes and families, actually. Some Northern California tribes had concepts of land ownership very close to European ones. They were deliberately exterminated, which is why California has so little land in reservations. Tribes in Eastern Canada developed ownership patterns close to western ones in order to make use of their territories as they entered into trading relations with European fur traders. Before then they did not need to alter how they managed their land.
Once again, your ignorance as to how Indians actually lived has blinded you to actual cases of theft, even by Western standards. Canada is deeply enmeshed in these kinds of issues at the moment, especially in British Columbia, as it tries to establish the rule of law over tribes that had by its own legal principles been stolen from. And if people are happy with tribal ownership, by what right do you and Rand have to deny them their ownership, kick them off their land, and shoot them if they object? By what right?
Further, even if we grant your fallacious point regarding how the tribes initially lived, after contact they were forced to sign treaties (I believe you might call them contracts) deeding some land to Europeans while guaranteeing other lands to them – until they were threatened with violence, or violence was used, to take that land in turn. A decently moral person would suspect that this at least constituted theft, Rand did not and apparently neither do you.
More importantly, the fact that they used land differently than you or Rand approve of apparently means that, for you and Rand, taking guns and shooting Indians or ordering them to leave their ancestral lands does not constitute theft.
That, of course, is exactly what I have argued is a fatal flaw in the “Objectivist” understanding of reality. So you are supporting my case while arguing against it.
ALANO-(2) Although there were a few organized military actions to kill off certain groups of American Indians, for the most part they died from contagious diseases that came from the Old World. That sucks for them, but the left is being dishonest when they call that “genocide.”
GUS- You are attempting to cloud the issue. I will not take your bait since I have not made that argument. Some day maybe you can use a defined term in place of “the left.”
ALANO-(3) The left’s childish myths about noble savages notwithstanding, there were many negative things about the cultures of the Native American tribes. My understanding is that not a single culture in the Western hemisphere had achieved literacy, a basic hallmark of civilization. Cannibalism, human sacrifice, torture, slavery, and the subjugation of women, etc., were common in many of the tribes. The colonizers were far from perfect, but when it comes to basic human rights, the Europeans were far ahead of the Indian tribes.
GUS- Again, your abysmal ignorance of Indian cultures makes your comments pretty much irrelevant, Further, my argument did not depend on them being anything other than human. But I will answer your slurs and bigotry where a brief response rather than a book will do.
First, I have nowhere indulged in that ‘noble savage’ myth although you wallow in the ‘ignoble savage’ one.
Second, the literacy issue is irrelevant at many levels, especially regarding basic morality. And if you wish to include all the Indians of the Americas in your description, we have translated the Mayan script now. I believe there are other scripts so far untranslated. But I will stick to North America. Petroglyphs seem pretty standardized continent-wide, and were likely a means for communicating certain knowledge. But in our terms there was no literacy, a trait that seems to have required long settled cities to develop at first – as with the Mayans. But again – that issue is irrelevant with respect to morality.
Third, cannibalism and human sacrifice existed in a few tribes in North America (as I understand it, human sacrifice existed in exactly one, the Pawnee, and they voluntarily gave it up. The same thing happened with the ‘savage’ Greeks. Ever hear of Iphigenia?)
As to cannibalism, there was some in a very few tribes, most spectacularly the Aztecs. But it was very rare. For an easy access informed discussion, see http://www.native-languages.org/iaq13.htm Your comments is as accurate as if I said Europeans were head hunters who loved to impale people on stakes while they were still alive.
Fourth, Torture, slavery, and the subjugation of women were endemic in Europe at the time. The subjugation of women was actually noticeably less in Indian cultures, in general, than it was in European ones, as a great many early explorers noted (and in the case of missionaries, often noted to their horror). Slavery existed in relatively few tribes whereas it or serfdom was all but universal in Europe. You are committing the usual double standard of the noble European vs the bestial savage, which is the mirror image of what you are falsely accusing me of. I am innocent and you are guilty as hell.
ALANO-(4) Ethnic warfare, colonization, race-based slavery and oppression had been going on for thousands of years and on every continent. These practices were largely abolished only in the 19th-Century by European/Western civilization – by the advent of capitalism.
GUS-First, this point is 100% irrelevant to how the Indians were treated in the US, much of which took place before the 19th century.
But let’s just look at the nineteenth century. Almost everywhere on earth was ALREADY a European colony. Look at a map of the world back then sometime. China and Thailand were about the only places not colonized or controlled, other than the US and Latin America, who had fought wars to free themselves. China and Thailand did not survive as independent countries because of capitalist ideology. Capitalism did nothing to end colonization, liberalism did. Individual businesses did much to enrich themselves through colonization. Check out the English in India sometime. Colonization only ended after WWII, and not through enlightened capitalism. By that time capitalism had been around for a long time.
One of your sources of confusion is confusing capitalism with liberal principles. They are in interesting relationship, but are hardly identical, as China and Singapore today demonstrate.
Race-based slavery is actually to a large extent a European invention. Earlier slave holding societies enslaved people of their own race as well as other races (though Greeks did not approve of enslaving ethnic Greeks – but I think they sometimes did anyway, I am not sure). This openness to enslaving one’s own race also made it possible to easily free slaves and integrate them into the ‘free’ society if the owner so chose or if the slave acquired the means to purchase their freedom. No one thought of slaves as less than human. That only came with race-based slavery pushed by Europeans seeking cheap labor for market production – and they did so to make it easier to use slaves without worrying about escapes. This slavery was for the market and before the Civil War was a key part of world commerce. It was anti-liberal but not anti-capitalistic.
Warfare has ONLY ended for a long time, I believe probably permanently, when both countries involved have become democratic. This is due to Western liberalism, but it’s a branch of liberal priorities which Randians neither understand nor have done all that much to support. You have already indicated your willingness to invade and conquer “primitive” people whom do not live according to your standards of what is proper.
ALANO- We cannot forget that the only reason why we see racism, ethnic slavery, etc., as wrong is because we have a Western/capitalist worldview. We believe in individual rights and the right of the individual to his own work, property, and profit. The American Indians you so love, treasure, and admire would not be so enamored with your tolerance, love, and acceptance; they would probably scalp you for looking different than them.
GUS- The rise of liberalism, beginning with Locke, did much of the good you describe. Locke wrote and liberalism’s most powerful success (our revolution) occurred before capitalism became dominant (Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations also appeared in 1776), though market economies had become dominant. Racism was far more a European import than an Indian attitude. Racism is not the same as tribalism.
I have NOT committed the noble savage fallacy – while you repeatedly, proudly, and ignorantly commit the “debased savage” fallacy. In doing so you demonstrate that you understand neither Indians nor my actual views about the market, capitalism, or Indians. To explain all this to you takes more time than I think is worth spending, although if you read this blog you would have avoided some of your more ignorant guesses about me. Once I am convinced you have tried to learn something on your own rather than parroting Rand, perhaps we can carry this conversation farther. Till then, what’s the point?
ALANO-(5) Some cultures are superior to others. There is such a thing as right and wrong.
GUS-Have you read this blog? I agree. And I believe it is now crystal clear that Randians will support truly hideous treatment of people whom they believe by their existence are interfering with their own ideas of what is “most rational.” On other words, you have supported my argument while attempting to rebut it.
And a final point: You demonstrate how strong ideological certainty combined with considerable ignorance can lead a person who thinks of himself as a moral being who loves liberty into justifying murder, theft, and aggression in the name of freedom by completely dehumanizing people whose existence is inconvenient. George Orwell would understand.

Jerry- I think the above response to Alano answers your stuff as well.
You owe me an apology assuming you agree with Alano. Until you either apologize or offer a more knowledgeable rebuttal than Alano has, don’t come back.

You get completely bogged down in empirical details. Rather than arguing against the general point I was making, you nitpick over irrelevancies about, say, communal farming among illiterate primitives in Northern California. Who cares? We’re talking about philosophical principles here, not history.
Rand’s general point was that a group of people who want to set up a regime of stable and enduring property rights over an area of land – along with an elected government, rule of law, and protection of individual rights (all of which require WRITING in the form of property deeds, legislation, statues, land records, legal decisions, etc.) has a moral right to do so as against illiterate savages who have no concept of property or rule of law or individual rights. That’s the point.
Did this or that American Indian tribe not deserve to be moved off the land they were hunting on because they were actually secretly civilized and had some sort of hidden system of property ownership that didn’t involve written records (however the hell that might work)? Maybe. That’s an empirical question that involves a bunch of details. Did the American gov’t mistreat certain tribes? Maybe – again, it depends on the details.
(BTW, Rand was far from being an apologist for everything in American history. For instance, she consistently referred to black slavery – and then Jim Crow – as a shameful and horrible contradiction to America’s founding values and beliefs.)
These historical details neither prove nor disprove Rand’s philosophical statement that a group of civilized people attempting to establish rule of law and property rights in a given geographic area have a right to do so – as against wandering, illiterate nomads who happen to be hunting and/or squating in that area at that time. This is a general principle. It would apply to the Romans civilizing the British aisles as much as it would apply to the early American colonists.
So I pose the philosophical question to you, Gus. Let’s say you and your friends are on a piece of land. You would like to partition off the land into little plots so that each person can build his own home, grow his own crops, etc., and if someone else comes along and sets your home on fire or steals your crops, you want some way – some justification – for punishing them…. If you don’t come up with such a system, then no one will build homes or plant crops…
How would you solve these problem? (You would need property rights.) How would you keep a record of who owned what? (You would need writing and record keeping.) What happens when a man dies of old age? Does everyone fight over his plot of land? (You need written laws to determine inheritance.)
And now: In addition to your friends, there’s another group of people who refuse to let the land be partitioned; they prefer to wander around taking crops and killing animals wherever they want; they speak a different language than you and communication with them is difficult. What do you do with them?
If you’re trying to set up a civilization on this land – and certain people occupying that land refuse to go along with it – then what is morally permissible and what isn’t? THAT is the philosophical question Rand was trying to answer. Forget the American Indians. Consider the philosophical issue in the abstract, and tell us what the proper decision would be.

You made empirical claims about Indians, and I corrected them. Since the empirical claims you made were important to the point you were trying to make, I was hardly nitpicking. And your “illiterate savages” point in your response simply proves to me you have not yet understood what I was saying, and that you continue to support aggression against people of whom you disapprove and about whom you know little beyond Rand’s ignorant rant, in order to justify taking their property for yourself.
I have never opposed property rights – they are the foundation of human society in all its forms. I have probably written and published on these issues – from a pro-market perspective – since before you were born. And I continue to do so, but not so much on this blog which serves different purposes. But go back to early posts before I joined Beliefnet and you’ll see plenty. You might also take a look at my stuff at http://www.studiesinemergentorder.com/ .
Your ignorance as to actually how Indian peoples really lived makes to difficult to carry on a conversation here because I again have to go back to square one, and say “They were not like that.” It prevents us from getting into the interesting stuff and it prevents you from seeing the moral complexities that actually characterize human life, and the wonderful variety of ways of life which people can develop for themselves, and the importance of respecting people who live differently from ourselves. Try Hugh Brody’s The Other Side of Eden. Maybe that will get through to you. Then come back and we can pick up this conversation.

Something huge I think Alano is completely missing -oral history and the the laws that were remembered and passed on orally in many cultures. “Primitive” cultures that lived to establish writing or, were taught writing by captors, were able to write down their own standards of order, law, inheritance, etc. that existed prior to their writings. How do you think the Torah came about? At the very least, prior to Babylon,the Israelites were passing on their religion, culture, and law by word-of-mouth. Did they deserve to be captured or subjugated just because they didn’t have written words at the time?

A,
The Spaniards enslaved the Indians, so we can’t really characterize them as noble democratic crusaders establishing freedom. I am not entirely up to speed on American government policy towards native people right now, but if my memory serves correctly; it was not in keeping with individualist principles. Rand did indeed think that a free nation had the right to invade a dictatorship, but she qualified it with two statements:
1. The liberator nation had to establish a free socio-political order.
2. The rights of the inhabitants still exist.
[t]his right, however, is conditional. Just as the suppression of crimes does not give a policeman the right of engaging in criminal activities, so the invasion and destruction of a dictatorship does not give the invader the right to establish another variant of a slave society in the conquered country. A slave country has no national rights, but the individual rights of its citizens remain valid, even if unrecognized, and the conqueror has no right to violate them. Therefore, the invasion of an enslaved country is morally justified only when and if the conquerors establish a free social system, that is, a system based on the recognition of individual rights. (“Collectivized Rights,” in The Virtue of Selfishness [New York: Signet, 1989], p. 122.)
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2006-summer/letters-replies.asp
What Gus is doing is entirely relevant to the application of these principles to the concrete case Rand was touching on. If Rand was wrong about the specific nature of American Indian socio-political orders; this would affect whether or not U.S. action was just. I am not even going to pretend the Spanish empire’s literal enslavement and feudal land estates represent liberal principles triumphant

You write: “There is also a view that society itself is composed mostly of the weak, the uncreative, the dependent, who are the undeserving beneficiaries of the creative few.”
Rand herself wrote these things: “A nation’s productive—and moral, and intellectual—top is the middle class. It is a broad reservoir of energy, it is a country’s motor and lifeblood, which feeds the rest.”
“The middle class is the heart, the lifeblood, the energy source of a free, industrial economy, i.e., of capitalism; it did not and cannot exist under any other system; it is the product of upward mobility, incompatible with frozen social castes.” (Ayn Rand Letter)
Then you include Ellsworth Toohey in your cast of “weak, uncreative” people, yet you attribute him with being able to “bring the creative few and others as well into subordination.” There may have been a few of those, but if Toohey had been in Atlas Shrugged, it would have been the Wesley Mouches, Lilian Reardons and men like Reardon’s brother, the James Taggarts and the men of his Board of Directors, and the Dr. Robert Stadlers that Toohey would have had control over.
Perhaps those are the “weak, the uncreative, the dependent, who are the undeserving beneficiaries of the creative few” to which you refer? I think not. The tone of your piece is condescending to the middle class and you condescend in the name of Rand herself, who obviously said otherwise. Because you think you are speaking in her voice, you say of the people she called “productive, moral, and intellectual, that “What emerges is such contempt for the inferiors that they can be sacrificed when necessary. This is because if the gap between the capable and the weak is big enough, not subordinating the inferior becomes a kind of ‘self-sacrifice’ that is ‘irrational.’ “
What she said was, “Individualism regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.” And: “Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.”
You, sir, made the “mistake of the ignorant”. So long as people like you mis-read and mis-understand what you have read of Rand’s works, you will remain ignorant. But now that you have been warned of your ignorance and shown the proof, any such future opinions will no longer be considered “ignorant.” They will be deliberately chosen and will place you in the company of Mouch and James Taggart, neither of whom could withstand the spiritual ugliness of their actions and the consequences, and had mental breakdowns. If you remember, Taggart had to be dragged, almost inasane, from the room where Galt was being tortured.

By the way, the man that Dagny kills is not killed because he was weak and stood in the way of her plans. He stood in the path of the rescue of the very man the government itself said was its only savior, but which the government had stripped naked and physically assaulted. Yes, the guard was weak. But Dagny had already proved to the guard and the rest of the nation that she was one of him, i.e., on the side of the guard. She lied to the guard when giving him a chance to save himself. If she had told the truth he would have lowered his weapon and she would have had to shoot him without giving him a decent chance to escape death.

Sorry- IF the broad middle class is the creative core of modern society, the entire premise of Atlas Shrugged falls apart. Galt’s Gulch is not that big and consisted of the Big Boys, if I remember.
That she can be quoted on both sides of issues was my main point because what is a philosophy of individual freedom from one set of quotes is a philosophy of domination and oppression of the “inferior” from another.
Rand – and some of her followers comments on this thread prove it even while they attempted to defend her – divided the world into the superior and the inferior. The superior had the right to dominate the inferior when the inferior got in their way. Example: Indians. Answer that one and we have a conversation – till then, we don’t.

alano’s arguments are literally laughable.
The Greeks did enslave other Greeks. But it was a bit of a problem for them. The existence of Greek slaves was a constant source of discomfort for free Greeks.
The Norse laws are the basis of English Common Law which is the basis of American Common Law. The Norse laws were pre-writing and were recited each year at the annual Allthing by the Law Speaker. Those pre-literate laws are where we get the ideas of: trial by a jury of your peers, lawyers (professional legal representatives), and the concept of an “outlaw” (meaning someone who no longer had recourse to the law for redress).
“Slave – late 13c., “person who is the property of another,” from O.Fr. esclave, from M.L. Sclavus “slave” (cf. It. schiavo, Fr. esclave, Sp. esclavo), originally “Slav” (see Slav), so called because of the many Slavs sold into slavery by conquering peoples.
“This sense development arose in the consequence of the wars waged by Otto the Great and his successors against the Slavs, a great number of whom they took captive and sold into slavery.” [Klein]
O.E. Wealh “Briton” also began to be used in the sense of “serf, slave” c.850; and Skt. dasa-, which can mean “slave,” is apparently connected to dasyu- “pre-Aryan inhabitant of India.” More common O.E. words for slave were þeow (related to þeowian “to serve”) and þræl (see thrall). The Slavic words for “slave” (Rus. rab, Serbo-Croatian rob, O.C.S. rabu) are from O.Slav. *orbu, from the PIE base *orbh- (also source of orphan) the ground sense of which seems to be “thing that changes allegiance” (in the case of the slave, from himself to his master). The Slavic word is also the source of robot. Applied to devices from 1904, especially those which are controlled by others (cf. slave jib in sailing, similarly of locomotives, flash bulbs, amplifiers). Slavery is from 1550s; slavish is attested from 1565; in the sense of “servilely imitative” it is from 1753. slave-driver is attested from 1807. In U.S. history, slavocracy “the political dominance of slave-owners” is attested from 1840.”
“The Native American population was decimated after contact with the Old World due to the introduction of many different fatal diseases. There are two documented cases of alleged and attempted germ warfare. The first, during a parley at Fort Pitt on June 24, 1763, Ecuyer gave representatives of the besieging Delawares two blankets and a handkerchief that had been exposed to smallpox, hoping to spread the disease to the Natives in order to end the siege. William Trent, the militia commander, left records that clearly indicated that the purpose of giving the blankets was “to Convey the Smallpox to the Indians.”"
“Historian Jack Weatherford argues that Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and others, got their ideas on democracy not from any Greek or Roman influence, but from the Iroquois and other indigenous peoples of the Americas, who practiced the type of democracy found in the United States Constitution, through self-governing territories that were part of a larger whole. This democracy was founded between the years 1000-1450, and lasted several hundred years. He also states that American democracy was continually changed and improved by the influence of Native Americans throughout North America. For example, the right of women to vote started on the American frontier, and moved eastward. In other words, Americans learned democracy from the indigenous peoples of the North America. The Native American peoples were not always recognized as US citizens until 1924 and were thus ironically disenfranchised for much of the modern history of democracy in North America.
The Aztecs also practiced elections, but the elected officials elected a supreme speaker, not a ruler.”

James Axtell has written some good books about Europeans who defected to Native American tribes because of the superior life style of those cultures.
There is also “Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World” and “Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America” by Jack Weatherford