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Ayn Rand Signed on for Medicare and social Security

Not necessarily. If she had been forced to pay into the system her entire adult life, why shouldn't she get something out of it? He main objection was to being forced to pay in. You may as well criticize her for driving on public roads, or using municipal water.
 
BenBurch said:
A psychopath who managed to misunderstand 3000 years of Western thought and who founded an ideology based entirely on a tautology which has been used as an excuse for psychopaths who seek riches.
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She also wrote a bunch of execrably bad novels.
 
She has the special distinction of being the Republican right's favorite atheist and illegal immigrant.
 
One might think of Ayn Rand as one of the most loathsome people ever to live. She had the highest praise for a serial killer who kidnapped, tortured, raped, murdered, dismembered and disemboweled his child victums. Fox News and most of the rest of the news media as well as the "teabaggers"( Hey, it's their sexual-play term.)promoting the Queen of Greed who should be the poster-child for Social Security and Medicare, two "entitlement"(now a deragatory term) programs to which she contributed while she was wealthy and living high. She paid for her benefits. She was, therefore, "entitled".
 
brodski said:
Not necessarily. If she had been forced to pay into the system her entire adult life, why shouldn't she get something out of it? He main objection was to being forced to pay in. You may as well criticize her for driving on public roads, or using municipal water.
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Where is it written that not being a hypocrite is easy or cost effective?

If you are against something on principle, then you should not partake in it on principle. That's how having principles works.
 
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johnny karate said:
Where is it written that not being a hypocrite is easy or cost effective?

If you are against something on principle, then you should not partake in it on principle. That's how having principles works.
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If the government takes my money, then the government owes me something. I'd rather the government didn't take it in the first place, but as long as the government owes me, I intend to collect. There's nothing hypocritical about that.

Are you often forced into contracts by another party, and then insist that the other party not fulfill their part of the contract "on principle"?
 
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I've no problem with it...

I'm a fan of Rand because, like Orwell, she popularized ideals counter to *Communist ideology as espoused by the likes of Stalin and Mao. She did this at a time when many were questioning capitalism and the importance of self against extreme socialist utilitarian philosophy that devalued the individual. She was also a strong woman in an age of patriarchy.

I'm happy to grant much of the plethora of criticism directed at her. She was a woman but didn't appear to do anything to advance the cause of women but was in fact arguably hostile to the woman's movement. She had no philosophical rigor. Her books were overly didactic. Etc., etc..

The social security criticism I don't buy. From her perspective it would be idiotic to not take advantage of an insurance policy forced on her. It does not, IMO, make her morally inconsistent.

*so called.
 
Although everything about her causes me to roll my eyes and snort, I don't find any fault in this.
 
theprestige said:
If the government takes my money, then the government owes me something. I'd rather the government didn't take it in the first place, but as long as the government owes me, I intend to collect. There's nothing hypocritical about that.

Are you often forced into contracts by another party, and then insist that the other party not fulfill their part of the contract "on principle"?
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You can rationalize it all you want, but an inconsistency between belief and action is, by definition, hypocrisy.

Again, no one said maintaining your principles was easy or even logical. It certainly makes sense that if you pay into a program, you are entitled to receive benefits from it. But if you have a principled stance against that program, you are a hypocrite no matter how rational your actions are.
 
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