I read on his Wikipedia page that he called Obama's re-election "the worst political event ever to occur in the history of this continent" and "worse than the Civil War".
An estimated 600,000 to one million people died in the war. And many more suffered life-long injuries, had to deal with the loss of their child, spouse, etc. Also seems to me the slave system in the US – where people were born in to slavery with no realistic hope of freedom – is the ultimate in state control and stripping of individual rights that people like him are supposed to be against.
You can dislike Obama, nothing wrong with that. But is having a president you dislike for 4 years really worse than up to a million dead people? And the institute of slavery?
Also denies property rights to Palestinians and native Americans. The notion that individual rights are paramount again goes out of window at the first sign of inconvenience.
So not just unpleasant on a personal level, also morally decrepit and intellectually vapid.
The attempt by Randians to apply her to modern politics was a major tell when I was young to get out of that crowd. One person, supposedly a an intellectual leading light of Objectivism at the time, said that nuking Iran was fine because Iran pursing nuclear enrichment constituted "initiation of force" (important term of art in the Rand lexicography), seemingly squaring the circle between Rand's brand of hardcore libertarian isolationism and neocon warmongering that was popular at the time.
I wanted to see intellectual hero philosophers as the legacy, but what objectivism produced, outside of Nathaneil Branden and David Kelly who were at least interesting, was largely a complete joke.
I read on his Wikipedia page that he called Obama's re-election "the worst political event ever to occur in the history of this continent" and "worse than the Civil War".
An estimated 600,000 to one million people died in the war. And many more suffered life-long injuries, had to deal with the loss of their child, spouse, etc. Also seems to me the slave system in the US – where people were born in to slavery with no realistic hope of freedom – is the ultimate in state control and stripping of individual rights that people like him are supposed to be against.
You can dislike Obama, nothing wrong with that. But is having a president you dislike for 4 years really worse than up to a million dead people? And the institute of slavery?
Also denies property rights to Palestinians and native Americans. The notion that individual rights are paramount again goes out of window at the first sign of inconvenience.
So not just unpleasant on a personal level, also morally decrepit and intellectually vapid.