Kept ya’ waiting, huh?

Read the speech (came up on a Ron Paul site), found it alright but didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know. Anyone who thinks money created greed is an imbecile, greed was around since anyone decided to take more than they could reasonable use.

Plenty of other things I could try picking at but there is only one thing I really want to ask, if you feel qualified to answer it.

How, on a national scale, does one differentiate the thugs and parasites from people who could actually be productive and such if only given some support?

Rand’s books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are fiction, and I find them enjoyable to read, if a little heavy at certain parts.

Reading the “Francisco D’anconia money speech” from Atlas Shrugged is very thought-provoking; How many of us take the idea of money for granted? I’m sure you can find that excerpt in full on the internet.

I have seen groups who expect a town to give complete control over to them, down to conscripting child soldiers and dissolving temples, to protect them from a nebulous threat, despite the fact the group is barely known and could be just as dangerous as what they claim to be protecting the town from.

More to the point, I have heard as a Gamemaster, this example player logic for why people should do what their characters say “Because we are PC’s and all these people are NPC’s.”

In general, just the idea that what you want is the right thing because it is what you want and anything that stops you is wrong.

That said, I really known nothing about objectivism, good or bad, beyond what I have heard second hand. I am perplexed though that a supposedly Christian (read: meant to be used for charity, helpful communities and altruism) nation such as the United States seems to have such a strong following of objectivists.