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by good_gnu 3465 days ago
>The recipient of a public scholarship is morally justified only so long as he regards it as restitution and opposes all forms of welfare statism. Those who advocate public scholarships, have no right to them; those who oppose them, have. If this sounds like a paradox, the fault lies in the moral contradictions of welfare statism, not in its victims.

Basically things that Ayn Rand hates are bad--except when Ayn Rand does them and then it's because the things are unreasonable, not Ayn Rand.

2 comments

Ayn Rand didn't use force to take anyone's money. That's what she hated. When those who took her money offered her a small portion back, her philosophy didn't require her to refuse it.

Like if she was in a forced labour concentration camp, her philosophy wouldn't require her to refuse to eat the food she was offered.

Rand was extremely influential to me, but you're absolutely right on this. I stopped calling myself an Objectivist long ago because I kept getting into arguments with others who took the label over things that Rand did that are blatantly against her first principles, but that Rand held a contradictory position.

In particular, Rand supported US foreign aid to Israel in her later years despite strongly denouncing the concept of foreign aid in its entirety prior.