What a bunch of crap. Not A voice of reason at all.

The dictator would have been Hildebeast. All of the things she accused Trump of, she was guilty of- and more

All good points. Thanks.

In another dimension.

In 1980 the Democratic Party still had some power in Alabama.
That same year I landed a new job at a newspaper in Mississippi. I was surprised that the staff did not like Reagan either.
In freaking Mississippi?!
By 1982 I was making better money working for the Alabama Department of Corrections and now have an adequate cash flow from a state retirement plan.

Sounds like you live in a blue state. Me too. The schools are the worst. The teachers have the kids so terrorized they are all afraid to even admit it if they supported Trump. They did a "mock" vote in my son's 8th grade class. 23 kids voted for Hillary and only 1 voted for Trump (my son, who was the only one brave enough to admit it). So proud of that kid but this is getting ridiculous. It's like the old Soviet Union -- this election was about people saying we are not going to take that any more.

I see you like to read Dilbert too.
I'd say Alabama would be to the west and across the Atlantic.

What's worrying me is that the spin up is advocating violence more and more. Republican electors are receiving death threats if they don't change their vote on Dec 19th to put Hillary in office. The irrational, psychotic behavior is becoming pandemic. Stirring up the brainwashed into violence on the streets could be planned to allow Obama to declare martial law and deny Trump the office.

There are some things clear about the author.
He does not like Trump or his supporters.
He does not understand the Constitution as he supports Roe vs Wade which is bad Constitutional law even if you support abortion.
He views people as leftist do, unthinking followers.
All in all, a worthless piece of drivel.

Consider the murder in Haiti 3 days ago of Monica
Peterson. She was investigating the Clinton foundation's involvement in human trafficking in Haiti.
Her friends say she told them she found the smoking gun. Now her parents are being kept in the dark about the circumstances.

I voted for Trump because he was the best choice for me as I hate HRC and WJC and their demented existence. The race bull-ship that Obama and Sharpten and Holder whipped up was a sixty year set back. Secure borders is not bigotry. Trump is not ideal but the Clintons are a cancer. The snowflakes are a boil on the ass of progress!

Walter thank you for weighing in. I'd highly encourage everyone to read Walter's excellent essay at:

http://www.thesavvystreet.com/the-med...

He very clearly and comprehensively explains the "big lie" that was the heart of Hillary's strategy: take some of Trump's controversial statements, twist them, and then get the media to repeat the lie over and over ad nauseam, ie, that Trump is racist, bigoted, misogynistic, Islamophobic, etc. And if that's the case, then his blindly following supporters must be just as "deplorable," right?

(Don't mean to put words in your mouth Walter but that was one of my takeaways from your fine article).

That's a classic Leftist tactic, and unfortunately, it looks like ARI fell for it hook, line and sinker.

It's very important we understand this, because you can already see the narrative that's taking shape on the Left post-election: they are saying Trump won because of an "alt-right" racist backlash against the compassionate, enlightened, inclusive liberals. That's complete nonsense.

I also had the feeling through most of the article that it was written by a disgruntled Hillary voter. When he brought in Ayn Rand at the end, that was by then disjointed. He made the people sound like they were oto thinking for themselves. We had a giant disgust for the corruption, the self-serving financial dealing, and the lies of both parties. We wanted someone who was not a politicians, preferably someone who understood economics and, in my case, someone who would stop the march froward by the UN to take over this country. Why would we focus on what Trump said years ago, when Hillary was being hooked up with women by their "fixer" and cussing like a storm trooper to staff, generals, SS, and even broadcast media, call those oh the Middle East "sand niggers"? We knew of her corruption clear back to Watergate We could read her Marxist thesis. Seems like the article was grasping at straws to prove what he believed.

Yes indeed. Here in MA they called him Ronald Ray-Gun, as well as Hitler of course, and went around screaming he was going to nuke the planet.

LOL. Thanks Herb, I would bet on you too.Yes, and I think they are completely wrong about both the cause and the meaning of Trump's victory. Since they are viewed as the "authority" on Ayn Rand, that's not good four our cause.

WDonway:
Holy smokes! You remind me of the discussions we had in the 60's.

A good point, well spoken.

deb417:
You must not have heard his promises. He's doing exactly what he said he'd do since his choices are the personification of those promises.

Your 2 cents is worth $10.

We well may be related. My cousins, their children and etc. are posting the looniest stuff on Facebook. I have told them to block me out or I'll change my last name.
Their discontent is feeding on one another until Trump will go from the equivalent of the Anti-Christ to the Anti-Universe.

Sounds reasonable to me.

Rural Alabama? Isn't that just north of Elbonia?

Reading Atlas Shrugged, this article makes me think ,America is not "Galt's Gulch". We are all on this website seeking the attitude Ms Rand would have if she were here no, seeking.the John Galt of today who would lead us to our reasoning minds. Your words give us pause for thought!

Continued from above
I wish, in the interests of objectivity, he had mentioned--but he does not--that as a young man Mr. Trump knew he was inheriting a large fortune. He could have become a man of leisure, a playboy, but he entered into a remarkably energetic career of NYC construction, Atlantic City casino development, book writing, and latterly his reality TV program. His energy and commitment to keep producing seem extraordinary. He is over 70, now, and still manifesting extraordinary energy, work ethic, and determination.

Few would affirm Trump, or consider it a virtue, that he has created for himself a life of "conspicuous consumption," enjoying his wealth, and always surrounding himself with glamorous women, women of beauty. Never apologizing for his wealth--in fact, boasting of it--and never apologizing for the the "Penthouse Legend" of his world.

It is a fascination of the sweeping Trump appeal that his working-class, middle-American supporters, fed up with the crony capitalism system and with the so-called "liberal elites, embrace the billionaire Trump and his unapologetic enjoyment of his life, including all the glamor. They can fully accept a man who has worked to achieve great wealth and without apology enjoys it.

But also, never, ever stopped working at an extraordinary pace. Is this not worth any mention by Dr. Ghate?

I wish that Dr. Ghate had pointed to Trump's family, not for the usual "family values," "family man" ethic--far from it--but because he has raised and shaped his entirely family around "the business." All of them pushed to work, to rise; there are no hippies of any description, and no postmodernist rebels. Mr. Trump's values emerge clearly.

I have dealt at great length with the media creation--an act of virtually pure fiction--that is Donald Trump the racist, xenophobic, misogynist, sexist mocker of the disabled. That is a fantasy of the postmodernism, advocacy journalist media. (http://www.thesavvystreet.com/the-med...)

I could wish that Dr. Ghates at least had raised the issue of the rule of law when it comes to the 11.0 million illegal aliens in the United States. They are not "undocumented," they are illegal, for the most part. As the holder of the highest elective office in the land, sworn to duly execute the law, what should Mr. Trump do with 11.0 million people whose first act upon entering our country was to break the law? Mr. Trump does, after all, embrace legal immigration, pledging a much more efficient, faster system of legal entry.

It never become clear, at least to me, in Dr. Ghates's essay, how Mr. Trump is a step toward dictatorship as compared with Hillary Clinton--it was going to be one or the other, you know. Or how a step toward dictatorship after President Obama.

It seemed to me that Mr. Trump represents a step back from dictatorship after Obama or the new Obama, Clinton. It seemed to me that his specific pledges were in the direction of liberty. I have grave concerns about his supposed commitment to "the right to life. But it seems misleading to speak of "One Small Step Toward Dictatorship," after some half century of the disturbing progression of Ayn Rand's prophecy of fascism, when we have the first President to defy the liberal left on its dearest causes--such as global warming, shutting down fossil fuels, challenging public education, simply paying no attention to the obsession with "identity politics"--and never ever apologizes or falls for the argument from intimidation or any number of smears.

A better title might be "For the first time in our generation, a successful business man wins the Presidency and never once apologizes for his wealth."

Something like that, you know.

Onkar Ghate, the chief content officer at the Ayn Rand Institute, has spent almost 4,000 words making the case that election of Donald Trump is "One Small Step Toward Dictatorship." He argues that Mr. Trump's character, personality, ideas (or lack of political principles), rhetoric, and proposals (for the most part) simply advance America toward dictatorship, set us up for the next and worse tyrant.

I don't dismiss these concerns. When I received the "Objectivist Newsletter" with the article "The Fascist New Frontier," I was floored utterly. I had had no idea. But her argument proved so powerful that a whole generation of Objectivists, and many since, came to interpret the trend of government intervention and the growing welfare state as the fascist, not communist, variant of socialism. It was a distinction that Ludwig von Mises already had made in his essays on the rise of the German Nazi power because, of course, first the Freikorps, and then the Nazis, were born to battle the German socialists in the streets. Again and again, the socialists attempted violent takeovers in Germany, repulsed by the Freikorps. Socialist against socialist, one with an international bent (Marxist/Leninist) and one with a nationalist bent (National Socialists).

As a comic sideline: My mother and father forbade me absolutely from referring to the "Fascist New Frontier" or, later about the Johnson administration, "The New Fascist: Rule by Consensus." I heard the later, as I recall as a lecture at Ford Hall Forum.

But since that foundational essay, "The Fascist New Frontier," I would suggest to you, we have interpreted virtually every candidate for President as one step further toward fascism. And so, half a century later, we have seen in Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon (?), Carter, Reagan (?), Clinton, and Obama just one more advance toward fascism: more regulation, a more pervasive command economy, a larger welfare state, a devastating control over the money supply and credit, financial regulations--the growth of regulation alone now has created a $2 trillion a year drag on the economy. Since 2000, the new regulations passed by the EPA have surpassed the total of new regulations by every other government department--most aimed at suppressing the fossil fuel industry.

So exactly what is the significance of the title--no longer in the slightest surprising to Objectivists--"One Small Step Toward Dictatorship?" Shouldn't it be: Business as usual?

Dr. Ghate points out that some policies advocated by Mr. Trump might be in the direction of more limited government. My examination of the Trump platform, which began to budge me in his direction, revealed almost consistent constraint of government power over the individual: curtail regulation, slash taxes, ignore "global warming" and the whole anti-Industrial Revolution, opt for school choice/charter schools/vouchers,, up hold the Second Amendment, let the American energy industry rip, and so on.

But Dr. Ghate points to Trump's endorsement of the so-called "right to life." Ayn Rand used commitment to a woman's choice over her own body and pregnancy as a touchstone for understanding of all human rights. But, as I recall, she came to modify that position, saying that no one could hope to win the Republican nomination for President without at least paying lip service to the so-called "right to life." And thus, she said, we must decide: Is it lip service or serious?

It seems clear with Mr. Trump. Ten years ago, after all, he was a "liberal" and Democrat; his life style and involvements hardly suggest an opponent of abortion. But, launching his candidacy, he avowed belief in the "right to life." Unfortunately, for those who might hope this was lip service, he selected Mike Pence as his vice president and Pence is a serious, devout Christian and leader of the "right to life" movement in Congress. This is a negative, as far as I am concerned, about Trump. But I believe that he personally has no commitment to the "right to life." Reagan, who Ayn Rand bitterly opposed; Bush, and Romney all paid lip service to the right to life. The first two did not make efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade; the last didn't get the chance.

Dr. Ghade quickly dismisses Trump's consistently pro-liberty positions and says that the way he enacts them will vitiate their value. But for the most part he seems to focus very, very heavily on Mr. Trump's character and personality.

Continued below