Furthermore, she respected others as individuals, for example her oath:

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

Typically, selfish people are not concerned with how one's actions affect others.

I think that makes perfect sense. That might help explain why I am attracted to her writings, even though I think that her ideals can be destructive when followed to their natural conclusions, as many ideals do. I struggle with idealism versus realism in myself. I do very much value individualism, but not at the expense of others, especially innocents.

Planned Parenthood is neither planned nor parenthood, much like most leftist terminology. Worse yet, it is a prime source of looting.

Full disclosure, I think abortion after a heartbeat is murder. I think there is a place for it when young women become pregnant due to rape, incest and when she is unmarried but only as soon as possible; outside of this there is adoption. The problem I have with this is that its irrational and I understand that, but I don’t have an answer for that. I think she leaned towards the rights of the individual where I’m leaning towards the rights of the unborn, someone loses. Its not an easy answer…

The ugly truth is Planned Parenthood is a non-profit enterprise (an oxymoron) that was formed with a hidden agenda of eugenics. Margaret Sanger was a racist and saw abortion as a way of controlling the black population. Try to square that with a compass… This should not be in anyone’s rational self-interest, unless you just hate people, including yourself.

In contrast, altruism for the sake of not being selfish is bad for a society. It attracts the irrational selfish people and allows them easy targets to take advantage of others, this is our society today. Please show me a situation today where charity has not been without corruption, its very rare and fleeing. For example, a charitable enterprise is rarely truly charitable because they have a self-interest, which is not altruism, by human nature. A soup kitchen at a church is truly altruism but only because the people that run the soup kitchen receive something for their efforts, satisfaction in helping others, so in this light, they are also being selfish, which is a virtue. Would you agree?

With regrade to selfishness being a virtue, she always used the term, “rational self-interest”, which I would agree is an important distinction from simple selfishness; simple selfishness is not in your best interest, you’ll be ostracized and condemned. If I understand her correctly, which I believe I do, a society of people that practiced rational self-interest would be a health society, her catch phase the virtue of selfishness is simply to sell books, imho.

My late father died at 91. He had Alzheimer's, but I am pretty sure he had no form of diabetes, as skinny and muscular as he was. But he was depressed. and had been refusing to eat or drink anything.

I believe there are personal traits and then there are major philosophical issues. I am objectivist and capitalist to the core. Ms Rand was pro choice. I am pro life. She smoked. I don’t.
I think the whole act of selfish has been redefined by the left and most religions to be a bad thing. We are conditioned from grade school to “give back.” I haven’t taken anything I didn’t work for -unless it was a ridiculous government handout like Covid money. I took it and pretended I was Ragnar.
I believe the gulch leans slightly to the right because the lefts main issue seems to be redistribution of wealth. A mortal sin in my book. 20th Century Motors would be a good case study. I am equally against crony capitalism which is an oxy moron. It’s my money ( money= my talent, my work, my time, my best self) taken by looters and given to moochers. By force. (Pay taxes or be destroyed).
Given all of the conditioning surrounding our every move we must always ask ourselves is my action benevolent, altruistic, forced. I’m benevolent. I am not altruistic. I’ll help my neighbor. I will not put my neighbor above self or my family. Selfish?
Altruism is the ally of the left and religion.
Ms Rand was atheist. There are a lot of believers in the gulch that want left alone in their belief, not get raped in their take home pay, and want to produce for the joy of producing. I’m a non believer. I’m pro life by choice. ( Ironic).

Rational best interests--which cannot include violation of the rights of others. Because when you wilfully violate the rights of another, you thereby destroy your own. (Addressed to CMBurton's comment; it seems that these machines never put my comments in the place where I type them, right after the comment I am answering.)

I can't say that I agree with abortion up until birth. As I understand it, when someone on life support is dying, the hospital personnel pull the plug when the brain waves have ceased, and if that applies at the end of life, it seems logical that the same should apply at the beginning: that it is a conscious being (and therefore human ) when brain waves begin, and that after that, abortion would be murder. (from what I have read, that is slightly short of three months along.)
Also, I have read in The Ayn Rand Letter (a periodical she sent out for a while in the '70's), "one may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months." (That's a memory quote on my part).
I read a book once containing her "off-the-cuff" remarks, and one person asked her about that issue, and, as I recall, she waffled a bit, agreeing at one point that at a certain point that "it would be wrong to kill it"(the questioner's words), but after some discussion, she said it should be permitted up until birth. So it seems that she didn't say the same thing every time.
I don't know just what she would say now, but I know what I think about the issue.

Rand was as pro-capitalism as you can get. I get what you're saying about the crony aspect, though. I agree, she would very much be against getting rich by knowing someone rather than by earning it yourself. That being said, are there any capitalist (in real life) who didn't benefit from cronyism? My personal take on Atlas Shrugged, though, is that everyone in that book was being selfish, some were just more honest about it than others. So, I guess in that respect, it is no longer fiction.

My take is that Rand and I suspect most of us in the Gulch are against crony capitalism and the swamp. As the poster states" Atlas Shrugged - No Longer Fiction."

As do I.

Wonderful. Me dino has Type 2.

My mother had a severe case Alzheimer's when she died but I was told a stroke killed her.
She had already survived a previous stroke.

Alzheimer's has a strong genetic component, but can be managed somewhat by avoiding diabetes issues. Alzheimer's is sometimes referred to as Type 3 diabetes.

All of those deceased ancestors spent at least 20 years in the hometown of Dow Chemical.

I kind of expected the Gulch to be "you stay out of my rights and I'll stay out of yours." Not sure if that's really right or left.

I should point out this girl's family grew up on a farm in a Texas town where there was Uranium mining being done.

I don't think Senility or Alzheimer's causes death. I would guess there was a co-morbidity. I'm not a doctor but I've worked in the medical field most of my adult life. My BFF had 8 siblings, 6 have died of cancer and she is a victim of cancer also. A couple of them had Alzheimer's also.

The Gulch swings a little to the right as of late. Considering what happened in the past 2 years.....understandably.

I can see some of myself in those characters as well. I really like her emphasis on the value of the individual as an individual and the idea that striving for excellence is a value worth pursuing. I think she takes some of her ideas to their extreme and the natural result of most extremes is absurd and unworkable. I think she failed to see that with some of her ideas. For example, everyone doing what it is in their own best interests is not a recipe for utopia.

The day I quit learning is the day I start dying, probably of Alzheimer's disease that my dad, his dad, and his aunt all died of.

An astute observation. Me dino is still learning too.

Precisely my thinking. No one is perfect. Not even a genius.

What draws people Galt's Gulch Online is the desire to be around productive, thinking people, as opposed to the TikTok-driven drivel that passes for conventional media. I have some characteristics of many of the AR characters: Quentin Daniels, Hank Rearden, and Dagny Taggart. I am still learning.