IMHO, you hit the nail on the head of most Trump supporters.

This is exactly the same way that Hitler got in office. While I don't think Trump will march people off the the gas chamber, it is hard to tell what he will do with the power of the President. There are more ways to destroy people that don't involve killing them but are just as effective. Personally I think we will find out quickly, what I thought to be a tyrannical Obama administration, will be mild compared to what we will get with Trump. Of course I may be wrong but really don't think I am.

Yea, you could take it that way...however we all know in the bigger picture is the danger be with the one that assumes that punitive power absolutely.

like the request for people to raise their right hand and pledge their support to him at a rally? if that is not group think and nationalism...gah...how can you support a candidate for President who does such a maneuver. Reminds me of the little kids singing Obama praise songs in school

And a willingness to apply scientific method to areas that many would normally prefer to leave unquestioned.

Trump's fascist tendencies are exposed by his "big mouth"; your comments reflect your blind acceptance of his views.

This has nothing to do with your deflection about 'John Galt'. It has everything to do with preventing Trump's even higher level of unstable fascist views into our government.

We currently have uneducated mob rule by the establishment and fed by the media. Trump has a big mouth and will expose a lot of crap the establishment does. THATs what we need right now. That's why people seem to hate him. He is not John galt and won't singlehanded ly restore our freedoms. But he will expose more of the crap the political establishment is doing.

So what do you think Hillary or sanders are? Cruz is a religious authoritarian. Wasn't any good leader that? Even Steve jobs

All that ever comes to my mind when I read your defense of Trump, is "blind faith". You constantly ignore and disregard Trump's career of cronyism and disregard of individual rights. Your deflections of these facts with retorts about Hillary do not change their accuracy.

It's clear that you share Trump's Pragmatist view that anything is negotiable. You admire his juvenile behavior and criticize others. His cronyistic use of politicians gets a pass from you.

This is the kind of blind devotion that will excuse any behavior. When it is multiplied within many other individuals, it can become a mob directed by whim.

I think to effect change we need to expose what's going on to enough people. Trump is not the problem like the haters say. The establishment politicians ARE the problem

To me, the article started out strong, but quickly devolved into chicanery. It started to classify everything as authoritarianism - almost as if the authors were trying to propose that a system of no laws at all was the panacea! I had to shake my head because they weren't looking at the rulings, the morality of the rulings, or the effects at all - only that there were rulings in the first place. It was like they were saying that if one lauded the fact that there was a Law of Gravity that that person was an evil authoritarian. Just ridiculous.

Well said. When I read this article, it appeared as if the authors wanted to paint anyone who wanted laws as authoritarian regardless of what those laws were.

Well said.

"It was nice that they quantified that 65% of supporters of gov't authoritarianism are Republicans."

I found that assertion to be just laughable, to be honest. Authoritarians are those who aren't satisfied with the laws on the books but want to make every man an offender - AS-style. The (R) or (D) is secondary - I look at who actually keeps proposing all these miles and miles of new laws and regulations and one can do a pretty thorough and short analysis of that to see that the Democrats are miles ahead on the authoritarian bent. That's not to say there aren't complicit Republicans, but don't kid yourself into thinking that the Progressive Party is the party of freedom.

I think that the author also seriously confuses nihilism with anti-authoritarianism. The way I read it, the authors were arguing that anyone who wanted societal rules were authoritarians while they failed to address whether or not the rules being discussed had any foundation in reality. To me, they were arguing that all lawmaking amounted to authoritarianism regardless of the outcomes of such. It quickly degenerated into blatant partisanship and fear-mongering from what initially looked to be a promising analysis.

Well said.

The real question is whether or not people should be free to live for themselves or forced to live in support of others. That is the very nature of authoritarianism: wanting to force others to support you.

If you think Trump is not an authoritarian, I have a Tower to sell you.

A little pragmatism is in order I think. Firstly, the government is filled with cronyism and waste and they get away with it. Secondly, the establishment hides this and protects the status quo. My interest in trump is primarily that he will expose this

Sense of life is everything. It does not do you or me any good to know all the canon and quote it well, even to have it all nicely integrated, if, in fact, we are miserable, unhappy, frightened, withdrawn. Believe me, there's a lot of that among people who self-identify as Objectivists.

That said, it is true that the formal philosophy is not about what you feel. Vanilla ice cream can make you feel good. Understanding why requires the rational-empirical (objective) method.

Do you have any principles at all? How does "speaking his mind" mean he supports the rights of the individual that he otherwise trashes as "holdouts" in the way of his "deals" to "make the country great"? We don't need more "employees" in government, let alone those who "make deals" without regard to individual rights in what was supposed to be a government with strict limits on what it does. And we don't need a nationalist statist claiming that his government deals "make the country great".

Hillary is fascist, not trump. What I like about trump is he speaks his mind, he will tell if the emperor has no clothes, he knows how to work with employees and pick good ones, and sticks up for America for a change. None of the other candidates do that. Rubio was a teenage schoolyard loudmouth, something about Cruz just disturbs me, and the others are unelectable. Hillary is an evil person, and sanders is a wacko, but at least an honest wacko who tells u up front where he is at

I will not argue that point, sometimes though it seems like a competition to see who can restrict us the most, enslave us the most, just to deliver what THEY want to give to those they decide are worthy. What I earn for myself, i keep for myself, and not for some other masters preferences (as much as I can). That is why all the parties seem to oscillate in their demands for compliance. I am OK with structure, because 98% of our sheeple apparently cannot discern right from wrong, and also leave others alone. But it seems each party just wants to tell us how they will regulate everyone else, and then cater to each special interest they have cultivated. The inherent conflict of that method just keeps spinning faster and faster. That seems to me to explain why all the politicians are so useless, they have no idea what their efforts to cater have created, and jump from disaster to disaster making it up as they go. I think this leads more sheeple to want more and more stronger structure and hence authoritarianism.

Maybe....