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Ayn Rand Answers – The Best of her Q & A
Q: What political steps should be taken to achieve your goals? (pg. 47)
A: “… First, convince yourself of the case for capitalism, then preach ideology. … Don’t apologize for capitalism. Don’t allow it to be denounced as a system of selfish greed. But you cannot do any of this so long as you simultaneously pay lip service to altruism.
Learn the morality implied in the Declaration of Independence, a document that today isn’t quoted enough nor sufficiently understood. The Objectivist ethics is merely the philosophically-worked-out proof of what the Founding Fathers implied in the Declaration. …”
From "Ayn Rand Answers [The best of her Q & A]":
Q: Does a person have to be strong (as opposed to be weak) to be selfish?
A: No. This is one of the fallacies of today's prevalent morality, altruism, which holds that man must sacrifice himself to others - that service to others is the moral justification of one's life. This creates the idea that it takes a special strength to live by the judgment of your own mind. But, in fact, all it takes is honesty, whatever your level of intelligence or ability.
The penalty for living unselfishly (that is, irrationally) - for depending on, or sacrificing yourself to, others - is so tremendous, psychologically, that no man has the strength to survive it. As proof, note that most men today live in chronic misery, psychologically and existentially.


