Arguing with Objectivists

Like arguing with born-again Christians or Scientologists, it's really pointless to argue with Objectivists - hard-core devotees of cults cannot be reasoned with. So when, over the past couple of days, I got a couple of hard-core Rand-roids commenting on my recent post about Krugman name-dropping Francisco d'Anconia it was amusing for about the first couple of go-rounds before the zombie-like recitation of Objectivist talking points kicked in. A Leftist is to an Objectivist what a Body Thetan is to a Scientologist.

One thing I will say about Objectivism vs. Scientology - it's pretty clear that Scientology is far more organized and far more dangerous than Objectivism, even in spite of the popularity of Objectivism among Republican politicians. As Operation Clambake has documented, Scientology is far better at parting people from their money, friends and family, and is crazy-litigious to boot.

But the general principle of mindless cult behavior still applies to both: the Objectivist visitors are so intellectually incurious they couldn't even be bothered to check out the rest of this web site - my web statistics indicate that they only go to that one single web page every time they visit. Meanwhile they could be reading my review of the first three chapters of Atlas Shrugged.

Of course I'm not the first one to get the Rand-Hubbard connection, as this hysterical Cracked video demonstrates. Although really Ayn Rand should have a Russian accent.