Reply #4: Ayn Rand never understood the nature of Democracy. [View All]

[brainshrub]

Rand equated Democracy with Communism. (Not surprising for a woman who was born in Russia.) She felt that Democratic societies would only subvert individual will & interest in the long run. She never understood that individuality does not live in a vacuum; we are only as free as the social context in which we live.

People who are able to transcend the constraints of society are usually insane or wealthy enough to afford the luxury of swimming upstream of convention.

The youth temporarily have the energy to fight social pressures to conform, but unless they find a way to make enough money, they quickly find themselves run-down.

In a Democracy, we help each other enjoy the freedoms that we were naturally endowed with by creating an infrastructure that would be to expensive to create by any one individual. Social programs such as public schools, universal health-care, and social security relieve some of the pressure so that the common citizens can enjoy some of the individuality that used to be experienced by the privileged.