Why all the hysteria over Ayn Rand?

Altruism means "serve everyone but yourself" when the logical thing to do from the utilitarian perspective is to serve everyone including yourself.


The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.
Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others.


Ayn Rand meant selfishness in the sense of standing up for yourself. There are many real life examples of where the traditional roles of selfishness and altruism are overturned, where selfishness is good and altruism is evil. For instance if you're being bullied the altruistic thing to do would be to sacrifice your own personal gain for others, by sitting there and taking it like a little bitch. The selfish thing to do would be to gain pleasure at the expense of others, escape, tell your bros then jump them the next day, spraying them up with mace and beating them with phone books.

I don't agree with Ayn Rand on everything, I believe the "common good" as a concept has been abused, not that it is invalid. The common good should ideally be democratic concerning groups and include individual rights when the group is at odds with the individual.

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/common_good.html

However I have never heard anyone criticize Ayn Rand on these legitimate points and issues, only ever "hurr durr selfish randroids derp".

Because most people can't or won't separate the idea of selfishness with the idea of greed. They want to believe that living for yourself means stepping on everyone else and that capitalism means cutting throats when none of that matches up with anything Rand wrote.

I too have never heard someone actually present a convincing argument against Objectivism, you only ever see rhetoric and comments on her ability as a fiction writer. I would love it if opponents to her ideas addressed the substance of the philosophy, presenting clear, logical challenges but alas, all you get is rhetoric from the religious, communists, socialists, people who think mistakenly think you support the republican party and people who watch Fox news coverage of Ron Paul.