<snip>
>The philosophy of Ayn Rand and her ilk, if I
>understand it correctly, would applaud Hitler for gassing all those
>useless mentally retarded children--aren't they just taking up
>resources that our brighter kids could use?
<snip>
Drawing on what I know of her philosophy (which, like you, I find
better expressed in her novels than in her other writings), I think that she
would applaud the use of individuals as livestock / resources. That is the
essence of capitalism (ref. Marx, _Capital_). If they had been worked to
death, or starved to death because they could not or would not work, it
wouldn't have been a problem -- *because* if they had the impetus and
intelligence to do so, they would have found a way out of their situation.
She would object (and probably did) to the extermination of individuals when
that was done as a method of garbage disposal. That would be vandalism, just
as slavery would be theft.
Your point on "taking up resources that our brighter kids could use"
is way off, however. That viewpoint is socialistic -- which she emphatically
was not.
SGK
Editor, The Stygian Forge -- http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/5380 or
http://www.netforward.com/DeathsDoor/?argos
Member: Order of the Jarls of Baelder @ http://www.student.hk-r.se/~tb96der/
Contemporary renaissance futures @ http://www.seraph.org/