Raygun's greatest contribution

Ayn rand's philosophy was that people grow best when they aren't helped, that charity holds them back.

It's misguided of course, but the ostensible motivation was for people to grow.

From Reagan to today's republicans, they never talk about genuinely making things better for poor people, minorities, or women. It's always about keeping them from causing them problems and keeping them hungry so that they can extract more labor cheaply. When it's not just about making them suffer, just because.

Rand talked about love. Republicans never do.

Just throw the seed on the ground and get out of the way. It might work, it might not.
But we do know that crops carefully tended have a far greater chance of producing fruit.
We also know that a lot of the things people need are often beyond their personal ability to obtain without help.
After all, that's why we have governments...to see to the general welfare of the people so the nation, as a whole, can grow and prosper.

It may be better to teach someone to fish than to just give them fish, but

A) some people are to weak to fish, they need to be given fish first so they have the strength to fish themselves;
B) some people can't fish due to mental or physical challenges;
C) rand basically says, similar to your analogy, you'll fish better if you figure out how to fish yourself. Training is how society advances. By condensing a lifetime of wisdom into a few short lessons, this lets the next generation learn quickly and then figure out how to fish *better*

Rand would basically have everyone reinvent the wheel.

Goes back a lot further in America than Reagan.

For instance In WW II, we were appalled at the thought of Kamakazis, while the Japanese celebrated them.

gas and rubber rationing, home gardens, higher taxes, and--oh yeah--a comprehensive draft.

Imagine today's anti-maskers being required to produce gas ration coupons, or to turn out their lights if they lived near a coastline where U-boats might use their lights to target a ship.

"Show me a study that proves turning out my lights will help anybody?" "I want the world to see my beautiful Christmas lights! Why are you against Christmas?!" "I'll burn as much petroleum as I want--it's my right!!"

Can you imagine the complaints if we made fly suicide missions?

From the days of settlers traveling west.

Yet those settlers relied heavily on help from native Americans and from their own community of settlers.

Whole towns would come together to build a house for new arrivals because they understood that they all needed each other for defense and hunting and growing crops and so on.

Not without its grain of truth, but people live to forget how much government and society helps.

I especially love "self-made billionaires" who got there with a team of thousands of employees, millions of customers, many suppliers and investors and lenders, not to mention laws and courts and police to protect their wealth and income and property....

Even Tiger woods and Lebron James have extensive staff working for them.

words in the English language being, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

He poisoned a generation into thinking that government doesn't benefit its citizens.

Only he and president johnson has done this. I think it’s worthy of some positive.