What I am reading in your comment is an implication:
- that by attacking the use of a quote to ridicule those who have read Ayn Rand and attempt to present her ideas, I am myself promoting Ayn Rand's ideas,
- and that the other ideas of Ayn Rand's (beyond those illustrated by the metaphors used in Atlas Shrugged that lead to this quote, which is very specifically about government use of bad laws for manipulation) are relevant to this discussion.
This would lead for a need for a response to Ayn Rand's body of ideas as relates to "economic and common-sense grounds" (which I assume is not related to the quote by the grandparent), as opposed to specifically the original post or the direction I have put the thread in.
Is this the correct interpretation?
If so, I disagree that Ayn Rand's entire body of ideas is relevant to the discussion of the specific case put forward by her metaphor and narrative in the context of this quote and discussion.
An example of this kind of association fallacy: Heinlein promoted incest in his later novels (e.g. Lazarus Long's relationship with his mother post time travel). Incest has negative connotations in modern society. It would be possible to use an appeal to emotion: "Heinlein promotes incest! You like Heinlein, so I can't listen to your argument, since you promote incest." It would, however, be manipulation to do so. A similar line of argument is used to attack certain religions today (I've even seen some French politicians try to paint Muslims as barbarians by pointing out a few incidents of goats slaughtered ritually in the bath tubs of social housing projects).
Every writer, every body of work has flaws. The beauty of discussing ideas is to hash out a better set of values and ideas to better model and understand the world we live in. There are even valid uses of appeal to emotion, when emotion is used to transmit higher information content than can be done via contextual awareness and shared culture, or to transmit complex ideas quickly. You could even argue that's a large reason for the existence of art (much of which is paid propaganda, other propaganda of the artist's ideas spread using appeal to emotion).
To use a writer's flaws to censor their work out of discussion is a subtler, more powerful version of Orwell's 1984 book censorship. I hold that all books should be discussed, even the "unpalatable" ones.
