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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPaul Ryan’s Guru Ayn Rand Worshipped a Serial Killer Who Kidnapped and Dismembered Little Girls
Theres something deeply unsettling about living in a country where millions of people go frothing batshit angry at the suggestion that maybe health care coverage should be extended to the tens of millions of Americans who dont have it... Where do they find their philosophical justification for this kind of attitude?
It turns out, you can trace much of this thinking back to Ayn Rand, a popular cult-philosopher who plays Charlie to the American right-wings Manson Family. Read on and youll see why.
One reason why most countries dont find the time to embrace her thinking is that Ayn Rand is a textbook sociopath. Literally a sociopath: Ayn Rand, in her notebooks, worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of ideal man that Rand promoted in her more famous books ideas which were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of Americas most recent economic catastrophe...
Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten by Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street on him.
What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should, she wrote, gushing that Hickman had no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel other people.
This echoes almost word for word Rands later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: He was born without the ability to consider others.
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/mark-ames-paul-ryans-guru-ayn-rand-worshipped-a-serial-killer-who-kidnapped-and-dismembered-little-girls.html#IXoGYazET2Z6rwT2.99
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)I haven't heard a Republican defend helping the poor, the sick, or the elderly in so many years that I don't think they even care that they exist in this country.
So, I am not surprised by Ryan or Romney's attitudes towards other human beings.
grantcart
(53,061 posts)because she was depressed all the time.
What a brigh light they have.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)grantcart
(53,061 posts)Tom Ripley
(4,945 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)unattractive feature, other than her ugly soul.
JHB
(37,163 posts)People come in all kinds, and some of those kinds are just rotten.
Response to grantcart (Reply #2)
grantcart This message was self-deleted by its author.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)Betty Jo
(66 posts)why does Paulie suck every government dollar he can?
AnnieK401
(541 posts)Unfortunately I have a genetic/medical condition that was undiagnosed at the time which makes me much less than the ideal physical specimen. Not a good combination.
renate
(13,776 posts)philly_bob
(2,419 posts)Shows that you've moved on with your life.
RoccoRyg
(260 posts)Thanks for bringing this up. I advertised this fact in my book, "This God, I," where I present Objectivism as a well-worded, compelling excuse to be a sociopath.
DAngelo136
(265 posts)The modern Republican party have intentionally forgotten their past. They are dominated now by right-wing, fearful, bigoted owned by the corporate-industrial complex, empty shells of people. When Herbert Hoover sold the soul of the party by adopting a "Southern Strategy" (It didn't just start under Nixon) to try to win re-election, he sold out the legacy of such progressive Republicans as: Fiorello La Guardia, George W. Norris and Robert LaFollette,Sr. as the party tacked to the the bigotry of southern segregationists.
If you notice, they don't talk about Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits or even the late Jack Kemp. Not. A. Word.
This party, "the party of Lincoln", becomes more of a caricature of itself, a cartoon version of a party that is clueless about the world around them. They hang on for dear life to an economic ideology that was dead on arrival and like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, becomes more "critically dead".They hang on because they don't have anything else to offer.
This presidential ticket they present, is their "crowning achievement" for mediocrity; the epitome of stupidity a high point for hilarity.
This party is a zombie party; they're the living dead. The most merciful thing we can do, is to put this party out of it's misery with a loss, so complete, so titanic in it's effect, that they will treat their exile into the political wilderness as a welcomed vacation respite.
Are we up to doing that?
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)Oh yeah,...that's right,...he added, "As long as it doesn't hurt others"....
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)ayak9
(44 posts)http://www.theprovocation.net/2011/09/tea-party-owes-more-to-church-of-satan.html
(excerpt)
Far from seeking to obscure the relationship between Rand's ideas and LaVey's, the modern Church of Satan admits it right up front on its website: "Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, is an acknowledged source for some of the Satanic philosophy as outlined in The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey."
get the red out
(13,468 posts)They've certainly thrown in their lot with the Republicans who literally worship Rand. It comes full circle to where they've become what they project onto others, what they claim to despise.
dsteve01
(312 posts)OP, Your hardcore!
You have all my props.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)BOG PERSON
(2,916 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)"Ayn Rand, a popular cult-philosopher who plays Charlie to the American right-wings Manson Family."
hue
(4,949 posts)meow2u3
(24,775 posts)Not only was Rand a blaring hypocrite, Paul Ryan is, too. He took Social Security survivors when his dad died and now he wants to abolish it. Talk about peeing in the bucket after he had his drink so no one else can drink it.
Raine
(30,541 posts)Ayn Rand was an admirer of his!
dsteve01
(312 posts)that I had to write a summarizing blog about it.
Thanks, HiPointDem.
It really meant a lot to me.
http://derekstevens01.blogspot.com/2012/08/paul-ryans-spirtual-mentor-ayn-rand.html