I'm Not Sure What To Make Of This... Advice Appreciated... Wanted To Like It... But Uncomfortable...

[WillyT]

My Original Subject Line Was Gonna Be...

Has The Republican Party Become A Cult ???

Then I started questioning things in the article... am I wrong here ???

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Sex, Ayn Rand and the Republican Party
by Daniel Johnson, Deputy Executive Editor - SalemNews
10/11/12

"Some people are moulded by their admirations, others by their hostilities." (Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen)

<snip>

(CALGARY, Alberta) - Although she died in 1982, Ayn Rand (born Alisa Rosenbaum) and her acolytes, like the living dead, keep rising from the ground to walk the earth. Those (like me) who vigorously oppose the hateful, anti-social, mean spiritedness of Rand's philosophy have trouble gaining traction because Randites are exceptionally close-minded and insular—a typical cult.

Objectivists deny and reject, almost in toto, the standards of mainstream society. They believe, and this is not an exaggeration, that everyone is out of step but them. Their attitude is summarized in two panels of a Dilbert comic.

The current crop has grown, like poison mushrooms, in the current Republican Party, most publicly in the philosophy of Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan.

The cultural danger, here, was aphorized by the philosopher Lewis Mumford when he said:

"If the history of the human race teaches any plain lessons this is one of them: Man cannot be trusted with absolutes,". An unwavering, inflexible belief in absolutes is at the bedrock of her philosophy which she named Objectivism.

Former acolyte Edith Efron boldly summarized:

“There is no way to communicate how crazy she was....Ultimately everyone who knew her would ask themselves, ‘Is she insane or am I?...She was a profoundly manipulative woman...so repressed’ that it resulted in a ‘very complicated paranoia.’”

According to Allan Blumenthal, one of the founding members of Rand’s inner circle (she referred to them as “the Collective”) she “created an entire system, including her philosophical system, to deal with her own psychological problems.” Jeff Walker (author of The Ayn Rand Cult) was astounded. “All of Objectivism was to deal with her own psychological problems?” Blumenthal agreed, “That's my view,” which supports Rand’s own statement that “Objectivism is me....”

Objectivism was a foreign system planted in the United States by Russian born Rand and a band of Canadian Jews, most of them closely related. Leonard Peikoff. initially a lowly member of the Collective, though he was one day to become Rand's heir, hailed from Winnipeg, Manitoba, as did Joan Mitchell Blumenthal, Rand's close friend for a quarter-century, and Peikoff’s cousin Barbara Weidman (Barbara Branden). With Toronto natives Nathan Blumenthal (Nathaniel Branden), a Blumenthal sister and her husband, and cousin Allan Blumenthal. Add Alan Greenspan and that was the Collective.

Philosopher John Hospers summed up the Collective:

"They became shivering-scared disciples who dared not say the wrong thing lest they incur her wrath....Rand said she wanted people imbued with reason around her...she actually got on the whole...a bunch of adoring sycophants." Edith Efron suggested you'd be "better off with Rand if you were...a malleable nothing...the kind of special adoration the youngsters gave her...she could not get from an adult."

<snip>

Much More: http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october112012/rand_dj.php

[bemildred]

1. What's the question? nt

[Nikia]

2. I attended a few Objectivism meetings as a college freshman

They touted Objectivism as a philosophy in favor of Individualism and Reason. At the meetings though, they talked about Ayn Rand the way Christian Fundamentalists talked about Jesus and quoted her works like the Bible. They offered none of their own opinions using their own reason when they were challenged.