It's Scary -- Ayn Rand's Nutty Ideas Are Being Taken Seriously, Even in Canada

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/story/156424/it%27s_scary_--_ayn_rand%27s_nutty_ideas_are_being_taken_seriously%2C_even_in_canada

Ayn Rand was a kind of running joke when I was a kid in the 1950s. I knew about her thanks to the 1957 publication of Atlas Shrugged and its instant rise on the best-seller list. That in turn drew attention to her philosophy of Objectivism, which promoted selfishness as a virtue and damned altruism as a vice -- a self-evident joke.

Rand also got attention because of her anti-Soviet views. She and her prosperous Russian family had managed to get out of the U.S.S.R. in 1926, and ever after she seemed to have taken the Russian Revolution awfully personally. Nothing the Soviets did could possibly be any good; when they launched Sputnik, the first earth satellite, Rand insisted it had to be a hoax -- and of course the joke was on her.

One or two of my friends loved Atlas Shrugged, which I tried and failed to get into. So for me Rand and Objectivism were just part of the right-wing background noise of the era, along with the John Birch Society and William F. Buckley's National Review. All were mildly scandalous because of their extreme views. But they were trivial compared to the segregationists and mainstream red-baiters who ran the U.S. in those days.

Still, Rand refused to go away. She popped up on TV, she published new books, and her followers published new books about her. Until her death in 1982 she was a presence; Objectivism -- and Objectivists -- survived her, and clearly crossed into Canada. Alberta's Wildrose Party leader leader Danielle Smith and Vancouver's lululemon founder Chip Wilson are among high profile Canadians who pay homage to Rand's teachings today.

[TheMastersNemesis]

1. RW Austerity Is An International Issue

The MSM won't report it but the RW Koch infection is not just happening in the US. The oligarchs and our banks also set up Europe because they hate government anywhere in the world. The "world is not enough" for these people. They want to control everything. And the kind of free trade we see is about economically controlling all workers.

Europe's trouble are connected as far as I am concerned. The high unemployment rates and debt are a way for the RW here to attack their socialism and social welfare. Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark are also under attack. And the Murdoch empire is part and parcel of bringing down anything that is NOT "savaging capitalism". How often have we heard that European workers have too many job protections and benefits. The a free market labor system is what not only the US needs, but the world at large needs.

The GOP and its RW allies support economic armageddon because it serves their purpose. There are massive demonstrations about government cuts and austerity. Yet our MSM covers NONE of that turmoil. The GOP will be happy if our official unemployment rate were 25% and the underemployment rate were 70%. That way workers will work for "free falling market" wages just to have some income.

We need to wake up to this billionaire conspiracy.