Ayn Rand’s Revenge - LOL

[denem]

Sometimes the irony of it all gets too much. Tell the looters, “We have no demands to present you, no terms to bargain about, no compromise to reach. You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you.” What else can you say to the Party of No?

From Obama's acceptance speech: "In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You're on your own. Well it's time for them to own their failure."

The Tea Party of whiners, 'just don't get it'. How many teabaggers know Rand was so virulently anti-religion that Christian leaders denounced her up hill and down dale, that Rand disliked Reagan or that the Ayn Rand Center declares 'Abortion An Absolute Right' http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5105

If they do know, how much vanilla fudge is needed to prevent a punch up? For what it's worth, here's what I was reading in the Sunday Book Review.

Ayn Rand’s Revenge

A specter is haunting the Republican Party — the specter of John Galt. In Ayn Rand’s libertarian epic “Atlas Shrugged,” Galt, an inventor disgusted by creeping American collectivism, leads the country’s capitalists on a retributive strike. “We have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who had always been the givers, but have only now understood it,” Galt lectures the “looters” and “moochers” who make up the populace. “We have no demands to present you, no terms to bargain about, no compromise to reach. You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you.”

“Atlas Shrugged” was published 52 years ago, but in the Obama era, Rand’s angry message is more resonant than ever before. Sales of the book have reportedly spiked. At “tea parties” and other conservative protests, alongside the Obama-as-Joker signs, you will find placards reading “Atlas Shrugs” and “Ayn Rand Was Right.” Not long after the inauguration, as right-wing pundits like Glenn Beck were invoking Rand and issuing warnings of incipient socialism, Representative John Campbell, Republican of California, told a reporter that the prospect of rising taxes and government regulation meant “people are starting to feel like we’re living through the scenario that happened in ‘Atlas Shrugged.’ ”

Rand’s style of vehement individualism has never been universally popular among conservatives — back in 1957, Whittaker Chambers denounced the “wickedness” of “Atlas Shrugged” in National Review — and Rand still has her critics on the right today. But it can often seem, as Jonathan Chait, a senior editor at The New Republic recently observed, that “Rand is everywhere in this right-wing mood.”http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/books/review/Kirsch-t.html?em

[elleng]

1. Not exactly 'LOL.'

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said Thursday that banking regulators should consider breaking up large financial institutions considered “too big to fail.”


http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/greenspan-break-up-banks-too-big-to-fail/?scp=2&sq=alan%20greenspan&st=cse

[denem]

2. My LOL was reserved for Teabaggers invoking her name.

Greenspan himself would merit a LOL if the disasters he participated in were only works of fiction.

[elleng]

3. Yes, he would.

Thanks, denem.

[burrowowl]

19. Alan Greenspan should be indicted

and tried and hopefully end up in jail for crimes against the real economy (work, production), the American People and Fraud!

[elleng]

24. By that logic, so should most who call themselves

economists. Really, its those who put them and keep them in their positions. If we can't understand what and why they do, they shouldn't be in there. I assume that Prez O understands what his fed and treasury guys are doing. He's certainly smart and intelligent enough to do so.

[SpiralHawk]

4. "Time for the Republicons to Own Their Own Failure" - John Galt

Exactly. The Republicons need to nut up, or shut up. Pull themselves out of their own FAIL by their own bootstraps -- and stop whining about America and Americans.

[Sinti]

5. Not being intentionally conspiratorial

but I've often thought that Ayn Rand might have been part of a huge communist plot all along. Think about it, she comes here from Mother Russia with this completely ridiculous theory of how the world works or should work. If the people here were stupid enough to actually follow this line of thinking, childish as it may be, the fall of capitalism must follow sure as night follows day - either that or mankind itself would fail. Human beings overcome obstacles to our survival by using our intellect, the more minds we have around (and the better we educate those minds) the more likely we are to survive as a species. Crazy talk, I know... :silly:

[denem]

8. Nothing is 'Crazy talk' regarding Ayn Rand

Crazy + crazy = crazy.

[MattSh]

6. Can never bring this article up often enough...

Recently I was rereading Scott Ryan's fascinating, albeit highly technical, critique of Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality, and getting a lot more out of it the second time, when I came across a fact culled from a posthumous collection of Rand's journal entries.

In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," she exulted. (Quoted in Ryan, citing Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 21-22.)

At the time, she was planning a novel that was to be titled The Little Street, the projected hero of which was named Danny Renahan. According to Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra, she deliberately modeled Renahan - intended to be her first sketch of her ideal man - after this same William Edward Hickman. Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should." (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22; emphasis hers.)

"A wonderful, free, light consciousness" born of the utter absence of any understanding of "the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people." Obviously, Ayn Rand was most favorably impressed with Mr. Hickman. He was, at least at that stage of Rand's life, her kind of man.

So the question is, who exactly was he?

William Edward Hickman was one of the most famous men in America in 1928. But he came by his fame in a way that perhaps should have given pause to Ayn Rand before she decided that he was a "real man" worthy of enshrinement in her pantheon of fictional heroes.

You see, Hickman was a forger, an armed robber, a child kidnapper, and a multiple murderer.

Other than that, he was probably a swell guy.

http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm

[denem]

7. Rand's archetypal heros are a sociopaths?

Her first one fits the mold.

[glitch]

9. Absolutely perfect! nt

[Ikonoklast]

11. Rand was a sociopath who had no use for other people, except as worshippers.

It is no wonder that she found her ideal man in a person who exhibited no moral compunctions, in regards to human society as well as human life.

To her, people were to be used in any way she would seem fit, disposing of them at will if that would serve her purposes.

The people that drool over her infantile selfishness described as a 'philosophy' are humans stunted in both emotional and intellectual development. They have no real understanding of just where in the overall scheme of things in an Objectivist utopia their place would be.

One hint: They aren't John Galt.

[Joe Chi Minh]

22. No. she was worse than that. She was an out-and-out psychopath; a reptile.

[G_j]

20. a sociopathic creed nt

[NashVegas]

10. Many of Rand's Admirers and Detractors Both Drive Me Buggy

Her admirers, because they don't separate the reality between her idealistic fantasy and the way the capitalist world really works.

Her detractors, because few can or want to get why Atlas and Fountainhead will always appeal to many artists and others who want to uphold an ideal.

[johnaries]

13. In Reality, the artists and idealists are Galt's "looters and moochers".

in the Real World, Galt would not be one of the "givers" but a Corporate Executive. The real givers are the engineers, the artists, the idealists, the "front-line", and the very "looters and moochers" that make the business possible. The sole purpose of the Executives is to turn a profit for the investors. They increase profits for investors by keeping "costs" down. And the largest cost? By far the salaries and benefits of the "givers" are the largest costs of almost any business.

[Blue-Jay]

12. Atlas Shat.

That's pretty much all I have to say about Ayn Rand.

[treestar]

14. It does explain the Repukes a lot

That's why they'd say during the Bush Administration - leave if you don't like it. They don't want to need other people and want to be able to just dismiss whoever they disagree with.

[NutmegYankee]

15. I have read the book.

As a Christian, I reject the evil philosophy it endorses. It pains me to think that millions of people embrace such a shocking lack of empathy and mercy as their political ideal.
My social justice views surely meet their disapproval as well.

[denem]

16. Rand HATED Christians - "mystics of spirit" as much as Socialism "mystics of muscle"

In her view, both promoted the ultimate obscenity - Altruism. The teabaggers are clueless.

[JoeyT]

23. You're not alone.

As an atheist, I rejected her immoral philosophy too for the exact same reasons you do, and I've also read her rambling.
If ever a worldview deserved to have the word evil slapped on it, it'd be one that not only encouraged it's members to watch the less fortunate suffer, but actively encouraged them to force more suffering upon them while labeling them leeches and thieves.

Course if you ever want to see a Randroid's head explode, point out to them that, as a philosopher, Rand neither created nor added value or wealth. Which makes her one of the very "leeches" they hate so much. On top of that she definitely fit their definition of an illegal alien for a while.

[NutmegYankee]

25. You make an excellent point.

Faith or no faith, we both find the lack of empathy from Rand sickening. It's a shame that humanism is disparaged as socialism by her people.

[jimlup]

17. Ayn Rand's leading follower ...

Alan Greenspan was a Rand follower. She attended his swearing in under Reagan. He was her real life John Galt.

I can't think of a time in our history when her philosophy has been any more discredited than now (perhaps the Great Depression). The teabaggers are the most ignorant people and our society. That they buy this stuff so easily would be sad if it weren't so destructive.

[denem]

18. Pity the entire world had to pay for Greenspan's version of Galt.

NOW that the bubbles burst, he's a convert to the very anti-trust principles he detested:

Greenspan Calls to Break Up Banks ‘Too Big to Fail’

“If they’re too big to fail, they’re too big,” Mr. Greenspan said. “In 1911 we broke up Standard Oil — so what happened? The individual parts became more valuable than the whole. Maybe that’s what we need to do.” http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/greenspan-break-up-banks-too-big-to-fail/?scp=2&sq=alan%20greenspan&st=cse

Fuck you, and the Rand you rode in on.

[jimlup]

21. Yeah, I do believe one of the reasons our economy is near shambles

is the ridiculous philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Greenspan was revered but now he is seen as discredited. That is by everyone but the ignorant tea bagging right wing.