Intro: "Here's a treasure trove of background info on the woman who inspired Romney's VP pick to go into public office."
Paul Ryan's budget is filled with endless cuts. (photo: WSJ)
Lunatic Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan's Biggest Influence
13 August 12
Here's a treasure trove of background info on the woman who inspired Romney's VP pick to go into public office.
he reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand." That's freshly minted GOP vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan talking - statements he would eventually recant - at a party celebrating what would have been the prolific author's 100th birthday,
Rand's books are a big driver in the long-term right-wing campaign to delude millions of people into believing that there's no such thing as society - that everyone must look out only for themselves. Lately, Rand's work has enjoyed a major revival of interest. Besides Ryan, she's inspired yoga-wear company Lululemon to publish her quotations on its products, and she's even made inroads into the North American semi-socialist enclave of Canada.
AlterNet has kept the pace with Rand's resurgence, doing our best to educate people about what a nutcase she was and how harmful her ideas are. These 10 articles, previously published on AlterNet, shed light on why Rand's influence on Ryan is so dangerous.
1. How Ayn Rand Seduced Generations of Young Men and Helped Make the U.S. Into a Selfish, Greedy Nation
"When I was a kid," AlterNet contribuer Bruce Levine writes, "my reading included comic books and Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. There wasn't much difference between the comic books and Rand's novels in terms of the simplicity of the heroes. What was different was that unlike Superman or Batman, Rand made selfishness heroic, and she made caring about others weakness."
Bruce Levine's explanation of how Rand has captured the minds of so many is a must-read. "While Harriet Beecher Stowe shamed Americans about the United State's dehumanization of African Americans and slavery, Ayn Rand removed Americans' guilt for being selfish and uncaring about anyone except themselves. Not only did Rand make it 'moral' for the wealthy not to pay their fair share of taxes, she 'liberated' millions of other Americans from caring about the suffering of others, even the suffering of their own children."
2. Rand's Philosophy in a Nutshell
The bloggers at ThinkProgress explain that the philosophy Ayn Rand laid out in her novels and essays was, "a frightful concoction of hyper-egotism, power-worship and anarcho-capitalism. She opposed all forms of welfare, unemployment insurance, support for the poor and middle-class, regulation of industry and government provision for roads or other infrastructure. She also insisted that law enforcement, defense and the courts were the only appropriate arenas for government, and that all taxation should be purely voluntary. Her view of economics starkly divided the world into a contest between 'moochers' and 'producers,' with the small group making up the latter generally composed of the spectacularly wealthy, the successful, and the titans of industry."
AlterNet's Joshua Holland has the goods: "Her books provided wide-ranging parables of 'parasites,' 'looters' and 'moochers' using the levers of government to steal the fruits of her heroes' labor. In the real world, however, Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor).
4. Rand Worked on a Movie Script Glorifying the Atomic Bomb
According to author Greg Mitchell, Rand called the nuclear weapon capable of incinerating entire cities "an eloquent example of, argument for and tribute to free enterprise."
5. Billionaires and Corporations Use Rand's Writings To Brainwash College Students
Pam Martens reported that Charles Koch, who pushes "millions of dollars through his foundation into economic programs at public universities and mandating approval of faculty and curriculum in some instances," partnered with the "southern banking giant BB&T ... mandating that Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged is taught and distributed to students."
6. How Rand Became the Libertarians' Favorite Philosopher
Author Gary Weiss explains how the "Rand movement, which was little more than a cult when the Atlas Shrugged author died 30 years ago, has effectively merged with the vastly larger libertarian movement. While many differences are likely to remain ... this means that Objectivism, Rand's quasi-religious philosophy, is going to permeate the political process more than ever before."
Author Hal Crowther writes, "For an eyewitness portrait of Ayn Rand in the flesh, in the prime of her celebrity, you can't improve on the 'Ubermensch' chapter in Tobias Wolff's autobiographical novel Old School. Invited to meet with the faculty and student writers at the narrator's boarding school, Rand arrives with an entourage of chain-smoking idolaters in black and behaves so repellently that her audience of innocents gets a life lesson in what kind of adult to avoid, and to avoid becoming. Rude, dismissive, vain and self-infatuated to the point of obtuseness - she names Atlas Shrugged as the only great American novel - Rand and her hissing chorus in black manage to alienate the entire school, even the rich board member who had admired and invited her. What strikes Wolff's narrator most forcefully is her utter lack of charity or empathy, her transparent disgust with everything she views as disfiguring or disabling..."
8. Red-State 'Parasites,' Blue-State Providers
Ayn Rand loved to throw around the word "parasite." If you aren't a psychopath billionaire, in Rand's eyes you're a parasite. It's a psychology totally in keeping with the myths of blue-state/red-state America, as AlterNet's Sara Robinson explains.
9. Ayn Rand Was a Big Admirer of a Serial Killer
No exaggerating here. Mark Ames writes, "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 a 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 with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation ... on him."
"The most devoted member of [Rand's] inner circle," George Monbiot writes, "was Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve. Among the essays he wrote for Rand were those published in a book he co-edited with her called Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Here, starkly explained, you'll find the philosophy he brought into government. There is no need for the regulation of business – even builders or Big Pharma – he argued, as 'the "greed" of the businessman or, more appropriately, his profit-seeking … is the unexcelled protector of the consumer.' As for bankers, their need to win the trust of their clients guarantees that they will act with honour and integrity. Unregulated capitalism, he maintains, is a 'superlatively moral system.'"
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Comments
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The Republican Corporatists cite Rand and try to associate with Objectivism because they think it makes them look sophisticated to their ignorant base. It makes them seem intellectual to people who do not have any idea what is actually happening on Earth.
There is --nothing-- libertarian about the Reagan, Romney or Ryan. Ryan is a big government control freak, as big as there is in Washington. If he was not, he would not be there. He is an altar boy for the Bankster Priests who ream you, and they need the -authority- of Government to force you into the rectory.
It does not serve the Left to keep on conflating libertarianism with Republicans. You are falling into a trap set by Milton Friedman, who could not use the word that actually describes the policies of him and the Chicago Boys, because -Fascism- is an unfashionable word.
"'Libertarian' is a cool word, it has the word 'liberty' right in it. Let's use that instead. The base won't know the difference and the left will fall for it hook line and sinker, and now we can consolidate power for 30 years and we'll get the Democrats to do half our dirty work for us."
So yeah.. the idea that there are Republicans who know as much about Rand as this author does is dubious at best. Don't kid yourselves. Quit it, please.. These people do not even read the Bills they pass.. so you think they read Rand? Really? Suckers.
What does Ayn Rand say about speculator to investor ratios?
Seems she never picked up on what Hoover called "anarchical" capitalists either, the ones he never anticipated being so different than his idealized vision of egalitarian capitalists.
Speculation in hedges and derivatives is also not "capitalism", since the capital is not being invested in capital goods that are suitable for production.
This is one of the biggest mistakes I see many people making today: equating corporate gambling and greed with "capitalism". They are NOT the same things, at all.
You can be a capitalist. Or you can be a Wall Street investor, broker or banker. There are very damned few who are both.
Thank you, Antler!!! As long as Ryan has been in the picture as the House Budget Committee Chair, people have thought of him as a harmless Libertarian. My responses on this site have tried to wake people up to the insidious danger that this man brings to Right Wing thinking. He is no ordinary congressman. This man is an Ayn Rand disciple, requiring his staff to read her works. And now with his appointment as Rmoney's Veep in waiting, the sociopathic atheist Ayn Rand is now knocking on the door of the White House. Catholic Nuns went on a multi-state bus tour talking the dangers of the Ryan budget, and the Catholic Bishops have condemned it as failing a “basic moral test”.
In addition to Ryan and Greenspan, the GOP God, Ronald Reagan; Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI); Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX); his son Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY); Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; and former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford were all influenced by Rand. Since Reagan and the air traffic controller's union, the GOP has gradually chipped away at all unions and the Social Safety Net. We've been like the proverbial frog in a pot of water, which will leap out if the water is boiling. But, if immersed in cold water over a flame, he won't know what hit him until it's too late.
If the Rmoney/Ryan ticket prevails in November, WE WILL BE THAT FROG!
Nothing they do follows Libertarian principles. They use the force of big government every chance they can to expand a non-defense Military budget, to give away your hard-earned money to oil companies and "defense" contractors, big agriculture to poison you. not to mention pharmaceuticals .
And, unfortunately, and I know our Partisan friends are not going to like this and give me all kinds of ugly "thumbs downs", but the Democrats just put a friendlier face on most of this. They are saying they want to stop fracking, but wait till the election is over. It's always the same.. just wait till the election is over and we will see once again who turns the screws.
But then, as long as I've been reading RSN, I have yet to see a single unbiased, honest description of Libertarian philosophy anyway. I seriously wonder sometimes whether the authors are truly ignorant of what it is all about, or just being deliberately dishonest.
And by the way: Rand was not a Libertarian, and Objectivists are not Libertarians. Some people I know who were in our local Libertarian party who became Objectivists quit the party, which is just as well because if they hadn't, they would probably have been asked to leave.
Further, as much as he professed to be, Greenspan was neither. He might have been a Rand sycophant at one time, but nobody who honestly believed in either Objectivism or Libertarianism could run the Fed. They would try to destroy it instead.
I do not find Ayn Rand an admirable human being. Her personal life was far from an example of "her" philosophy (which itself was neither original nor unique to her). And she spent much of her life encouraging a personality cult which survives today.
You will not find this in her books, which are simply potboilers which include ideas. Those of us who like a few things to think about while reading tend to enjoy that sort of thing. Rand was an expert at challenging the status quo, which brings out the inner rebel in those who have one and can be a delightful ride.
Yes, you will find industry leaders and the ultra-rich in "Atlas Shrugged". You will also find philosophers, writers, janitors, factory workers, and a truck driver, all of whom are referred to in favorable terms. The central character of "The Fountainhead" is not wealthy, and is largely unable to practice his profession, working in quarries and other commonplace jobs to earn a living while he pursues his dream.
Rand's tone is very shrill when referring to those of whom she disapproves, both in fiction and reality. But there are lessons to be learned from her writings. For all of us.
That is why there is the inherent distrust and villainizing of politicians in her work, because they produce nothing, but control the production of others. That is why some politicians misrepresent her, and that is why some politicians want to associate with her.. so they can pretend they are different than "those other" politicians. But they are fooling less and less people all the time.. and that is a good thing.. Paul Ryan will be one of the last politicians who will be able to hide behind Rand. It's time to end this.
I half expect Obama to Tell Michael Phelps about his 22 Olympic Medals --You didn't do that, truth be told - Phelps did.
If you want to insist on the distorted extract, where the only words in the video clip that came out as something he clearly didn't mean, does that mean we can hold Romney to the little video clip where he introduced Paul Ryan as the next President of the United States?
Perhaps we should take a longer look at both, and agree with what they said they actually meant.
You're really strugglin' for anti-Ob' rhetoric with this one Bubba!
CUT IT OUT!
Obama made a small mistake in a speech where he left out the 2 words "by yourself". He has made the same speech over and over and over. Once, just once he skipped a phrase and its like he issued a declaration of some sort.
It's just like the Romney slip of "I like to fire people". We know he meant that he likes being able to fire people that are not doing their job.
Both cases are simple mistakes. If you want to discuss the Obama administration rationally, then do so.
Your first point that Obama despises the hero? What the bleep does that mean? How did you come to that conclusion?
The government hinders more than it helps. I know some people the government put out of business because of a mistake their tax preparer made, and should have been accountable for. But because of the "guilty until proven innocent" attitude of the IRS at the time, they hadn't a chance in hell.
Small businesses pay more than their fair burden of taxes, and get less help than their fair share as well. Obama hasn't changed that; he's made it worse, with his Corporate revolving-door Cabinet and the like.
To state that someone had support and assistance for their heroic work does not equate with "despising" them. Even Phelps had parents who probably drove him to swimming practice on roads paid for by taxes, in pools paid for by taxes etc. So , in fact, a lot of infrastructure was in place to assist him.
I exposed: The fact that these corporatist politician tools do not even read the Bills they pass, let alone Ayn Rand. And that Milton Friedman was a fascist who commandeered the word "libertarian" because it is a cooler looking word than "fascist".
The fact that there is NOTHING libertarian about Reagan, Ryan or Romney, and that they are big guv control freaks who use the FORCE OF GOVERNMENT to push through the wishes of their Bankster employers as they fleece you.
The fact that Friedman's conflation of Republicanism and libertarianism has served to confuse Americans about the corporatist agenda of the two-party system as they have agreed on the VAST majority of legislation while your lying television keeps repeating all the disagreements as being significant, when really, more and more they just keep passing corporatist happy law, one after another.
None of the politicians in Washington have an understanding of Rand. There is nothing small govt. or pro- free-enterprise about either of these two-parties. They know who writes the real checks, and it is not you, you allow them to put you in debt any time they need more money printed. That's your role.
My post is missing too, Antler. They must have deleted your post and any responses, one of which was mine. Catholic Nuns have been on a multi-state bus tour in opposition to the Ryan budget. The Catholic Bishops condemn Ryan's budget as failing a “basic moral test”. Ryan is under the spell of the sociopathic atheist Ayn Rand to the extent that her works are required reading for his staff. Since the GOP god - Ronald Reagan, another Rand disciple - came on the scene, put down the air traffic controllers union, and said "government IS the problem", everything has trickled downhill. Everything but money and jobs, that is. America is not the same since the Regressives began chipping away at all social programs. By the way, Daddy Bush called it "Voodoo Economics".
We've been put to sleep by this gradualism. But, unbelievably, Rmoney/Ryan are putting forth the same policies - ON STEROIDS. Grover Norquist has already said, "We want the Ryan budget. We don't need an idealogue in the White House. All we need is a person with enough digits to hold a pen to sign the legislation that will be coming from Congress".
Of course, we're like the frog in the pot of water. If the water was boiling, he'd immediately jump out. But if he's immersed in cold water over a fire, he'll gradually be cooked before he knows it.
ARE WE GONNA CONTINUE TO BE FROGS???
Um, you mean your post of 2012-08-13 07:30? It's still there. It's up to 31.
A little paranoid, perhaps? :-)
FYI, Mr. Williams, Rand hated Fascists as much as she did Socialists.
"Greed is good", is a short, sound byte phrase that has been taken out of context by the very types of people Rand warns you about in her writings about working class people aspiring to do great things but are then thwarted by avaricious politicians who have no valuable skills.
False
//No one builds his/her own business alone.//
We trade value for value. Each working honestly for their own interest.
Your gang of government bureaucrats also work for their own selfish interest - Problem with them is unlike a private business where you the customer can walk away - with Government they stick the tax collectors gun in your face and make you pay them.
On the other hand, "your gang of government bureaucrats" is, at least in principle, answerable to the voting public. Take away government regulation and your gang of coporate overlords are answerable only to their shareholders.
really - I see my now US Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa) using government force to remove the Green from the ballot in 2006 then fine him for the trouble of screwing the people out of a choice.
But the larger fail here is the fact that government in principle is a GUN - it is force, unlike a private entity where you may choose to engage with them or choose to ignore them.
As to regulation -- do a serious read on the phrase Regulatory capture -- A few months ago RSN published an article by Matt Tibbi (I hope I have this all correct) wailing about how the SEC failed to do its job .. even worse they were helping the big companies .. again research the term regulatory capture -- before you falsely get enamored with the foolish notion that government regulations will protect you.
Of course government is a force. We have designed the government for that very purpose. However, the design also puts restrictions on the the amount of force, such as the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
There are ways to corrupt the legitimate power of government to create and enforce laws that would ultimately benefit the nation as a whole. Minimal funding of enforcement and rule making agencies. Outsourcing the writing of laws and regulations to the very target of those laws and rules. And, the ever popular, hiring only persons that are sympathetic at best or leaders from the very industries being regulated at worst.
These are some of the ways that the Conservatives have made the US government into a puppet of the financial, energy, agricultural, chemical and military industries. That is what laissez-faire (sp?) accomplishes, an oligarchy of those in charge of the industries that are in charge of running the government. And it does not bode well for any other businesses, especially startups, regardless of the rhetoric. And it ain't looking too good for those that speak out either.
Methinks thou dost protest too much.
No, she doesn't. You may have read her books, but you certainly did not understand them. Which is quite amazing to me, since she was very repetitive about the points she was trying to make.
Just for example: if you don't think she recognizes the need to support and invest in a diverse society, then you must not have read the part about the little city they were all hiding in.
It has a viable society, and people invested in it. The difference was that EVERYBODY invested in it.
Quote: "If you don't recognize that as greed and a lack of empathy, perhaps you need to rethink your definitions of those terms."
Perhaps you need to re-think your analysis of what Rand was trying to tell you. Because it wasn't anything like that, at all.
I'm not trying to defend her. I'm just pointing out where people are mistaken about the philosophy. I am not an Objectivist. But at least I do understand what it is supposed to be.
Bluffdale, Utah is coming on line in September. The match has been ignited. Know William Binney, Indira Singh, www.RememberBuilding7.org.
Evolution is substitution. What substitute is there for the Old Guard if hierarchy is all we can assess? Lynn Margulis, et alia. Really, this is not so expensive, or complicated, but, it is somewhat.
(or vice versa)
http://www.opednews.com/populum/printer_friendly.php?content=a&id=154033
That brutality that immigrants leave behind from other countries manages to serve them well here in this country far too often.
One of the Cops indicted was named Ryan, and one of the St. Atty who was involved as well.
Yes, your freedom fighters could easily power the city of Chicago with the spinning in the graves.
Would be nice if all immigrants learned the lessons that you did.. indeed.
I don't think Ayn Rand can be held responsible for this horrible mess. I think Ronald ("red ronney") Reagan is more responsible for the greed and selfishness destroying this country than anyone else.
After all, it was his bogus "TRICKLE-DOWN" theory,which stated that if you increased the wealth of the already rich, that increase would "trickle-down" to lower income/minority /poverty groups and uplift the entire country. This, of course, was a bold-faced lie!!! How stupid can people be??? Americans believed these lies and they were supported by famous economists, academicians and elites. The rest is history, as they say. Our illustrious government -- aided by corporate elites and bankers--couldn 't wait to deregulate the banking industry, wall street,and anything else they could think of, and then began outsourcing tens of millions of jobs, stripping America of her dignity and real source of wealth, the PEOPLE.Then after their dirty little game blew-up in their faces (housing bubble collapse)they continued on with more than 16 TRILLION in bailouts! Thank Ronald Reagan and George Bush for this debacle. Ayn Rand is just window dressing-- an excuse used by the greedy to hurt other people economically, socially, morally and spiritually!
Where is Indira Singh?
Who is William Binney and what is Bluffdale, Utah?
www.RememberBuilding7.org
Joe Vialls:
1. http://educate-yourself.org/cn/viallssumatra2004tsunami05jan05.shtml
2. http://www.reformation.org/joevialls.html
The match is lit.
Actually, I find that while the term is generally avoided today, it is probably the central tenet of the G.O.P.
Furthermore, though they would vehemently deny it, I believe many D's effectively espouse it too. At the local level, "economic development" subsidies to fat-cat developers. At the federal level, the bank bailouts, and possibly too much of the stimulus packages reflect this thinking, as do many subsidies given in the name of "job creation" - none of which come close to the kind of programs that FDR championed (CCC, PWA, NYA, etc.)
However, before you vilify either one too much, keep in mind that the "trickle-down" theory is wholly Keynesian in nature, and Keynes is still the darling of Democrats. (Art Laffer is fully a member of the Keynesian school and has always maintained that he learned of the so-called Laffer Curve from John Maynard Keynes himself.)
If you want to get away from ideas like Trickle Down, you need to get away from Keynes. You can't have it both ways.
Of course it helps that Keyenesian economics has been thoroughly discredited, and has had a track record of very close to zero accurate predictions about the economy. But that DOESN'T help when you realize that the White House and Wall Street are enamored of Keynes anyway... because his errors are their stock in trade.
The Laffer curve was originally written on a napkin in a bar. Based on the above statement that Laffer based it on Keynes; I am fairly confident that whoever reported back to Reagan what was on the napkin had it upside down.
Is he lying? How the hell should I know? But that's what he says. And if you look at Laffer's bio (or even Wikipedia for that matter), under "influences" there is listed only one name: John Maynard Keynes.
How do you think that the rich would feel if the infrastructure that the middle class has built for them would suddenly disappear because they, the middle class, decided to not not volunteer their tax dollars.
If the majority if the tax dollars paid are from middle class pockets, even using Rand's logic, belong to the middle class for having paid them. You are entitled to "entitlements" when you paid for them in the first place.
I suppose that no one wants to read any detraction of Obama given the alternative faced in the election. Personally, I feel he should be held even more accountable given his "Change" promises in 2008. His cabinet appointments were very much an early signal that he wasn't going to pursue and substantive change at all.
The reason that That I know what Ayn Rand says in her writings is because I have actually read it. That is the reason I know that Paul Ryan is not an Objectivist or a Libertarian. He has almost -ZERO- Libertarian traits. If Democrats were honest.. or even -intelligent- they would point that fact out. But they are not, so they don't, because the vitriol against Rand serves the two-party agenda.. which to Democrats and Republicans is more important than you and your SS. your Medicare and your health care.
I will place the deeper explanation in the next post.
Many intelligent members of the Democrat party actually know what Objectivists and Libertarians are all about. But you never see them discuss those groups in an honest fashion. Why is that?
It is far easier to demonize them than to actually discredit their philosophies. (Especially when you consider that in many respects, they have the facts on their side.) So you never see them trying to do the latter. They just demonize.
The system today is set up such that you pay into Social Security, and then you get your money out of it later. Ryan did not make those rules, and he paid in, so he should get his money out. Yes, he's working to change the system, but so what? I don't see him actually proposing to deny anybody money that they actually have coming.
As for "denying others a safety net", I don't think anybody's really doing that. First, getting rid of Social Security does not necessarily mean denying money to people who have paid in. It simply means there will be a point at which young people will cease to pay in. At that time -- presumably -- there will be some other kind of system in place.
But it's clear that Social Security has become nothing but a big Ponzi scheme, and it MUST be phased out before it crashes. It can't go on this way. It's simply not possible.
Meanwhile, in the middle of your predictable victory dance every other crazy thing in that Bill got passed and it turns out to be a lot of great things for corporations and the 1% and it screws over poor people and the middle class in 100 other ways.
And -your- heros in the Democratic Party, while acting on TV like they just discovered science or something -know- that is what is going to happen... the whole time, but they don't care because you are dumb enough to keep voting for them and keeping them with their cushy job..
That is the way it works.. I don't know where you were in High School but it's the first thing I learned in my Govt. class. It's called "asking for the whole pie in order to get half".
Quit it!! you do this to yourself.. you only have yourself to blame.
I was enamored of Ayn Rand's ideas when I was a teenager in the late 1960s. Her work had a very damaging psychological effect, worsening a tendency to contempt, isolation, and judgmentalism that took a long time for me to dispell.
I sat in a hotel ballroom in Manhattan in 1989 when Nathaniel Branden was promoting his book about his personal relationship with Rand, and when he assured the objectivists gathered that Rand had a very inadequate grasp of human psychology and that her work did psychological and emotional damage to a great many people, many people burst into tears, obviously at having had their deepest suspicions confirmed by someone who knew Rand very well.
The best reading on Rand I've encountered is Ann C. Heller's biography "Ayn Rand, And The World She Made." Recommended for anyone who wants to understand the tortured and troubled psyche that produced the ideas (I refuse to call them a philosophy) that have so infected our society.
Gene Ritchings, novelist
www.winterinasummertown.com
Who can account for anything?
GUT-CP?
James Lovelock and global warming?
Saul Bellow murdered (vis a vis Gus Alex) after publishing More Die of Heartbreak about how the mob was fixin to rise a level...
Cognition is what it is about, that you can be sure of.
self reliance. So HARD, so VERY HARD, so tempting, so FUN, to pretend it was not Democrats who repealed Glass-Steagall, de-regulating Wall Street CRIMINALS. So HARD, so VERY HARD, to admit it is Obama who is engaged in impeachable Obstruction of Justice to PREVENT bankster accountability. BETRAYAL is PAINFUL. & he betrayed US, his family, YOU!
Very true, and very revealing that this comment got only negative evaluations.
I view the self-emasculate d Democratic Party with their dependence on corporate campaign contributions as another extension of the political domination of wealth and power that wasn't spawned by Reagan but certainly encouraged and promoted by him and every politician of whatever party ever since. In selling their political souls, they have sold our government and turned it into an engine of injustice and a haven for white collar crooks.
Obama, the cypher, is a perfect symbol of a soulless and bankrupt Democratic Party. But until progressive and humane people restore the party to its historic values -- pro-labor, pro-econmic justice, pro-civil liberties, pro-environment -- he is, sadly enough, all we've got. To fail to vote for him is to enable a far darker and crueler future for everyone.
Gene Ritchings, novelist
www.winterinasummertown.dom
I don't plan on rereading this book to see if my recollection is correct. There are far too many good books on the shelf.
So was she particularly relevant and did she address herself mostly to a certain demographic in the US almost exclusively?
I'd really like to know why she is so significant here.
I mean, I doubt that even Paul Ryan is THAT deranged and was only trying to court the attention and support of the established looney-right fringe and the power-drunk oligarchy in citing such a black-Mamba-lik e predatory, egotistical, meant-spirited blot on the literary and social landscape.
I'd believe it of Pat Buchanan (¡Viva Franco!) Eugene McCarthy, Oliver North, The Dulles Bro's and their latter day mani-infestatio n the Koch-pest and several other but a VP running mate for a milquetoast, featureless cypher like Twit R'? Hardly, but help me out here.
As a person who read "atlas shrugged", I have to agree with that assessment.
Sorry, you're right of course (still half-asleep when I posted this). Thanks for the correction and my apologies to the excellent Eugene and other McCarthys out there.
Just a point of information: You mean Joe McCarthy, not Gene -- who was the nice guy liberal who ran for the 1968 Democratic Party nomination.
But regardless of what she was like personally, she espoused (but apparently didn't particularly follow herself) a philosophy that many people have found compelling. And no, it is not at all like, or in any way comparable to, "Main Kampf". Whoever told you that was either ignorant or lying. Rand despised Fascists and Socialists alike.
Not that you'll find a good description of her actual philosophy on these pages. For one, it would take too long to explain, and for another, people would be too busy actively distorting it with misinformation for it to get across.
I'm not defending it. I'm not an Objectivist. But if you want truth about it, you won't find it here.
It has sort of a ring to it, don't you think?
Rand Paul -
Paul Ryan...
(sort of a 3-headed beast)
Now, if there's another loony right-wing talking head named "Ryan Ayn" it will be the final sign of the apocalypse.
I exposed: The fact that these corporatist politician tools do not even read the Bills they pass, let alone Ayn Rand. And that Milton Friedman was a fascist who commandeered the word "libertarian" because it is a cooler looking word than "fascist".
The fact that there is NOTHING libertarian about Reagan, Ryan or Romney, and that they are big guv control freaks who use the FORCE OF GOVERNMENT to push through the wishes of their Bankster employers as they fleece you.
The fact that Friedman's conflation of Republicanism and libertarianism has served to confuse Americans about the corporatist agenda of the two-party system as they have agreed on the VAST majority of legislation while your lying television keeps repeating all the disagreements as being significant, when really, more and more they just keep passing corporatist happy law, one after another.
None of the politicians in Washington have an understanding of Rand. There is nothing small govt. or pro- free-enterprise about either of these two-parties. They know who writes the real checks, and it is not you, you allow them to put you in debt any time they need more money printed. That's your role.
Reagan GREW the govt. and raised taxes. He GREW the non-defense Military.. also not a Libertarian principle.
Some of you people need to learn what words mean. There are definitions for words. You can't just throw words around like Milton Friedman did and expect and ignorant population to just buy the whole thing.
you can tell me you are a banana, but that does not make you a banana any more than Milton Friedman having a crush on Ayn Rand makes him a Libertarian.
Stop doing this to yourself.. you look silly.
Ayn Rand may write potboilers--but NOT speculative fiction. I couldn't get past page 100 in a single one of her turgid diatribes--and gave up on Heinlein's novels after he converted to libertarianism. There's something intrinsically boring about single-minded ego-worship and I feel sorry for the narcissist pre-adolescents to whom the Ubermensch appeals. They lack personalities with the "elements mix'd" in Shakespeare's words, they take no pleasure in self-contraditi on as do Emerson, Whitman and Dickinson, a quality necessary to form a completely grown-up human being.
There is no right to enslave
-- and progressives are all about enslaving others for their selfish benefit.
You seem to be obsessed with your own slavish adherence to the Libertarian ideal of damning others who desire a measure of order and services (including the protection of basic freedoms) by a government of, by and for the people and progressive taxation for the common good rather than for -as it is now-, the further aggrandizement of the already wealthy who mostly inherited it anyway, and consider themselves on a rarified plane beyond the reach of government and the commoners -so what are you complainin' about? You already have much of what you crave.
Come to think of it, you sound just like the author's portrayal of the subject who, from what I've read so far, would be the true enslaver with her retinue of black-suited yes-men.
Love that idea do you, o' fancy-yourself- free one?
How can you have 'basic freedoms' when the majority can vote to enslave you for their selfish benefit?
"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship." (Alexander Tyler - 1787)
And now we are $16 trillion in short term debt, $120 trillion in long term debt - accident?
I think not.
Predictable, entirely.
I'm glad you agree that you certainly are entirely predictable: who writes y'r Libertarian scripts.
I rest my case -'nuff said.
It's amazing to me how many Republicans I know never heard of her. That's because they've been brainwashed with religion...of which Rand was against.
But selfless and virtous to have government plunder others wealth for your personal gain?
one day older and
4 Billion more in debt
By the way Before Obama and the democrats - who had total control of house,senate and white house Fed Gove was spending 2.5 trillion / year and now it is 3.5 trillion - income has not increased.
IT'S THE SPENDING STUPID!
To inspire the masses of people who are dying for a new future, we have got to create and not simply tell ourselves how awful these people are. Elliot H
Ryan would fit in with that group of REAL looters and moochers.
What was .. her way?
What was the status quo that was being rejected?
You have perhaps seen a severed hand or foot, or a head lying by itself apart from its body. That is the state to which a man is doing his best to reduce himself, when he refuses to accept what befalls him and breaks away from his fellows, or when he acts for selfish aims alone. Then you become an outcast from the unity of Nature; though born part of it, you have cut yourself away with your own hand. Yet here is the beautiful thought: that it still lies in your own power to reunite yourself. No other part of creation has been so favoured by God with permission to come together again, after once being sundered and divided. Behold, then, his goodness, with which he has dignified man; he has put in his power, not only initially to keep him inseparate from the whole, but afterwards, if separated, to return and be reunited and resume his membership as before.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Eight, 34
What many people don't realize (or are lying about... I don't know which and don't much care) is that Rand was not against helping others at all. But that help had to be VOLUNTARY. Not coerced.
Taxation, then spending on "entitlement" programs, is government coercion. The individual does not have a reasonable choice in the matter.
The same holds true for helping some businesses over others, or helping certain groups of people over others. If the government is doing it, then it's not VOLUNTARY.
THAT is what Rand was against. She didn't advocate not helping others. What she said was: "YOU don't have a right to take from me, in order to help others that YOU choose. It is my individual right to choose, to help anybody or nobody, as I please."
Now, don't go telling me that if not coerced, people won't help. That's simply not true. Before we had government entitlement programs, we had private charities and organizations, which did a damned fine job.
I read several of Rand's books decades ago, when I was an impressionable young student, and I specifically remember reading in one of of her books, something to the affect that we do not need to feel that "you must donate or help" anyone in need, and that when you see that jar at the grocery store asking you to donate you should ignore it. SO, in my opinion she had NO empathy in her very own words.
She was pro-choice, she believed in only funding a defense Military, she did not believe Religion should play a role in politics. She did not believe in the government and corporations being in bed together. She was not into military expansionism.
She was barely a good writer. You need to be honest about this. You will do much better when you learn about what you speak and then employ some honesty about this phony Rand worship that Republicans do.
No system can work if there is not a balance of power. They would give all the power away to private enterprise in the name of "individual liberty.". Why they even want the roads to be owned by private sector. just think, where would we go to exercise our constitutional rights to assemble and protest if every piece of land is owned by private multi-nationals corps that will deny any permits to be issued for assemblies of this kind on their property?
The "collective" that is oppressively taking over is big business thanks to "unregulated" capitalism.
Even Adam Smith -- who, though he did not use the exact word "capitalism" nevertheless defined its principles -- recognized that a reasonable body of antitrust regulations would be necessary to keep everybody playing WITHIN the capitalist system. Without that regulation, you end up with monopoly (or oligopoly) and cronyism.
So: there is no such thing as "unregulated capitalism". Capitalism, in order to exist, MUST have at least some working antitrust laws. Those are the meta-rules keeping everybody working within the actual capitalist system, in which there are no monopolies, or oligopolies, or government interference (as opposed to antitrust) in free markets.
It is our DEVIATION from true Capitalist principles (honest voluntary trade, and profit free from government interference EXCEPT antitrust and reasonable taxes) that has led to this problem. You can hardly call our domestic markets "free" anymore... everything in sight is "regulated" in one way or another. I should say "mis-regulated" because Wall Street has certainly been regulated, but not in ways that were healthy for our economy.
There is no way you can convince me that the main problems behind Wall Street are not caused by the Government itself.
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