Posted on 12/23/2011 5:48:23 PM PST by Misterioso
If there is any intellectual of the last 100 years who scares the Left, it is Ayn Rand. One needs only to search her name on the internet and they will find that she is perhaps more abused and insulted than Milton Friedman and Reagan. Often the charges that most attack her with can be boiled down to “She believes that people should be self-centered bastards and not give a damn about anyone else.”
While anyone who has taken the time to read her fiction and nonfiction works knows that the above claim isn’t accurate, the fact that Rand is the target of so many wannabe-commentators reveals the amount of anger that the woman brings out in the Left. The question honestly begs to be asked – why? Why does this Russian immigrant, who died in 1982, bring Liberals to the use of such vitriol and character assassination?
The answer is actually quite simple – she makes sense. She is to Socialism what David was to Goliath and the Left simply doesn’t know how to respond to her except to demagogue and paint her as a puppet to the elitists. Unlike some of the more pacifistic fighters for the Right and Libertarianism Rand doesn’t hold back, if anything she removes the veil that the Progressive and Socialist movement has used for decades – the veil of “the Greater Good”. It had been this façade that left far too many Conservatives stammering during the New Deal, with the passing of Social Security, and the growth of Welfare. However she tore it off with her philosophy of the Individual and showed the true face of the Left with her novels.
Rand explained that Capitalism is the only Moral Economic System because unlike Socialism, Feudalism, Communism, Welfare Statism, and the Mixed Economy, Capitalism treats people as Individuals and not the sacrificial animals that all the other systems did. She preached that instead of appeasing everyone else, that one should live for his own happiness. That Innovation is created by Free Individuals and not Government coercion.
This is what infuriates the Left. Ayn makes clear how the “Good Intentions” of government regulation often lead to worldly Hell. Her novella “Anthem” shows how government constraint goes against progress. And her magna opus “Atlas Shrugged” paints the end result of a society that doesn’t give Individuals their freedom. In short, she kills the Left’s Utopian ideals with logic.
It was nearly fifty years ago that Whitaker Chambers savaged “Atlas Shrugged” in the National Review and separated the Conservative Movement from Rand. Now we are beginning to see the reemergence of Randian ideas with the Tea Party and members of the Republican Party who are influenced by her like Paul Ryan and Rand Paul. It is time for the Right to admit it and embrace it – Rand is right.
Which ones?
Objective reason and logic are the last things the left is into.
No matter how you may try, you cannot break The Law. You can only break yourself against the Law.
A very good way to put it.
Trying to mix free markets with enforced atheism as we see today in the invented separation of morals (church) and public square, produces the Black Friday and Jordan shoe lifestyle. In addition, it produces amoral banksters making corrupt deals with corrupt politicans who demand they drop loan qualification standards and hence, crash the real estate market.
And that all that Ayn Rand Marxist social idealism results in massive economic collapse - theft of the middle class’ wealth to the banksters who knowingly wrecked the economy with politicans to enrich themselves.
That’s the beauty of libertarianism. Amoral wreckage produced by one deminsional Darwinistic materialistic cave men. Hang ‘em high.
Does this apply to cannibals and muslims?
The Christian Right doesn’t treat her any better. “She cheated on her husband!!!” (Like no Christian’s ever done that.) I tell you what, a lot of conservatives will accept a liberal Christian before they’ll accept an atheist conservative... which proves a theory of mine.
True, but you failed to ask an atheist leftist. Do so, and you will be assured that said leftist is the objective and logical one. I don't need to go on about this, EVERY leftist will repudiate you and your statement.
Excellent post. Can’t lay it out much better.
Say what? Rand was about as far from a Marxist as one could get, and social idealism as well. Rand always put the individual as superior to the collective.
Here’s Ayn Rand on abortion. Disgusting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0yUjMklVuI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4JWE7mp8nI
This is why music critics hate Rush. The lyrics don't conform to the Leftist worldview.
I think you have a chicken-egg, cart-horse problem. Ayn Rand saw long before most of us where we were heading politically as a nation. She described her vision in many books. She turned out to be right.
The weird castrati falsetto might have something to do with it, too.
I have no problem with atheist conservatives. The problem I have is Ayn Rand is not a conservative (and she's a terrible writer to boot). That won't change no matter how much some misguided people on the right try to market her stuff as "tea party material". The fact she's worshiped by Ron Paul loons pretty much confirms my "Rand's not a conservative" theory. Just because someone shares my belief in the free market, it doesn't make them "conservative".
She didn’t cheat. He knew about it.
They’re using Ron Paul to convince people that constitutional restoration is “crazy talk”. It seems to be working.
Incorrect in what way? On what points? Please expand.
So, because of her unbelief, the rest of her opinion is without merit? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. There are certain principles we must agree on and others that we can disagree over. Faith and unbelief are personal matters and should be respected as such. Americans need to grow up and face reality. We are not going to find perfection in this life. We killed the last guy who was. Rand’s take on communism vs. capitalism is spot on and needs to be promoted if we are to survive as a free nation.
She based her morality, which she called the morality of reason, on objective reality and man’s nature, unlike many other moral codes. Her ideas about morality stem from her concepts of man and his nature and the nature of existence. She held a vision of man as a heroic being or at least as a being with that potential and her purpose in writing was to show what the ideal man would be like.
I said there was quite a bit to like in her work. You have a problem with that?
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