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.
That’s true. She did not call herself a conservative. She called herself a radical for capitalism. As for Libertarians she despised them and accused them of stealing her ideas. She did not have much good to say about conservatives such as Reagan. She said once that if you vote for Reagan may you be damned.
I thought we were discussing Ayn Rand?
whatever
exactly. And that is why I have a problem with people mixing religion and politics. They let their religion cloud their political judgments. It also happens in the business world. People mix their religion (or their politics) with their business. I consider myself a conservative christian capitalist and Those 3 things I keep compartmentalized so that none of them interfere with the others...or at least I make a serious effort to do that.
She described what she saw the left do. She did not create the methods, she described and then showed how they are used to enslave. Using your logic one could call
the Holy Bible the bible of Satan.
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.”
ROTFLOL Sure, and unicorns squirt out Skittles.
Precisely. That was her thinking. She had a wonderful mind, though her thinking had its limits.
Since I happen to believe that objective truth exists... and I see that as quite rational....I am convinced of the spiritual dimension on which morality is based. Unlike Ms. Rand, my belief springs from much more than mere logic.
;-)
Well, that’s not “tan misterioso.”
May you soon be amazed at profound Mystery.
;-)
Ayn Rand would be more of a role model, had her ideas not been used to justify sending America’s industrial base to China.
In that aspect, Rand has been profoundly harmful.
Not Rand so much, more those who claim her philosophy, to justify anti-American greed.
Wrong use of “toe the line”.
Chortled? Like in derision? Or with the pleasure of recognizing a kind of triumph?
I think the thing the Left hates about Rand is that she made it absolutely clear that the government, the means of the Left’s power, has no ultimate power except the gun - force. The producers of value hold the final trump card in society. When they say “no more,” the Left is shown for the fraud it is. They have nothing to seduce people with since there’s nothing to hand out.
In the novel, Rearden revealed the Left’s fear when he stopped sanctioning their theft of his property. If they wanted it, they had to take it by force - for all to see. That, above all, was what they did not want people to see/know.
Could you provide words to describe from whence your belief springs? Speaking metaphorically, you leave the essence of yourself as a nebula, not a defined solar system with a radiating star at its core.
Well, for starters, her book agrees with many themes we find in Nietzsche’s works: eliminates what is weak, and glorifies and adheres to the strong (although this may sound good at first glance, it is quite dangerous). The book also clearly magnifies power and individualism as GOOD far beyond what it should. Overall, the pervasive theme of Atlas Shrugged is to use only the BEST practices ... regardless of who may be injured by this ...regardless of which traditions and beliefs will be subjugated in the process. There is the negative stereotyping in the book of “old fashioned thinking” and tradition. This becomes a dangerous line of thinking if you take it to its natural conclusions.
In other words, though there is truth in the book, particularly with regard to some economic situations, its underlying philosophy is in error and can lead to those same “unexpected results” that we see with leftist views.
The underlying philosophy that guided our Founders was that our rights and ultimate protections come from God. THAT is sound philosophy.
Well, there is mystery and there is Mystery. Simply THINK about that a bit.
In the meantime see post #55.
Merry Christmas!
;-)
If she hadn't been a self-centered rotten person her influence would have been much greater.
Ayn lived through the liberals of her time and country and wrote about them. Her writings, and the writings of others, are the teachings we should all read to get to know the liberal’s tactics and mentality and how to defeat them.
It might be a chicken and egg problem to some degree, but you gotta admit that the “laws we want you to break” have become a lot more numerous since Rand put it to paper in the 50’s.
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?
... er ... the phrase "easy target" comes to mind ...
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