Opening Obama’s Playbook – by Ayn Rand

The Red Side of Life ^ | 6/3/12 | RedInNewYork

[jmstein7]

“The Fountainhead” is to “Atlas Shrugged” what “Animal Farm” is to “1984.” Just like “Animal Farm” is not about farming, “Fountainhead” is not about architecture – it is about socialist ascent.

While “Atlas Shrugged”  is all the rage these days – and appropriately so – I strongly suggest that anyone who is truly interested in defeating Obama in November read “The Fountainhead,” because it subtly lays bare the Obama playbook. However, at some points, subtlety gives way to blunt frankness – the gloating revolutionary. In this case Ellsworth Toohey, the socialist villain, spells out several ways of accomplishing a socialist takeover. I urge you to read this carefully – I will reproduce his words, in relevant part, in a manner that constitutes “fair use.” If you read and understand these points, you will know – in your own way – what you can do to defeat Obama and socialism in general.

From “The Fountainhead”:

If you learn how to rule one single man’s soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It’s the soul, Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That’s why the Caesars, the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul, Peter, is that which can’t be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it—and the man is yours. You won’t need a whip—he’ll bring it to you and ask to be whipped. Set him in reverse—and his own mechanism will do your work for you. Use him against himself. Want to know how it’s done?

There are many ways. Here’s one. Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity. That’s difficult. The worst among you gropes for an ideal in his own twisted way. Kill integrity by internal corruption. Use it against itself. Direct it toward a goal destructive of all integrity. Preach selflessness. Tell man that he must live for others. Tell men that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one of them has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living instinct screams against it. But don’t you see what you accomplish? Man realizes that he’s incapable of what he’s accepted as the noblest virtue—and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideals, all aspiration, all sense of his personal value. He feels himself obliged to preach what he can’t practice. But one can’t be good halfway or honest approximately. To preserve one’s integrity is a hard battle. Why preserve that which one knows to be corrupt already? His soul gives up its self-respect. You’ve got him. He’ll obey. He’ll be glad to obey—because he can’t trust himself, he feels uncertain, he feels unclean. That’s one way. 

Here’s another. Kill man’s sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can’t be ruled. We don’t want any great men. Don’t deny the conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept—and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection... Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity—and the shrines are razed.

Then there’s another way. Kill by laughter. Laughter is an instrument of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of destruction. Turn it into a sneer. It’s simple. Tell them to laugh at everything. Tell them that a sense of humor is an unlimited virtue. Don’t let anything remain sacred in a man’s soul—and his soul won’t be sacred to him. Kill reverence and you’ve killed the hero in man. One doesn’t reverence with a giggle. He’ll obey and he’ll set no limits to his obedience—anything goes—nothing is too serious. 

Here’s another way. This is most important. Don’t allow men to be happy. Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men. So kill their joy in living. Take away from them whatever is dear or important to them. Never let them have what they want. Make them feel that the mere fact of a personal desire is evil. Bring them to a state where saying ‘I want’ is no longer a natural right, but a shameful admission. Altruism is of great help in this. Unhappy men will come to you. They’ll need you. They’ll come for consolation, for support, for escape. Nature allows no vacuum. Empty man’s soul—and the space is yours to fill. I don’t see why you should look so shocked, Peter. This is the oldest one of all. Look back at history. Look at any great system of ethics, from the Orient up. Didn’t they all preach the sacrifice of personal joy? Under all the complications of verbiage, haven’t they all had a single leitmotif: sacrifice, renunciation, self-denial? Haven’t you been able to catch their theme song—‘Give up, give up, give up, give up’? Look at the moral atmosphere of today. Everything enjoyable, from cigarettes to sex to ambition to the profit motive, is considered depraved or sinful. Just prove that a thing makes men happy—and you’ve damned it. That’s how far we’ve come. We’ve tied happiness to guilt. And we’ve got mankind by the throat. Throw your first-born into a sacrificial furnace—lie on a bed of nails—go into the desert to mortify the flesh—don’t dance—don’t go to the movies on Sunday—don’t try to get rich—don’t smoke—don’t drink. It’s all the same line. The great line. Fools think that taboos of this nature are just nonsense. Something left over, old-fashioned. But there’s always a purpose in nonsense. Don’t bother to examine a folly—ask yourself only what it accomplishes. Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power and ruled millions of men. 

Of course, you must dress it up. You must tell people that they’ll achieve a superior kind of happiness by giving up everything that makes them happy. You don’t have to be too clear about it. Use big vague words. ‘Universal Harmony’—‘Eternal Spirit’—‘Divine Purpose’ —‘Nirvana’—‘Paradise’—‘Racial Supremacy’—‘The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.’

 Internal corruption, Peter. That’s the oldest one of all. The farce has been going on for centuries and men still fall for it. Yet the test should be so simple: just listen to any prophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice—run. Run faster than from a plague. It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. But if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it’s your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself—that will be the man who’s not after your soul. That will be the man who has nothing to gain from you. But let him come and you’ll scream your empty heads off, howling that he’s a selfish monster. So the racket is safe for many, many centuries. But here you might have noticed something. I said, ‘It stands to reason.’ Do you see? 

Men have a weapon against you. Reason. So you must be very sure to take it away from them. Cut the props from under it. But be careful. Don’t deny outright. Never deny anything outright, you give your hand away. Don’t say reason is evil—though some have gone that far and with astonishing success. Just say that reason is limited. That there’s something above it. What? You don’t have to be too clear about it either. The field’s inexhaustible. ‘Instinct’—‘Feeling’—‘Revelation’—‘Divine Intuition’—‘Dialectic Materialism.’ If you get caught at some crucial point and somebody tells you that your doctrine doesn’t make sense—you’re ready for him. You tell him that there’s something above sense. That here he must not try to think, he must feel. He must believe. Suspend reason and you play it deuces wild. Anything goes in any manner you wish whenever you need it. You’ve got him. Can you rule a thinking man? We don’t want any thinking men.

Rand, Ayn, The Fountainhead (all emphasis is added)

READ THIS OVER AND OVER… AS MANY TIMES AS IT TAKES

[jmstein7]

Amen!

[SpaceBar]

The Fountainhead explores in more detail than Altlas the role of the media and the shaping of public opinion through yellow journalism. Something today’s media seems adept at.

[jimfree]

Ayn Rand sees Satan. She characterized him as Elsworth Toohey and various other villains.

[jmstein7]

Very true.

[jmstein7]

More about that in John Galt’s Speech (90 pages!)

[Colonel Kangaroo]

"If you learn how to rule one single man’s soul, you can get the rest of mankind."

That worked really well for Charles Manson. I'm not impressed with the atheist Ayn Rand.

[mjp]

Men have a weapon against you. Reason

In the Federalist, Publius believed that opinions or beliefs were formed by men through the exercise of their reason.And that reason may cause men to act insofar as their opinions or beliefs may cause them to act. Also, reason may move a man to act in accordance with what he believes is his moral right or moral duty.In other words, reason can serve as a motive of action when a belief causes a person to do something that he ought to do or may do.

[rlmorel]

While Rand’s atheism is not something I admire, that doesn’t make what the passages highlighted above wrong. I think in these things, she was prescient and recognized these things as accurately as Orwell did.

I don’t see a problem with bashing her atheism, but her views on oppression and subjugation. as described above are pretty accurate, and illustrate well the workings of liberalism.

[jmstein7]

Right... it can be separated from her take on capitalsm and socialism.

[Anima Mundi]

I think too much effort is spent trying to BE happy. One can’t BE happy. Even fairy tales end with “They lived happily ever after”, and not with “They were happy forever.” It is possible to “live happily,” and to have a good attitude and to find the positives and lessons even in bad situations. How much more directed would lives be if parents told their children they wanted them to be productive or to be self-sufficient, rather than telling them “I just want you to be happy?” Happy is so vague and confusing to maturing youngsters.

[Lurker]

That’s alright. She probably wouldn’t be very impressed by you either.

[rlmorel]

That is the way I see it, but some people can’t do that. I understand it, but I think it is unfortunate. I guess that is just the way it is...:)

[NoGrayZone]

Fine. Rand is an atheist. However; she was NOT incorrect. Many a time, I had to throw down Atlas Shrugged because of fear.....fear in what she was writing and what is happening in our country coming true before my very eyes.

[rwoodward]

Correction - she is against large organized religion. Big religion is not much different than Big government.

[jmstein7]

There is so much more to Objectivism

[impimp]

“Correction - she is against large organized religion. Big religion is not much different than Big government.”

Big religion IS the Catholic Church - the Church that Jesus founded. The Church that brought us science and just about everything the Western World has that made it flourish for two millenia. It is the Catholic Church that has brought us the Bible and the theology of the trinity. I say thank you to God for the big religion that comes with the Catholic Church.

[phockthis]

sfl

[Colonel Kangaroo]

That’s alright. She probably wouldn’t be very impressed by you either.

Quite true. But unlike Ayn Rand, I'm not supposed to be the Wonder Genius of All Time.

[thirst4truth]

Yep, my congressman is there. Peter DeFazio is so out of step with his constituents even the dems are disgusted. PD is going down in Nov 2012. Go Art Robinson!

[PGalt]

GRRRRRREAT news, thirst4truth! BUMP for the thirst4truth!

“Everything about socialism is sham and affectation.” - 23.11 Ch23 Evil; Economic Harmonies; Frederic Bastiat 1801-1850