The GOP and Tea-Party's Love Afair with Ayn Rand (OT)

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Fritz

Trad climber

Choss Creek, ID

Apr 19, 2011 - 12:34am PT

When I was unmarried and living the "good-life" in my 20's: I forced myself to read a lot of "important novels."

Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead: was one of the more forgetable of those.

Per the Wiki article on her, maybe I should force myself to read "Atlas Shrugged."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

Hell Yeah!! Maybe I can learn to quit caring about what other people think or need!

MisterE

Social climber

Cinderella Story, Outa Nowhere

Apr 19, 2011 - 12:40am PT

Selfishness is an "easy out" to avoid a caring, more global perspective.

As resources get scarcer, this kind of thinking will become more prevalent.

Ayn Rand is one of those writers that knows the juvenile mind, and her spewage reaches out for that immaturity in all of us, regardless of age.

Port

Trad climber

San Diego

Apr 19, 2011 - 12:56am PT

You're not entitled to an opinion until you've done the requisite work and formed your own ideas. Right now you're just spewing someone else's thoughts that fit your personal agenda

In honesty, I agree with what you're saying. But you need to read your sources, especially those that are in opposition to your ideology. It will force you to question your own assumptions and bias. You may realize that you don't have everything figured out, and actually have much to learn, like all of us do.

Port

Trad climber

San Diego

Apr 19, 2011 - 01:07am PT

Hey Jim,

Not defending Ayn Rand. Ignoring the fact that Klimmer has never read any of her books, I think its healthy to read and think about ideas that don't fit into our own ideology. Too many people read books that only confirm their own belief system....and then wonder how anyone could possibly have an opinion that doesn't fit into their own framework. Well, if they pick up a damn book, they could learn something.

Thats why people resort to "evil" as an explanation for someones behavior. All that tells me is that you've given up, or never tried, to understand where that person is coming from.

dirtbag

climber

Apr 19, 2011 - 02:35am PT

Why are GOPers and especially Tea-Party members raving about Ayn Rand so much lately? What is her draw? Why do they espouse her philosophy? What is her philosophy?

Because she makes them feel less guilty about I'veGotMineism.

apogee

climber

Apr 19, 2011 - 02:38am PT

"Because she makes them feel less guilty about being selfish."

And it allows them to rationalize their selfishness via intellectualism (even though 95% of them never read the damn thing).

Tomcat

Trad climber

Chatham N.H.

Apr 19, 2011 - 08:26am PT

I liked The Fountainhead more than Atlas Shrugged.

rottingjohnny

Sport climber

mammoth lakes ca

Apr 19, 2011 - 08:38am PT

Port....Right on!..I dated this beautiful intellectual lady that lives by Rands philosophies....She had a compulsive shopping disorder and owned 2 of everything inspite of a poverty level income...Perfect example of reading what fit her lifestyle...Rj

Mighty Hiker

climber

Vancouver, B.C.

Apr 19, 2011 - 11:08am PT

It's sad that Rant and other central European escapees from the totalitarianism of Hitler and Stalin, and the general instability of Europe, would as a reaction have created a theology that is almost as ugly and dystopian. I say theology advisedly - "objectivism" is no philosophy or political science. It's no more than a collection of beliefs and reactions.

Atlas Shrugged is one of the most turgid things I've ever (partly) waded through, although I admit to not even having tried Das Kapital (Marx) or Mein Kampf (Hitler), both of which are famously unreadable.

harihari

Trad climber

Squampton

Apr 19, 2011 - 11:58am PT

Rand has got to be the worst widely-read writer around. I read AS and TF in maybe gr 10 or so. LAter I was reading Galbraith, who said that "Conservativism is the intellectual quest to justify selfishness" which struck me as basically what Rand was trying to do.

The problem with Rand is that her philosophy is based on a reductio ad absurdum argument, which Hobbes had addressed 300 years before Rand was born: human existence, being inherently social, necessarily involves a set of compromises and giving up of certain rights. Hobbes' (and later Locke's) point was that these compromises made everybody better off. E.g. if everybody agrees to surrender the right to use violence to achieve one's ends, yes, you lose something, but you gain security.

If existence becomes solely about self-gain and self-preservation, everybody has an equal incentive to f**k with other people...this is what Hobbes called "the state of Nature." He rightly observed that (a) no human beings, ever, anywhere, live in such a state and that (b) if you did live in such a state, life would be "solitary, nasty, brutish and short."

the Fet

climber

Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La

Apr 19, 2011 - 12:40pm PT

The reason Tea partiers and all right wingers go for Atlas Shrugged is that they are essentially authoritarian by nature.

That is pretty much the opposite of my impression of Rand. She left communist Russia, so it's no surprise that her writing promotes individualism over collectivism. She is way more of a libertarian than one of today's conservatives. The tea baggers are just latching onto the things they agree with and ignoring the other aspects of her philosophy.

Of course IMO it's all about balance. Greed is bad, but capitalism is good. People are most efficient and hard working when they can enjoy the fruits of their labor. But as history has shown socialism is bad, it's against human nature and even more subject to abuse and corruption.

I've only read one Ayn Rand book, Anthem, a long time ago and thought it was great. About 100 page novella. I'd at least read that before forming an opinion of her writing. It's like the people who rail against Obama from what they hear on Fox news "Commentary" shows. But never have and never would read one of the books that HE has actually written.

apogee

climber

Apr 19, 2011 - 01:15pm PT

fattrad, would you shave your junk if Ayn Rand asked you to?

How about if Cheney asked you to?

ontheedgeandscaredtodeath

Trad climber

San Francisco, Ca

Apr 19, 2011 - 01:22pm PT

A common theme in her books is rough sex. I bet she made Alan Greenspan shave his junk.

MisterE

Social climber

Cinderella Story, Outa Nowhere

Apr 19, 2011 - 01:23pm PT

I would just like to add one more thing to Ayn Rand capturing the juvenile mind:

These kinds of ideas are presented to the juvenile as a test of adulthood. This is true for a person or a culture.

Ours is a juvenile culture, so these kind of ideas will hold power over us until we reject them as immature and move into adulthood.

My $0.02

(I have read both books)