The neo fascist, self centered utopia envisioned by Ayn Rand, idealized by Ronald Reagan, and now codified by Paul Ryan, his handlers, and far too many wealthy white men to count; has been obliquely embraced by the GOP.
Last month, Gary Weiss' essay, looked with fresh eyes on how Ayn Rand's-- and Paul Ryan's-- vision (certainly destined to be part of Barack Obama's hideous "Grand Bargain") will lead to an Objectivist America that describes a new age of unhindered free enterprise, far more primitive and Darwinian than anything seen before. And Weiss thinks the stages are already manifesting.
I think he might be right.
The shape of an Objectivist world, has been well documented for the past 50 years, since Ayn Rand, the Brandens, Alan Greenspan, and other selfish fucks began to set down their views in Randian newsletters.
When he casually defended repeal of child labor laws in the debate with Miles Rappaport, Aaron Brook [President of the Ayn Rand Institute] was merely repeating long- established Randian doctrine, summarized by Peikoff as “Government is inherently negative.”
It is a worldview that has been static through the decades, its tenets reiterated endlessly by Rand and her self centered apostles:
No government except the police, courts of law, and the armed services.
No regulation of anything by any government.
No Medicare or Medicaid.
No Social Security.
No public schools.
No public hospitals.
No public anything, in fact. Just individuals, each looking out for himself, not asking for help or giving help to anyone.
The poor and elderly, freed at last from dependence on government-subsidized medical care, would die as bravely and in as generous quantities as in a Dikensian novel.
Minimum wage laws would come to an end, providing factory owners with a pool of cheap labor competitive with any Banana Republic.
All laws protecting consumers would simply be erased from the books.
Mass transit would grind to a halt in the big cities as municipal subsidies were stopped.
Securities laws and stock market regulations would be eliminated.
Roads would go unplowed in winter, and bridges would fall as the government withdrew from the business of maintaining them - unless some private citizen would find it in his rational self-interest to voluntarily take up the slack by scraping off the rust and replacing frayed cables.
Public parks and land, from the tiniest vest-pocket patch of green to vast expanses of the West, would be sold off to the newly liberated megacorporations.
Airplane traffic would be grounded unless a profit-making capitalist found it in his own selfish interests to fund the air traffic control system. If it could be made profitable, fine. If not, tough luck. The market had spoken.
The Coast Guard would stay in port while storm-tossed mariners drown lustily as they did in days of yore. Fires would rage in the remnants of silent forests, vegetation and wildlife no longer protected by rangers and coercive environmental laws, swept clean of timber, their streams polluted in a rational, self-interested manner by bold, imaginative entrepreneurs.
...Such is the Ayn Rand vision of paradise: an America that would resemble the lands from which our ancestors emigrated, altruism confined to ignored, fringe texts, grinding poverty and starvation coexisting alongside the opulence of the wealthy. Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York would become like Cairo and Calcutta, with walled enclaves protecting the wealthy from the malnourished, uneducated masses outside.
We need to understand the basis of her "morality", not just its origins but where it doesn't originate - the three great monotheistic religions, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the other writings and actions of the Founding Fathers. The words “capitalism,” “markets,” and “free enterprise” appear in none of the founding documents of America. The natural enemies of Ayn Rand are not only Lenin and Roosevelt but Jefferson, Rousseau, and Paine. The Founders were not defenders of oligarchy and selfishness. They sacrificed. They were altruists, and proud of it.
We need to choose-- our heritage or Ayn Rand
Seriously? You are that frightened of losing your access to other's cash via tax theft? And you think Libertarians want to go back to jungle living? You are seriously radically, fearfully Left, not Left leaning. Spreading prejudicial falseness seems to be a defining property of the uber Left.
ReplyDelete