The Galt and Lamers 2

2 comments

1. George Smith

   August 15, 2013 at 4:49 pm

   This has always been interesting because it’s a hodge-podge of stupid and terrible in a uniquely American fashion. The current far right philosophies are jerry-bilt on what they wish to believe, what they think they know is right, and it has nothing to do with what historically was the case, it’s a just a case of their “philosophy” being custom made in a hermetically sealed environment. You’ll never convince me any majority has read Atlas Shrugged all the way through and liked it. You can’t but laugh out loud at entire portions of it, the high point probably being when the Scandinavian pirate with his own navy that sinks the cargo ships to give their booty to the wealthy, goes on a rant about Robin Hood being one the world’s great villains, at which point he hands a gold bar to Hank Rearden on a country road. Tea Party types have never read that. Conveniently, Ayn Rand is dead, so she can’t insult them for their trying to meld her beliefs with Evangelical Christianity and religious fundamentalism. I gave a talk at the Cato Institute about a decade ago and they weren’t as crazy as the libertarians are now. The Kochs had founded it and it sort of got away from their kookiness, something they’ve gone about trying to correct. And nobody reads Reason magazine or pays attention to the Ludwig Mises Institute. As for Paul Ryan, no sooner had his Arn Rand worship become a liability, then he publicly rejected her which only showed he has a paper rectum, which you could always kinda tell by looking at him. The current far right crazy has far more in common with obscure far right wing crazies from American history, people most don’t remember, like the Willis Cartos or the Lyndon LaRouches after the latter figured commies weren’t working out for him. Or Kurt Saxon, the author of self-published survivalist fight-the-tyranny literature, of which there is a ton. It’s why the Southern Poverty Law Center knows such much about the GOP now. As long-time historians and trackers of America’s violent right, they see how its now part of the cloth of the GOP. Whatever Ayn Rand was, she was not violent, and that completely separates her from the present crew. 

    
2. Frank

   August 16, 2013 at 8:33 am

   “Conveniently, Ayn Rand is dead, so she can’t insult them for their trying to meld her beliefs with Evangelical Christianity and religious fundamentalism.”

    

   Jesus revisited:  “Sell all your goods and keep the money for yourself.”

    

   In a larger perspective, it’s PR and clumsy PR at that–an attempt to put Sunday go-to-meeting clothes on greed.