[/caption]The rise of teabag politics in the US has lead to an equally disturbing return to deification of Ayn Rand and her Objectivist "philosophy". The right wing, of course, doesn't talk about Ayn Rand's disdain for things like religions or belief in a god, but focuses instead on her notions regarding capitalism. Specifically, they use the John Galt figure from one of her books to embody all that an American should be.
Who was John Galt? He was the deus ex machina in Atlas Shrugged, a rich industrialist who tired of seeing his tax money go to such despicable things as helping the poor. So, he took his ball and went home, quite literally. He buys an island and moves there with all his rich friends, leaving the rest of society to go without their creative manna (read: taxes).
[caption id="attachment_812" align="alignright" width="199" caption="Their pledge is "I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." They are bad people."]
[/caption]The teabaggers use this fictional character to represent themselves. They believe they are the same as Galt and no longer want to participate in our society with its taxes and social programs. There is even an organization dedicated to "going Galt":
They have the typical delusional "Us" and "Them" mentality so prevalent among the right wing. They are the True Americans© while everyone else is simply a leech, living off the tit of taxpayers. In replacing Ronald Reagan with Ayn Rand as their Conservative Messiah, they expressing a kind of vicious, self-interested sociopathy some of them don't even realize. The cognitive dissonance is astounding and they don't seem to actually get what they are saying.
For example, remember Craig T. Nelson's appearance on the Glenn Beck show?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U
He says the words but he doesn't appear to understand what he is saying. More recently, we see this:
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[/caption]This level of blindness to the implications of their ideology is one explanation for the puzzling endorsement of Rand's philosophies. Ayn Rand wasn't merely blindingly in love with laissez faire capitalism. She took it a step further and advocated some of those same concepts as a kind of morality. A good insight into her psyche was her thoughts on William Edward Hickman, a psychotic killer who kidnapped, ransomed, tortured, and killed a little girl so he could get enough money to go to seminary. When he was finally captured and investigators were questioning how he could morally justify himself, he famously said "what is good for me is right".
Rand considered this quote to be the epitome of a "real man's psychology". Her defense of him didn't just end there, however. She later wrote of him:
"The first thing that impresses me about the case is the ferocious rage of a whole society against one man. No matter what the man did, there is always something loathsome in the 'virtuous' indignation and mass-hatred of the 'majority.'... It is repulsive to see all these beings with worse sins and crimes in their own lives, virtuously condemning a criminal...
"This is not just the case of a terrible crime. It is not the crime alone that has raised the fury of public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. It is the fact that a crime has been committed by one man, alone; that this man knew it was against all laws of humanity and intended that way; that he does not want to recognize it as a crime and that he feels superior to all. It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. A man who really stands alone, in action and in soul."
"And when we look at the other side of it -- there is a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy turned into a purposeless monster. By whom? By what? Is it not by that very society that is now yelling so virtuously in its role of innocent victim? He had a brilliant mind, a romantic, adventurous, impatient soul and a straight, uncompromising, proud character. What had society to offer him? A wretched, insane family as the ideal home, a Y.M.C.A. club as social honor, and a bank-page job as ambition and career...
"If he had any desires and ambitions -- what was the way before him? A long, slow, soul-eating, heart-wrecking toil and struggle; the degrading, ignoble road of silent pain and loud compromises....
"A strong man can eventually trample society under his feet. That boy was not strong enough. But is that his crime? Is it his crime that he was too impatient, fiery and proud to go that slow way? That he was not able to serve, when he felt worthy to rule; to obey, when he wanted to command?...
"He was given [nothing with which] to fill his life. What was he offered to fill his soul? The petty, narrow, inconsistent, hypocritical ideology of present-day humanity. All the criminal, ludicrous, tragic nonsense of Christianity and its morals, virtues, and consequences. Is it any wonder that he didn't accept it?"
Her sympathy for a psychotic murderer is of the same vein of thought which informs her Objectivism. It is individuals like Hickman who became the model of other heroes in her books, Denny Renahan in "The Little Street". In further describing Hickman she wrote of her "involuntary, irresistible sympathy for him, which I cannot help feeling just because of [his antisocial nature] and in spite of everything else."
Such individualism and anti-social behavior defined all of Rand's heros and heroines. They viewed themselves as morally superior by virtue of simply staking out that ground, and the rest of humanity as mere tools to be used, ground down, and tossed aside to achieve whatever goal theses Individuals had for themselves. Such goals could obviously be building skyscrapers or killing innocent children. If it's good for them, it's right.
3 comments:
[...] the following essay in my notes, written by Tim Wise. He illustrates much of what I wrote of in my own essay previously and he does so with a good intellect. Well worth a [...]
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