She was Alan Greenspan's mentor and he used her model of laissez-faire Capitalism to guide his years at the Fed. She authored Justice Clarence Thomas favorite book The Fountainhead, which he makes all of his clerks read. Her book Atlas Shrugged is quoted by Conservatives from Rush Limbaugh, to Michelle Bachmann, Eric Cantor and even Newt Gingrich as they make their arguments for cutting the Social Safety net or denying health care to thirty million Americans without it. It is the guiding philsosphy of the whole Tea Party Movement. That her work is influential can not be denied.
Conservatism has been variously described by its detractors, as a movement always seeking a superior argument for why selfishness and greed are character virtues. Ayn Rand was the High Priestess of these ideas.
Liberals and Progressives continue to avoid reading her two most famous works, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, at their peril, because you will never understand their whole movement, nor even provide any effective arguments against it, until you do. Because the Left avoids reading her work as if you could get poison ivy from touching it, as many on the Right avoid Karl Marx, much of their movement code you misinterpret and call it what it isn't, because of ignorance of where their ideas come from.
I personally would love to encourage every Right Winger to hurry up and go John Galt on us, a reference to a character, John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, who brings about the collapse of Government by refusing to work and be taxed and who also encourages others to do the same thing creating a sort of Capitol strike by the rich, because Conservatives arrogantly and narcissistically believe all the rest of us moochers and parasites can't function without them.
I am still hoping Right Wingers will attempt this because it sure will open up the labor market and we could surely get rid of a few of those worthless Wall Street thieves like Blankfein at Goldman's and Jamie Damon at JP Morgan Chase as well. My real reason for writing this article however is that I wanted to ask Conservatives if they had read Mark Ames excellent article on Alternet about Ayn Rand's model for the real Conservative man.
The person, one William Edward Hickman, who along with Nietzsche's concept of the "Uberman" or Superman, the same idea that animated Hitler's idea of the Master Race, are the sources from which Rand would draw her characters traits throughout her writing career. Uberman is behind her idea of the so called productive members, the mega rich Venture Capitalists of society as opposed to the rest of us average people who in her own words are nothing but moochers and parasites even if we work hard for a living every day. While these productive members, the Capitalists are her Ubermen Hickman was the Uberman's personality right on up to the charcater of John Galt in Atlas Shrugged. So who was William Edward Hickman?
William Edward Hickman was in 1927 the most famous person in America. His fame was based on being a violent serial killing child murderer. In 1927 he kidnapped, murdered, and dismembered the body of a 12 year old girl. It is even farther alleged he had opined that he wanted to kill someone just to see what it was like. He later confessed to even more murders.
Ayn Rand knew all of this as she opined that he was a beautiful soul and that he was the finest example of what it was to be a man. Why?
Because he had no feelings for or connection to others and no ability to empathize with the feelings and needs of others. This cold ruthless inability to empathize or to feel in any way connected with the rest of society permeates her thinking and animates her ideals all the way through writing The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. and is behind much of today's Conservative Movement attacks on Obama and Liberals.
William Edward Hickman was a true socio-path. Arrogant, narcissistic, devoid of feelings for others or any connections with or ability to empathize with others. These are the personality traits that animate the entire Conservative Movement. This is where Rand's ideas about Altruism is a weakness and a moral sin come from, a homicidal sociopath.
This needs to be thrown in every Conservatives face every time they bring out Ayn Rand to defend denying health care to thirty million Americans without it. Their desire to cut government to pieces stems not from Governments incompetence but from the fact that it provides a safety net for those injured by Conservatism's thirty year sociopathic reign of error on the working American Public with outsourcing, insourcing, plundering the economy and putting 20% of Americans in the ranks of the underemployed and costing millions of Americans their houses, while having no remorse about it because, after all they are the only productive members of society and if you dare tax us to pay for the disaster our greedy naive stupidity has caused we will all go John Galt on you. That's right your whole movement, your quotes, Greenspan's globalized ignorance is based on a homicidal sociopathic child killer named William Edward Hickman. Some Right to Life movement you are.
Ayn Rand's writings have no more business being the guiding principles of our political and economic policy than do Marx's. Sadly a brilliant but extremely mentally ill woman never got the help she needed. But sociopathy is not a solution but a mental illness to be treated. Rand's ideas were given very little credibility when she wrote them and they deserve even less creditability now. You Conservatives better hope the God of your understanding is foregiving because you have destroyed people's lives not on scientifc principles of a rational market as you claim, but on the mentally ill rantings of a tragically sick woman.
